Lifeboat Foundation

Combining laser-induced graphene with a range of other materials gives it all sorts of new tricks.

There is a new battery type being hyped, with terms such as “Quantum Glass” battery or even “The Jesus Battery” and a claim that “It Will Ignite the Global $3 Trillion Electric Car Revolution.” Go and see it for yourself at investorplace.com (video transcript available from me), Forbes, and other financial information services.

This touted breakthrough in battery technology is the latest in a slew of innovative ideas that include “batteries made with sand,” “stretchable batteries,” “foam batteries,” “pee powered batteries,” “laser-made micro-super-capacitors” and more (13 Amazing Battery Innovations That Could Change The World).

Flat tires could soon be a thing of the past! Michelin and GM are working on an airless, puncture-proof tire that they say will make the roads safer for drivers. DETAILS: https://bit.ly/2F7HAcf

Among science fiction stories with space flight, the overwhelming majority are about combat, both between spacecraft and between futuristic ground troops. Not to mention the occasional starship marine assault trying to board a hostile ship while in flight. Yes, there are a few non-combat stories, mostly about exploration, but space combat is here to stay.

This is just the natural continuation of the process of militarisation of space

Which naturally leads to questions about the space branch of the military of various nations. The “astro-military” in other words. Some may start out as a subdivision of an existing branch and eventually grow large enough to split off (such as how the US Army Air Corps spit off to become the US Air Force in 1947). Some may grow large enough to absorb other branches of the military, others may be reabsorbed into other branches. In William Keith’s Galactic Marines series one of the themes of the early novels is how the US Marines fight being absorbed or eliminated. Their solution is diversifying their mission to include performing assaults on Luna and Mars.

Continue reading “Atomic Rockets” »

SpaceX founder Elon Musk wants people to live on Mars, while Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos envisions 1 trillion of us working in giant space tubes.

A new one-off prostate cancer test at the age of 55 promises to give men “peace of mind” that they will never develop the disease, scientists have revealed.

The 10-minute scan, which could be rolled out in supermarkets and shopping centres, detects dangerous cancers years before they cause any harm while ignoring growths that do not pose a threat.

Subject to a government-funded trial beginning this summer, the new MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) technique should enable the world’s first universal screening programme for prostate cancer.

Continue reading “New prostate cancer test will give men ‘peace of mind’ that they will never develop the disease, scientists say” »

The climate change analysis was written by a former fossil fuel executive and backed by the former chief of Australia’s military.

For Virginia Tech researchers Margaret Couvillon and Roger Schürch, the Tower of Babel origin myth—intended to explain the genesis of the world’s many languages—holds great meaning.

University of Maryland researchers analyzed an evolutionary tree reconstructed from the DNA of a majority of known bat species and found four bat lineages that exhibit extreme longevity. They also identified, for the first time, two life history features that predict extended life spans in bats.

Their work is described in a research paper, published in the April 10, 2019 issue of the journal Biology Letters, which concluded that horseshoe bats, long-eared bats, the common vampire bat and at least one lineage of mouse-eared bats all live at least four times longer than other, similarly sized mammals. The researchers also found that a high-latitude home range and larger males than females can be used to predict a given bat species’ life span.

“Scientists are very interested in finding closely related species in which one is long lived and one is short lived, because it implies that there has been some recent change to allow one species to live longer,” said Gerald Wilkinson, a biology professor at UMD and lead author of the paper. “This study provides multiple cases of closely related species with varying longevity, which gives us many opportunities to make comparisons and look for some underlying mechanism that would allow some species to live so long.”