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Apr 7, 2018

First in-flight firing of Virgin Galactic spaceplane engine

Posted by in category: space travel

Virgin Galactic’s tourist-carrying spaceplane has taken a step closer to entering service after its chemical rocket engine was fired for the first time in the skies over the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California. With test pilots Mark “Forger” Stucky and Dave Mackay at the controls, the 60-ft-long (18 m) SpaceShipTwo VSS Unity pegged the speedometer at Mach 1.87 (1,424 mph, 2,290 km/h) within 30 seconds of igniting its engine.

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Apr 7, 2018

Here’s How A Few People Knew The Strongest Earthquake In Years Was About To Hit LA

Posted by in category: mobile phones

Seconds before the strongest earthquake in years shook Southern California, hundreds of people received an alert on their cell phones, giving them crucial time to prepare.

BuzzFeed News Reporter

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Apr 7, 2018

Yosemite Valley to close to visitors as powerful storm moves in

Posted by in category: futurism

Yosemite Valley will close to the public Friday ahead of a powerful storm that could bring flooding to the area, officials said.

Visitors were asked to leave by 5 p.m. and all overnight reservations were canceled through Saturday night, according to Yosemite National Park officials who say the storm may cause “significant impacts.”

After the storm passes, authorities will assess road and facility conditions to determine when Yosemite Valley, home to many of the park’s picturesque waterfalls and cliffs, can reopen.

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Apr 7, 2018

Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, drones, law, military, robotics/AI

“Be very, very afraid. As this extraordinary book reveals, we are fast sailing into an era in which big life-and-death decisions in war will be made not by men…and women, but by artificial intelligence” — @stavridisj’s review of @paul_scharre upcoming book Pre-order yours now:


A Pentagon defense expert and former U.S. Army Ranger explores what it would mean to give machines authority over the ultimate decision of life or death.

What happens when a Predator drone has as much autonomy as a Google car? Or when a weapon that can hunt its own targets is hacked? Although it sounds like science fiction, the technology already exists to create weapons that can attack targets without human input. Paul Scharre, a leading expert in emerging weapons technologies, draws on deep research and firsthand experience to explore how these next-generation weapons are changing warfare.

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Apr 7, 2018

New Brain Maps With Unmatched Detail May Change Neuroscience

Posted by in categories: genetics, neuroscience

A technique based on genetic bar codes can easily map the connections of individual brain cells in unprecedented numbers. Unexpected complexity in the visual system is only the first secret it has revealed.

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Apr 7, 2018

XPrize breathes new life into failed moon landing competition

Posted by in category: space travel

The Google Lunar Xprize, a decade-long competition to put a privately funded spacecraft on the moon, may have come to an anticlimactic end but organizers aren’t conceding defeat just yet. They have today announced plans to re-launch the competition, though with no current sponsor to speak of teams could be competing for bragging rights only.

Launched in 2007, the Google Lunar XPrize tasked competing teams with getting a privately funded spacecraft to the Moon before having it travel 500 m (1,640 ft) and transmit HD video and images back to Earth. It offered up US$30 million in prizes, though these went unclaimed as organizers finally pulled the pin in January following several deadline extensions.

Google had funded the original Lunar XPrize but will be taking no part in the relaunched competition, which means that no cash is currently up for grabs. XPrize is now seeking a new title sponsor for the competition, who would get naming rights and be responsible for offering up prize money for the winners.

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Apr 7, 2018

‘Nightmare Bacteria’ Hits Washington

Posted by in category: futurism

Across Washington, WA — Hundreds of the virtually un-treatable “superbug” bacteria have been found in the U.S., including in Washington.

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Apr 7, 2018

1 thought on “The World’s First Floating Space Hotel Is Coming”

Posted by in category: space

Slated to open in 2021, Aurora Station is now taking reservations.

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Apr 7, 2018

Double perovskites in environmentally friendly solar cells

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

Researchers have taken a step toward manufacturing solar cells from lead-free perovskites. High-quality films based on double perovskites, which show promising photovoltaic properties, have been developed in collaboration between Linköping University, Sweden, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

Research groups around the world are pursuing the potential of perovskites as one of the most promising materials for the development of cheap, environmentally friendly and efficient . In just a few years, the has increased from a few percent to over 22 percent. The perovskites currently available for use in solar cells, however, contain lead, and Feng Gao, senior lecturer at LiU, was appointed in the autumn of 2017 as Wallenberg Academy Fellow to develop lead-free double perovskites, in which a monovalent metal and a trivalent metal replace the divalent lead.

In the laboratory at the Division of Biomolecular and Organic Electronics, LiU, postdoc researchers Weihua Ning and Feng Wang have successfully manufactured single-layer thin films of densely packed crystals of double perovskites. The films are of extremely high quality and can be used as the active layer in solar cells, in which sunlight is absorbed and created.

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Apr 7, 2018

300 Genes Found at The Root of Cancers Could Spur More Personalized Treatments

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics

A 10-year-long study called the PanCancer Atlas is releasing a trove of genetic data in an effort to help doctors treat a wide variety of cancers more precisely.

The history: Over the past decade, 150 researchers from the US and around the world painstakingly analyzed DNA, RNA, and proteins from tumor samples of more than 11,000 patients with 33 different types of cancer.

The findings: From that data, scientists have identified about 300 genes that drive tumor growth. They also found that just over half the tumors samples analyzed carry genetic mutations that could be targeted by therapies that are already on the market. These findings and others appear in 29 different papers today in the journal Cell.

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