Lifeboat Foundation

Up to seven potential terror attacks across Britain have been uncovered and stopped over the past year by a special MI5 unit which reads the minds of would-be attackers, the agency says.

MI5’s Behavioural Science Unit (BSU), made up of criminologists, psychologists and other academics, was launched in 2004 to analyse suspects’ behaviours to determine whether they are about to carry out an attack.

Built-in optics could enable chips that use trapped ions as quantum bits…

Researchers from MIT and MIT Lincoln Laboratory report an important step toward practical quantum computers, with a paper describing a prototype chip that can trap ions in an electric field and, with built-in optics, direct laser light toward each of them.

There are calls to lift NIH’s restrictions on the controversial chimera studies. But are we ready for this most controversial study yet?

Neuroscientist Andrew B. Newberg provides the answer.

The upconversion of photons allows for a more efficient use of light: Two photons are converted into a single photon having higher energy. Researchers at KIT now showed for the first time that the inner interfaces between surface-mounted metal-organic frameworks (SURMOFs) are suited perfectly for this purpose — they turned green light blue. The result, which is now being published in Advanced Materials (“Photon Upconversion at Crystalline Organic–Organic Heterojunctions”), opens up new opportunities for optoelectronic applications such as solar cells or LEDs.

Photon upconversion: energy transfer between the molecules is based on electron exchange (Dexter electron transfer). (Image: Michael Oldenburg)

What if we tried to prevent future problems, instead of just solving the ones in front of us?

In the blackland prairie of Texas, an ocean is thousands of miles away. But Benjamin Blumenthal, co-founder and chief executive officer of SunToWater Technologies, says we’re all standing under the sixth ocean — the one that’s above our heads.

The Carrollton startup makes an appliance that unlocks that water supply. The company’s water generators — each about the size of a central air conditioning unit — use air, salt and solar power to produce gallons of drinkable water. They could bring water to rural communities without a municipal water supply, regions stricken by drought or developing countries with water contamination.

But the company will target a higher-end market first: Homeowners with large lawns to water and swimming pools to fill. Blumenthal said SunToWater is focusing on customers in California and Texas, two states that have coped with an unpredictable, and often limited, water supply and the water restrictions and high utility bills that come with it.

Continue reading “With new water generators, Carrollton startup can unlock the ocean above your head” »

Not for me.

BLACK holes are portals to different parts of the universe – but if anything was to travel through it would be DOOMED.

The intelligence community’s tech think tank wants a new model for keeping data safe in the cloud.