Lifeboat Foundation

When in doubt, build a railgun.

Conservationists are employing animal bridges as wildlife crossings to save our furry friends. Take a look at how they work across the globe.

London’s Charge Automotive is preparing to emerge from the smoke and shadows with an impressive sports car that’s sure to terrify small children, even without a V8 rumbling under its hood scoop. The blacked-out, 1967-style Mustang fastback features a 536-hp (400-kW) electric powertrain spinning all four wheels for up to 200 miles (322 km). The prototype will make its debut at next month’s Goodwood Festival of Speed.

Lithoredo abatanica, a very weird shipworm found in a river in the Philippines, represents both a new species and genus.

In 2013, SOCOM expanded their development of such a suit, which they call the Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS). Navy SEALs or Special Forces would use these suits for special operations.

Scientists at a Polish company that produce body armor systems are working to implement a non-Newtonian liquid in their products.

The liquid is called Shear-Thickening Fluid (STF). STF does not conform to the model of Newtonian liquids, such as water, in which the force required to move the fluid faster must increase exponentially, and its resistance to flow changes according to temperature. Instead STF hardens upon impact at any temperature, providing protection from penetration by high-speed projectiles and additionally dispersing energy over a larger area.

Continue reading “Liquid body armor tested in Poland” »

Synthetic Ball-Lightning:

How to make a Stable Plasmoid ( Ball Lightning ) with the GMR v1.0 ( Graphite Microwave Resonator )by Jean-Louis NaudinCliquez ici pour la version Française created on March 1st, 2003 — JLN Labs — Last update December 22, 2005freely.

The Goldilocks coat.

Scientists and non-scientists alike have long been dreaming of elements with mighty properties. Perhaps the fictional materials they have conjured up are not as far from reality as it may at first seem.

The periodic table of elements has become one of the defining symbols of chemistry. It is, of course, a handy chart of the building blocks that make up absolutely anything and everything around us, but it is also the outcome of the work of a huge number of scientists, which led to the current understanding of the elements’ atomic structure and behaviour. For those who like organization, patterns and chemistry, what’s not to love?

The assembly of the gorilla genome was announced today, March 7, by a multi-national group of researchers. The gorilla is the last genus of the living great apes to have its genome decoded. While confirming that our closest relative is the chimpanzee, the team showed that much of the human genome more closely resembles the gorilla than it does the chimpanzee genome.

This is the first time scientists have been able to compare the genomes of all four living great apes: humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans. This study provides a new perspective on human origins and is an important resource for research into human evolution and biology, as well as for gorilla biology and conservation.

Researchers at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in the United Kingdom lead the study, with contributions from several other institutions, including the University of Washington.