Lifeboat Foundation

MIT researchers have demonstrated the first system for ultra-low-power underwater networking and communication, which can transmit signals across kilometer-scale distances.

This technique, which the researchers began developing several years ago, uses about one-millionth the power that existing underwater communication methods use. By expanding their battery-free system’s communication range, the researchers have made the technology more feasible for applications such as aquaculture, coastal hurricane prediction, and climate change modeling.

“What started as a very exciting intellectual idea a few years ago—underwater communication with a million times lower power—is now practical and realistic. There are still a few interesting technical challenges to address, but there is a clear path from where we are now to deployment,” says Fadel Adib, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and director of the Signal Kinetics group in the MIT Media Lab.

The Floridian repeat offender told the authorities that he planned on wheeling himself to London, England.

It started on August 26 when the US Coast Guard was transiting in the Atlantic Ocean in preparation for an intense hurricane when they found a weird-looking vessel in the middle of the ocean, 70 miles (110 km) off the coast of Georgia. There was a man aboard the vessel. He told the authorities that he planned on wheeling himself to London, England.

A Florida man was arrested in the middle of the ocean after he was found floating in a homemade vessel resembling a hamster wheel. But how did he get there in the first place?

Continue reading “Man tried to cross Atlantic in human-powered hamster wheel” »

The team plans to build battery-free underwater networks.

Deep Sea exploration is about to get more accessible. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed and demonstrated a technology that can transmit underwater signals spanning kilometers with a relatively low reader transmit power.

The researchers are calling their tech Van Atta Acoustic Backscatter (VAB), which can be used to map the pulse of the ocean. A submerged network of underwater sensors can continuously measure ocean vital signs like the temperature, pressure, and dissolved carbon dioxide to create more accurate climate change models and monitor the efficacy of carbon capture technologies, explained the researchers in their study.

Belinda Howell, Non-Executive Director at Digital Catapult, walks Reuters Plus through the potential that AI has to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change.

EU law requires manufacturers to adopt Type-C chargers in phones, tablets, etc by December 2024.

Apple will switch out its proprietary Lightning charging port in iPhones to be compatible with a USB Type-C cable instead, reported.

The EU law says that by 2024-end, all mobile phones, tablets, and cameras sold in countries under the EU will have to be equipped with a USB-C charging port. From spring 2026, the obligation will extend to laptops as well. The law’s overall purpose is to cut down on environmental waste and save consumers an estimated $247 million per annum.

For the first time in my timezone, SpaceX completed 9 launches in a month. Previously, if you were based in Europe, you saw 9 launches in a month a few months ago. At 9 launches/month that is a current rate of 108 launches/year, making SpaceX’s goal of 100 launches this year a possibility.

They had a lot of trouble getting this flight off today as a recent hurricane is still affecting the weather some. They got around this by having a 5 and a half hour launch window so they just waited a few hours until the weather was clear for several minutes and they launched!

Continue reading “SpaceX Falcon 9 Launches Starlink 6-13 Mission” »

In an era of growing digitalisation, data centers have emerged as the fundamental support of our technological framework. However, worries persist over the ecological effects due to their swift growth and power-demanding activities. These data centers rank among the planet’s most energy-intensive establishments, drawing substantial electricity to fuel servers, cooling mechanisms, and auxiliary apparatus vital for their operations. Such elevated energy usage significantly affects the environment by adding to greenhouse gas discharges and ushering climate change.

The AI Power Consumption Challenge

The growing surge of AI (Artificial Intelligence) in recent years has been a remarkable and transformative phenomenon. However, AI models and algorithms are highly resource-intensive and consume significant amounts of power. Training AI models involve massive computational workloads, often requiring specialised hardware accelerators like GPUs, which consume substantial energy. This power consumption is a major concern when it comes to making data centers greener.

Checking in with the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, one year later.

It’s the first of its kind model and it can suggest countermeasures for dealing with natural disasters.

Global warming is causing more and more natural disasters which often lead to devastating consequences including loss of life. These take the shape of extreme weather events such as heavy rainfall, droughts, tsunamis, cyclones, landslides, avalanches, earthquakes and forest fires.

Now, civil engineers at Monash University have conceived of a first-of-its kind software called GeoXPM that can not only predict where a geo-disaster might occur but also assess the event’s impact on its surrounding environment in order to mitigate its consequences. This is because the model can make suggestions of next steps to take to avoid dire loss of life and save as much property as possible.