Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Blog – Page 9513

Something about atoms has never added up. Fundamental particles called quarks get kind of sluggish once they’re caught up in crowds of protons and neutrons – and quite frankly, they shouldn’t.

For decades, physicists have hunted for clues on the quark’s tendency to slow down in larger atoms, but have come up empty-handed. But now, a closer look at old data has finally revealed a clue to explain this strange phenomenon.

A massive team of physicists known as the CLAS Collaboration (after the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer) recently ran through data gathered from previous experiments at the Jefferson Lab’s Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility.

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This 3D-printed concept wheel by tyre manufacturer Goodyear uses living moss to absorb moisture from the road, before converting it into oxygen through photosynthesis.

The Oxygene tyre was revealed at this year’s Geneva Motor Show that officially kicked off yesterday, 8 March 2018.

The concept is a response to research conducted by the World Health Organisation (WHO) that revealed more than 80 per cent of people who live in urban areas are exposed to air quality levels deemed to be unsafe.

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Circa 2016

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Electronic materials have been a major stumbling block for the advance of flexible electronics because existing materials do not function well after breaking and healing. A new electronic material created by an international team, however, can heal all its functions automatically even after breaking multiple times. This material could improve the durability of wearable electronics.

“Wearable and bendable electronics are subject to mechanical deformation over time, which could destroy or break them,” said Qing Wang, professor of materials science and engineering, Penn State. “We wanted to find an electronic material that would repair itself to restore all of its functionality, and do so after multiple breaks.”

Continue reading “Self-healing, flexible electronic material restores functions after many breaks” | >

A black, thumb-sized missile sails through the jungle air, a thunderous buzzing announcing its arrival. The massive insect lands heavily on a tree-bound termite nest, taking a moment to fold its brassy wings and stretch its humongous, curved jaws. This is Wallace’s giant bee, the beefiest and bumbliest bee on Earth. After going missing for nearly four decades, the species has just been rediscovered in its native Indonesia.

Wallace’s giant bee (Megachile pluto) gets its name from its original discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace, the British naturalist famous for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection alongside Charles Darwin. Wallace collected the bee while on an expedition in Indonesia’s North Moluccas islands in 1858, describing it as a “large black wasp-like insect, with immense jaws like a stag-beetle.” The tiny titan then went more than a century without being spotted by Western scientists, only seen again by entomologist Adam Messer in 1981, who was able to observe some of its behavior on a number of small islands. But since then, no one had documented any encounters with the huge bee.

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Firstly, it greatly depends on how you define immortality. If you define it as living forever and being indestructible as in a comic book, then, no, it is highly unlikely. However, if you define it in terms of showing no decline in survival characteristics, no increase in disease incidence and no increase in mortality with advancing age, then yes. The first is a science-fiction fantasy; the second is based on real-world biology that evolution has already selected for in certain species. We call this state negligible senescence.

Senescence and negligible senescence

Senescence refers to the gradual deterioration of aging and is typically very obvious in almost every species. More accurately, senescence refers to a decline of survival characteristics, such as strength, mobility, senses, and age-related increases in mortality along with a decrease in reproductive capability. Mortality rates for humans and most animals increase dramatically with age beyond reaching reproductive maturity.

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