Lifeboat Foundation

If you thought LIGO’s recent discoveries were profound and unusual, wait until you meet OJ 287.

Telecom experts are going so far as to herald the arrival of 5G as the advent of the fourth industrial revolution. There are an ever-expanding number of high-tech devices out there trying to connect to the internet every day, many of which require extensive bandwidth, and companies across the board will leverage 5G capabilities to better reach consumers.

“The application of 5G technology will result in massive changes for both consumers and enterprises,” said Jeff Weisbein, founder and CEO of digital media company Best Techie. “5G networks will offer consumers incredible broadband speeds at home (up to 20Gb/s). It will also enable companies to make advancements such as even smarter, better connected cars, advancements in medical technologies and improved retail experiences through personalization.”

5G refers to 5th-Generation Wireless Systems and uses additional spectrum in the existing LTE frequency range to build on the capabilities of 4G, which is often used interchangeably with 4G LTE by marketers. LTE denotes Long Term Evolution, and is a term that was deployed with early 4G networks that presented a substantial improvement on 3G, but did not fully qualify as 4G, meaning 4G LTE is essentially first-generation 4G.

Continue reading “The Shift From 4G to 5G Will Change Just About Everything” »

Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have discovered that a particular type of immune cell encourages harmful inflammation in the heart after a heart attack, and they have found a potential solution for protecting the heart.

The study, which was led by Dr. Douglas L. Mann, showed that a mouse model of human heart attack lived longer than control mice when treated with the drug pirfenidone, a drug already approved for treating lung conditions. The researchers showed that the drug works by regulating the immune response of B cell lymphocytes in the heart, thereby reducing inflammation and progressive injury following a cardiac event.

Pirfenidone is already used to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a condition in which the lungs become increasingly damaged and form scar tissue rather than healthy, functioning tissue. The researchers hope to understand how pirfenidone works in the heart and reduces inflammation; in doing so, they could potentially modify the drug to work more efficiently.

Since the Reagan administration, federal agencies have been required to produce cost-benefit analyses of their major regulations. These assessments are designed to ensure that regulators are pursuing actions that make society better off.

In my experience working on the White House economic team in the Clinton and Obama administrations, I found cost-benefit analysis provides a solid foundation for understanding the impacts of regulatory proposals. It also generates thoughtful discussion of ways to design rules to maximize net benefits to the public.

Continue reading “Why a minor change to how EPA makes rules could radically reduce environmental protection” »

Humanity has long dreamed about sending humans to other planets, even before crewed spaceflight became a reality. And with the discovery of thousands exoplanets in recent decades, particularly those that orbit within neighboring star systems (like Proxima b), that dream seems closer than ever to becoming a reality.

But of course, a lot of technical challenges need to be overcome before we can hope to mount such a mission.

In addition, a lot of questions need to be answered. For example, what kind of ship should we send to Proxima b or other nearby exoplanets? And how many people would we need to place aboard that ship?

Continue reading “To Start a New Life at Proxima Centauri, This Is How Many People We Need to Send” »

Solar energy is clean and abundant. But when the sun isn’t shining, you must store the energy in batteries or through a process called photocatalysis—in which solar energy is used to make fuels. In photocatalytic water splitting, sunlight separates water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen and oxygen can then be recombined in a fuel cell to release energy.

Now, a new class of materials—halide double perovskites—may have just the right properties to split water, according to a newly published paper in Applied Physics Letters.

“If we can come up with a material that can be useful as a water-splitting photocatalyst, then it would be an enormous breakthrough,” said Feliciano Giustino, a co-author on the paper.

Continue reading “Promising new material has the right properties to capture solar energy, split water into hydrogen and oxygen” »

A space launch every 3 hours may soon be possible using rockets carried on a fully autonomous unmanned airplane, a new startup company suggests.

Alabama-based startup Aevum aims to per mission, using an air-launch system called Ravn.

“Ravn is designed to launch every 180 minutes,” Jay Skylus, Aevum’s CEO and chief launch architect, told Space.com. “Other launch vehicles fly only a handful of times a year with an average of 18 months of lead time.” [Rocket Launches: The Latest Liftoffs, Photos & Videos].

CADET EXPLORER MISSION

Let Bill Nye and Robert Picardo take you on a journey through the future of space exploration and artificial intelligence. Each week they will show us a different space-themed topic and reveal how AI can help us reach the stars.

What does it mean to be human in world of increasingly powerful technology? This is a question video games have grappled with, most recently in the “Deus Ex” franchise and the upcoming E3 show-stealing “Cyberpunk 2077.”

Daedalic’s “State of Mind” approaches the topic in a different, more philosophical way. Guns and body mods aren’t the order of the day. Rather, “State of Mind” is a narrative adventure that considers how far the human race will go to trade dystopia for utopia.

Creative lead Martin Ganteföhr is an avid follower of transhumanist theory, and how humanity will evolve over the coming decades as scientists pursue the singularity. Transhumanism explores the intersection of people and technology, with the ultimate goal giving all people access to technology that leads to an egalitarian utopia.

Continue reading “Elon Musk and ‘State of Mind’s’ Transhumanism Philosophy” »