Lifeboat Foundation

Although quadcopter drones show promise as a means of exploring hazardous environments such as disaster sites, they do have one drawback – they’re wide, limiting their ability to squeeze through tight spaces. An experimental new drone addresses that problem, by folding into different shapes while in flight.

Researchers borrowed equations from calculus to redesign the core machinery of deep learning so it can model continuous processes like changes in health.

Toxic algae is overtaking Lake Atitlán. Now AI may help the lake recover.

Buried beneath 4,000 feet of Antarctic ice lies Lake Mercer, a subglacial body of water that formed thousands of years ago and has been long separated from the rest of the world. A project to explore this lake—and its mysterious contents—is finally set to begin later this month.

Called Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access, or SALSA for short, the project aims to uncover new knowledge about Antarctica’s subglacial lakes, of which over 400 are known to exist. Over the next two months, SALSA scientists will explore one of the largest subglacial lakes in West Antarctica, a body of water known as Lake Mercer. The team will bore through some 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) of ice using a 60-centimeter-wide drill capped with hot water. In addition to extracting water and mud samples, the researchers will deploy a remotely operated vehicle—a scientific first for a subglacial lake.

And all three of these shapes were exactly what the PHENIX scientists observed. It’s our first good peek at what the universe began forming in its very earliest moments after the Big Bang.

It’s officially deadlier than heroin in the United States.

The first lab-grown steak will be available to buy in two years after scientists finally produced meat with the correct appearance, shape and texture of a real slice of beef.

Up to now, researchers have produced small amounts of cell-grown meat, which have been mixed together to create hamburger patties and sausages, but making an entire steak has proved elusive.

Now Israeli food technology company Aleph Farms has announced it has succeeded in using natural beef cells to grow the three dimensional structure of a minute steak which mimics the muscle and tissue of real meat.

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Virgin Galactic is headed for the Big Black! https://spacenews.com/virgin-galactic-to-attempt-flight-to-space-this-week/

WASHINGTON — Virgin Galactic plans to perform the next test flight of its SpaceShipTwo suborbital spaceplane as soon as Dec. 13, a flight that could be the first by the vehicle to reach at least one definition of space.

In a Dec. 11 statement, the company said the next powered test flight of VSS Unity, the second SpaceShipTwo, is planned for a window that opens Dec. 13 from the Mojave Air and Space Port in California. The flight would be the fourth powered flight for this vehicle and the first since July. The statement came shortly after the publication of airspace restrictions in the vicinity of the airport “for rocket launch and recovery” for Dec. 13 through 15.

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Next stop: the Lunar Farside

China’s Chang’e-4 lunar mission, the first-ever soft-landing endeavor on the lunar farside, launched successfully on 8 December at 02:23 Beijing time (7 December at 18:23 UTC) via a Long March 3B rocket from Xichang Satellite Launch Center. The launch carried a lander and a rover toward the Moon. On 12 December at 8:45 Beijing time (16:45 UTC), the spacecraft arrived in lunar orbit, preparing for a landing in early January.

Continue reading “Chang’e-4 Successfully Enters Lunar Orbit” »