Lifeboat Foundation

Sure, it’ll be great when a drone can drop off your Amazon Prime goodies or 7-Eleven snacks just minutes after you order them… but it’ll be even better when they help regrow millions of trees.

That’s what U.K.-based BioCarbon Engineering has set out to do. The company has been developing a high-tech system that uses drones to replant deforested areas — even in areas where planting wouldn’t be feasible using older methods.

BioCarbon’s system utilizes drones for two separate stages of the process. First, they’re sent into the target area to create a detailed, three-dimensional map. Once they’ve completed that step, the planting drones return to the site to do their thing.

Continue reading “Reforestation Drones Can Plant 100K Trees In An Hour” »

Reaction Engine’s Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE) is closer to reality with ESA and the UK Space Agency (UKSA) green lighting the preliminary design of the demonstrator engine core. The successful review of the hypersonic engine, which is designed to act as both a jet and a rocket, means that the company can move on the major testing milestones in the next 18 months.

It’s not just that millennials have astonishing facility with computers, taking to every cell phone and software or video game release like birds to the sky. And it is not only that they seem more mechanically adept than other generations, with fine motor skills far beyond those of older people (with their ham-handed, clunky attempts at tiny phone keyboards).

It’s that they seem to be becoming one with the technology.

Anyone who’s ever had to remove a cell phone from beneath a teenager’s bed pillow to allow for a good night’s sleep (uninterrupted by incoming texts and calls) or peel an avid gamer away from the console long enough to eat dinner knows what I’m talking about. The devices are not just tools — they are extensions of young bodies and minds. In fact, according to a recent Nielsen survey, eighty-three percent of Generation Y admit to sleeping with their phones.

Continue reading “Rise of the Machine Empaths” »

Last month, OpenAI announced a text generating A.I. so scarily accurate they claimed it would be dangerous to release it. Now researchers have developed a tool to help spot text written by bots. Here’s what it means for the future of fake news in an age of smart machines.

A look at the Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 racing team’s steering wheel.

Researchers with the Stanford University School of Medicine found in a study sponsored by Apple and released Saturday that the company’s smartwatches can detect irregular heart rhythms.

Of the approximately 400,000 participants using Apple Watches in the eight-month study, 0.5 percent, or about 2,000 people, were sent irregular heart rhythm notifications.

“The results of the Apple Heart Study highlight the potential role that innovative digital technology can play in creating more predictive and preventive health care,” Lloyd Minor, dean of the Stanford School of Medicine, said in a statement.

Continue reading “Major US study finds Apple Watch can detect heart issues” »

Researchers have found rocks on a small island between Madagascar and the eastern coast of Africa, a discovery that has been described as mysterious for one very important reason — they shouldn’t be there.

The rocks in question, quartzite, were discovered by researchers at Columbia University, thanks to a grant from the National Geographic Society. They had heard about them from a number of different media reports, but were finally able to confirm the presence of the quartzite, which is usually found in areas that have high temperatures and pressures, for themselves.

“This is contrary to plate tectonics,” said Cornelia Class, a geochemist at Columbia University, in a blog post. “Quartzite bodies do not belong on volcanic islands.”

Continue reading “‘Impossible’ discovery found on remote island off African coast: A ‘lost part of the world’” »

Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology teamed up with colleagues from the U.S. and Switzerland and returned the state of a quantum computer a fraction of a second into the past. They also calculated the probability that an electron in empty interstellar space will spontaneously travel back into its recent past. The study is published in Scientific Reports.

“This is one in a series of papers on the possibility of violating the second law of thermodynamics. That law is closely related to the notion of the arrow of time that posits the one-way direction of time from the past to the future,” said the study’s lead author Gordey Lesovik, who heads the Laboratory of the Physics of Quantum Information Technology at MIPT.

“We began by describing a so-called local perpetual motion machine of the second kind. Then, in December, we published a paper that discusses the violation of the second law via a device called a Maxwell’s demon,” Lesovik said. “The most recent paper approaches the same problem from a third angle: We have artificially created a state that evolves in a direction opposite to that of the thermodynamic arrow of time.”