Lifeboat Foundation

After a thunderous launch on a Saturn V rocket, a three day journey through the unforgiving environment of space and a daring descent in the Lunar Module, you’re here: standing on the Moon. Look around and take in the sights of the surface, just as Apollo 17 astronauts Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt saw it almost 5 decades ago. #Apollo50th

NASA imagery experts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center have “stitched together” images from the Apollo landing sites on the Moon for a 50^th anniversary reminder of what the 12 humans who walked on its surface experience visually.

Individual images taken by the Apollo astronauts were pulled together by NASA imagery specialist Warren Harold at Johnson, and the accuracy of the unique perspective they represent was verified by Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, the only geologist to walk on the Moon.

Continue reading “NASA Releases Stunning Panoramas of Apollo Landing Sites for 50th Anniversary” »

Generating electricity from geothermal energy requires devices that can somehow make use of the heat within the Earth’s crust.

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University have published a new study that sheds light on skin rejuvenation, and it shares a link with what some cosmetic companies are doing using laser therapy.

A link between cosmetics and regeneration

During their study, the researchers found that the laser treatments used by cosmetic companies and retinoic acid, which is produced by the skin and sold commercially to treat wrinkles and sun damage, also target the same pathway. In addition, they also found that the activity of this pathway is increased in mice when they regenerate their hair follicles [1].

Meet Lizzy! Also known as Owl Kitty, she is the latest sensation that has hit Instagram and you can see why. Cats are well known for their skills at hunting, manipulating humans to get treats, and winding up the family dog. But did you know they are also excellent at acting? Well, some of them are.

Her cat dad, Thibault Charroppin, is a talented video editor and he decided to put his and her skills to good use by creating these hilarious movie clips. Her amazing performances have captured the hearts of her 445k Instagram following with some of the videos gathering over one million views.

We think she’s a star in the making, take a look and I’m sure that you’ll agree.

Researchers have created a new type of tiny 3D-printed robot that moves by harnessing vibration from piezoelectric actuators, ultrasound sources or even tiny speakers. Swarms of these “micro-bristle-bots” might work together to sense environmental changes, move materials—or perhaps one day repair injuries inside the human body.

The prototype robots respond to different vibration frequencies depending on their configurations, allowing researchers to control individual bots by adjusting the vibration. Approximately two millimeters long—about the size of the world’s smallest ant—the bots can cover four times their own length in a second despite the physical limitations of their small size.

Continue reading “Tiny vibration-powered robots the size of the world’s smallest ant” »

The first programmable memristor computer—not just a memristor array operated through an external computer—has been developed at the University of Michigan.

It could lead to the processing of artificial intelligence directly on small, energy-constrained devices such as smartphones and sensors. A smartphone AI processor would mean that voice commands would no longer have to be sent to the cloud for interpretation, speeding up response time.

“Everyone wants to put an AI processor on smartphones, but you don’t want your cell phone battery to drain very quickly,” said Wei Lu, U-M professor of electrical and computer engineering and senior author of the study in Nature Electronics.

A new wireless transceiver invented by electrical engineers at the University of California, Irvine boosts radio frequencies into 100-gigahertz territory, quadruple the speed of the upcoming 5G, or fifth-generation, wireless communications standard.

Labeled an “end-to-end transmitter-receiver” by its creators in UCI’s Nanoscale Communication Integrated Circuits Labs, the 4.4-millimeter-square silicon chip is capable of processing digital signals significantly faster and more energy-efficiently because of its unique digital-analog architecture. The team’s innovation is outlined in a paper published recently in the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

“We call our chip ‘beyond 5G’ because the combined speed and data rate that we can achieve is two orders of magnitude higher than the capability of the new wireless standard,” said senior author Payam Heydari, NCIC Labs director and UCI professor of electrical engineering & computer science. “In addition, operating in a higher frequency means that you and I and everyone else can be given a bigger chunk of the bandwidth offered by carriers.”

The telescope array in Arizona isn’t just about black holes and quasars anymore.

The year-old Ebola epidemic in the Democratic Republic of Congo is now considered a global health emergency, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday, in a formal declaration that many public health experts called long overdue.

“This is still a regional emergency and by no way a global threat,” said Robert Steffen of the University of Zurich, chairman of the W.H.O. emergency committee that recommended the declaration.

But the panel was persuaded by several factors that have made combating the epidemic more urgent in recent weeks: The disease reached Goma, a city of nearly two million people; the outbreak has raged for a year; the virus has flared again in spots where it had once been contained; and the epidemic hot zone has geographically expanded in northeastern Congo near Rwanda and into Uganda.