Lifeboat Foundation

Tiny crystals grown within molten metals at atmospheric pressure.

We’re now adding a new location and entering into the next stage of the program’s evolution. Later this year, drone deliveries are coming to the West Valley of the Phoenix Metro Area in Arizona.

With this new location, we’ll be fully integrated into Amazon’s delivery network, meaning, for the first time, drones will deploy from facilities next to our Same-Day Delivery site in Tolleson. These smaller sites are hybrid—part fulfillment center, part delivery station. They allow us to fulfill, sort, and deliver products all from one site so we can get packages out to our customers even quicker. Our Same-Day Delivery sites are situated close to the large metro areas they serve, which means customers get their orders faster. And with connections to the larger Amazon fulfillment centers nearby, we are able to offer Same-Day Delivery on millions of items.

We’re currently working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and local officials in Tolleson to obtain all necessary permissions to conduct these deliveries in Tolleson. Once we’ve received all the necessary approvals, we’ll begin reaching out to customers in the West Valley so they can receive drone deliveries when the service goes live later this year.

As the old saying goes, two heads are better than one. The same is true when it comes to solar cells working in tandem. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have prepared a roadmap on how to move tandem solar cells—particularly those that mesh different photovoltaic technologies—closer to commercialization.

As the researchers pointed out in an article in the journal Joule, considerably more solar power must be added globally beyond the currently installed 1 terawatt of capacity. Because of the growing population and increased electrification of all energy sectors, experts are predicting the world will need 75 terawatts of photovoltaics (PV) by 2050.

The vast majority of solar modules in use today rely on a single junction, which is able to absorb only a fraction of the solar spectrum and thus are limited to how efficient they can be. Tandem solar cells, which consist of two or more junctions, hold the potential to reach much higher efficiencies. Because tandems are stacked on top of each other, the total area a module requires decreases—in turn, raising the efficiency and potentially lowering the total system cost.

Extract from the documentary “Singularity or Bust”.Pr. Hugo de Garis describes his view of a potential future warfare resulting from the conflict between pro…

In the 20th century, many options abounded as to our cosmic origins. Today, only the Big Bang survives, thanks to this critical evidence.

Physicists have proposed modifications to the infamous Schrödinger’s cat paradox that could help explain why quantum particles can exist in more than one state simultaneously, while large objects (like the universe) seemingly cannot.

The single-celled organism Naegleria fowleri ranks among the deadliest human parasites. Matthias Horn and Patrick Arthofer of the University of Vienna’s Center for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science, along with other researchers, have identified viruses that target this dangerous organism.

Named Naegleriavirus, these belong to the giant viruses, a group known for their unusually large particles and complex genomes. The team details their findings in the prestigious journal, Nature Communications.

Naegleri species are single-celled amoebae, found globally in water bodies. Notably, one species, Naegleria fowleri, thrives in warm waters above 30°C and causes primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), a rare but almost invariably fatal brain infection. A research team led by Patrick Arthofer and Matthias Horn from the University of Vienna’s Center for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science (CeMESS) has now isolated giant viruses that infect various Naegleria species.

Light-driven molecular motors were first developed nearly 25 years ago at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. This resulted in a shared Nobel Prize for Chemistry for Professor Ben Feringa in 2016. However, making these motors do actual work proved to be a challenge. A new paper from the Feringa lab, published in Nature Chemistry on 26 April, describes a combination of improvements that brings real-life applications closer.

First author Jinyu Sheng, now a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), adapted a “first generation” light-driven molecular motor during his Ph.D. studies in the Feringa laboratory. His main focus was to increase the efficiency of the motor molecule. “It is very fast, but only 2% of the photons that the molecule absorbs drive the rotary movement.”

This poor efficiency can get in the way of real-life applications. “Besides, increased efficiency would give us better control of the motion,” adds Sheng. The rotary motion of Feringa’s molecular motor takes place in four steps: two of them are photochemical, while two are temperature-driven. The latter are unidirectional, but the photochemical steps cause an isomerization of the molecule that is usually reversible.

The newly discovered type of magnetic material could improve existing tech, including making better and faster hard drives.