Lifeboat Foundation

The MIT Technology Review has released a list of technologies it believes will make the most impact over the next 12 months, including smarter cities, genetic fortune telling and “babel fish” earphones.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s magazine has published the annual list online in its March/April 2018 issue, and based its contents on the innovations that will shape the coming year.

“What Tech Review looks for when selecting the list is to identify what will have a profound effect on our lives,” said a statement from the institution, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Continue reading “MIT predicts 10 breakthrough technologies of 2018” »

Ann Donnelly was utterly confused the first time she examined her protein. On all counts, it behaved like an enzyme—a protein catalyst that speeds up biological reactions in cells. One could argue that enzymes, sculpted by eons of evolution, make life possible.

There was just one problem: her protein wasn’t evolved. It wasn’t even “natural.” It was, in fact, a completely artificial construct made with random sequences of DNA—something that’s never existed in nature before.

Donnelly was looking at the first artificial enzyme. An artificial protein that, by all accounts, should not be able to play nice with the intricate web of biochemical components and reactions that support life.

Continue reading “Enzyme Designed Entirely From Scratch Opens a World of Biological Possibility” »

New photos by NASA’s Juno spacecraft show Jupiter’s south pole as seen from above during a recent close encounter on Feb. 7, 2018.

NASA is designing a robot submarine to explore the ultrachilly, hydrocarbon-filled seas on Saturn’s moon Titan — the only body in the solar system, apart from Earth, with liquid on its surface. Researchers have been testing the probe with a bucket-sized mock alien ocean in a lab.

The seas of Titan are very different from their counterparts on Earth: instead of seawater, Titan’s seas consist mainly of a frigid mixture of methane and ethane, at a temperature of around minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 184 degrees Celsius). That’s what NASA’s Cassini spacecraft and its Huygens probe, which landed on Titan in 2005, found.

The plan is to send the autonomous submarine into the largest sea on Titan. called Kraken Mare, from the name of a Scandinavian sea-monster and the Latin word for “sea,” the extraterrestrial sea covers 155,000 square miles (400,000 square kilometers) of the moon’s surface. (The second-largest sea on Titan, about a quarter the size of Kraken, is Ligeia Mare, named after one of the monstrous sirens of Greek mythology.) [See Photos of Titan’s Oceans].

The rise of commercial spaceflight companies such as SpaceX and Bigelow Aerospace sparked the age of space tourism as the ultra-wealthy became able to buy a ticket for a rocket ride into space. Of course, there is a huge limit on tourism if there isn’t a place to stay in one’s intended destination, but that’s about to change in space. Bigelow has announced plans to build two space stations that will float in low-Earth orbit. The company has big plans for these space stations and ideas about who might pay to use them. Essentially, the stations will be like orbiting space hotels where astronauts and possibly even tourists might stay one day.

In a press release this week, Bigelow Aerospace announced that it has created a spin-off venture called Bigelow Space Operations, which will operate and manage two space stations that will serve as hotels. The company expects to launch both hotels in 2021, and it’s beginning to work toward building them this year. Bigelow describes the two space stations as “the largest, most complex structures ever known as stations for human use in space.”

The two stations are currently being referred to as B330-1 and B330-2, and they aren’t the only two that Bigelow Space Operations plans to build. The two space stations are inflatable and will provide shelter for up to six people in low-Earth orbit with about 12,000 cubic feet of living space.

One photon can transmit information in two directions at once.

Lab-grown tumor tissue matched response of the patient’s tumor to cancer treatment.

Intel partners with Microsoft, Dell, HP, and Lenovo.

Intel has partnered with four major PC makers to bring 5G technology to laptops by the end of next year.

The chip giant is working with Microsoft, HP, Dell, and Lenovo to bring 5G connectivity to PCs with Intel’s XMM 8000 series modems.

Continue reading “Laptops with 5G connectivity coming next year” »

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