Lifeboat Foundation

Kathryn Zurek realized a decade ago that we may be searching in the wrong places for clues to one of the universe’s greatest unsolved mysteries: dark matter. Despite making up an estimated 85 percent of the total mass of the universe, we haven’t yet figured out what it’s made of.

Now, Zurek, a theoretical physicist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), says thanks to extraordinary improvements in experimental sensitivity, “We increasingly know where not to look.” In 2006, during grad school, Zurek began to explore the concept of a new “Hidden Valley” model for physics that could hold all of the answers to dark matter.

“I noticed that from a model-builder’s point of view that dark matter was extraordinarily undeveloped,” she said. It seemed as though scientists were figuratively hunting in the dark for answers. “People were focused on models of just two classes of dark matter candidates, rather than a much broader array of possibilities.”

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Printing genomes on demand could mean custom-built organisms, difficult ethical questions, and profits for a handful of companies.

Luv this article (science meets philosophical theory on the evolution of science); reminds me of an article that one of my Quantum friends shared yesterday on Linkedin Pulse.

Science is the biggest enterprise that man ever created. Of all the living things on this planet, man is the only one that seems to have started thinking about how this world works. To understand that he started this new venture, called Science, which was originally meant just to understand how this world works. Some exceptionally brilliant minds did accidentally stumble upon some understanding of the world’s laws like gravity, buoyancy, and others in the west while Indian sages had realised this much earlier.

Next step was to find out how the world works by doing some experiments. That was the stage when the Churches started obstructing “Science” as this kind of scientific enquiry, the Church felt, might interfere with religious beliefs. That is where the first conflict between religion and science started. The fall out was that scientists subconsciously developed an aversion to the God concept in religion and thus God was kept out of the scientific realm. Let us, therefore, think from now on. Science, then, was more of a hobby for the well to do. The leading lights of that generation were Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. There were a host of others but less illustrious than these two. Newton’s Laws of deterministic predictability and Einstein’s laws of relativity together founded a world view of “space-time” constraints where everything else out with this space time module was rejected.

Continue reading “The quantum world view and vedanta” »

Any electric car maker worth its salt knows that their vehicles are only as good as the charging stations that keep them running… and that includes Apple, apparently. Reuters sources understand that Apple is asking charging station manufacturers about their technology for the sake of its oft-rumored electric car project. It’s not certain how deep the talks go or who’s involved (the companies certainly aren’t talking). However, NRG Energy issued a vague response noting that it’s talking to “every potential manufacturer of tomorrow.” We wouldn’t rule it out, then.

There’s more evidence than that. An unnamed worldwide engineering company has already offered to help Apple build charging stations, Reuters says. Meanwhile, Apple has publicly hired EV charging experts from BMW, Georgia Tech and Google.

If true, the approach is a logical fit for Apple. Part of Tesla’s success in EVs comes from its willingness to build a network of high-speed charging stations — you’re more likely to buy a Model S if you know that you can drive it long distances without spending hours waiting for a recharge. Apple may need that same kind of reassurance. And let’s not forget that Apple’s strategy revolves around controlling as much of the experience as possible. It only makes sense that the company would want optimized charging stations instead of leaving drivers to use generic stations that might not work as effectively.

Continue reading “Apple reportedly looks into making electric car charging stations” »

Airbus Unveils ‘Hypercopter’ Patent For The World’s Fastest Helicopter.

We’ve just got to convince Airbus to make one…

Imagine implanting electrodes in the hippocampus to help brain-injured patients process memories. That’s what the Defense Department is attempting.

The US Navy will be taking its futuristic Railgun out of the lab where it has been tested for to past eight years. Over the next two years, railguns will be tested in open firing ranges and eventually at sea, where the futuristic electromagnetic gun will be able to demonstrate its full capacity to fire projectiles at targets 50–100 nautical miles (92 – 185 kilometers) away.

The Navy is evaluating two electromagnetic railgun models. A 32-megajoule prototype built by BAE Systems and the 32 megajoule Blitzer developed by General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS). The company has also developed a 3-megajoule railgun variant. In the future, the Navy plans to deploy railguns rated to 64-megajoule.

A railgun can deliver muzzle velocities greater than twice those of conventional guns. Using electromagnetic power, where magnetic fields created by strong electrical currents accelerate a sliding metal conductor between two rails, the railgun achieves muzzle speeds of more than Mach 7.5 without the use of chemical propellant.

Continue reading “Shipping containers full of capacitors will enable flexible railgun designs for shipboard and fixed or mobile land based railguns” »

Sea urchins are remarkable organisms. They can quickly regrow damaged spines and feet. Some species also live to extraordinary old ages and—even more remarkably—do so with no signs of poor health, such as a decline in regenerative capacity or an increase in age-related mortality. These ocean Methuselahs even reproduce as if they were still youngsters.

MDI Biological Laboratory Associate Professor James A. Coffman, Ph.D., is studying the regenerative capacity of sea urchins in hopes that a deeper understanding of the process of regeneration, which governs the regeneration of aging tissues as well as lost or damaged body parts, will lead to a deeper understanding of the aging process in humans, with whom sea urchins share a close genetic relationship.

In a paper recently published in Aging Cell, a leading journal in the field of aging biology, with Andrea G. Bodnar, Ph.D., of the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Studies, the scientists shed new light on the aging process in sea urchins, raising the prospect that the physical decline that typically accompanies aging is not inevitable.

Continue reading “Is aging inevitable? Not necessarily for sea urchins” »