Lifeboat Foundation

Recently, a start-up company called Make Sunsets has begun releasing chemicals into the stratosphere as a form of geoengineering that is intended to help climate change. However, many are very hesitant about the startup and the result of what they are doing.

For perspective, geoengineering is when chemical particles are released into the stratosphere to manipulate the weather or climate. The theory is that when sulfur is released into the atmosphere that it mimics a natural process that occurs after volcanoes and that by doing this intentionally, we could ease global warming.

While it isn’t difficult to do this, it is very controversial. The reason for this is that it could potentially have dangerous side effects. Additionally, because some regions could endure worse side effects, it could cause issues across international lines.

A rogue company has started putting aerosols into the stratosphere because it believes it will cool the planet.

The company justifies its actions as necessary to begin to cool the planet’s atmosphere. The scientific community is in disagreement.

Make Sunsets is already attempting to earn revenue for geoengineering, a move likely to provoke widespread criticism.

In physics, weak microwave signals can be amplified with minimal added noise. For instance, artificial quantum systems based on superconducting circuits can amplify and detect single microwave patterns, although at millikelvin temperatures. Researchers can use natural quantum systems for low-noise microwave amplification via stimulated emission effects; however, they generate a higher noise at functionalities greater than 1 Kelvin.

In this new work, published in the journal Science Advances, Alexander Sherman and a team of scientists in chemistry at the Technical-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, used electron spins in diamond as a quantum microwave amplifier to function with quantum-limited internal noise above liquid nitrogen temperatures. The team reported details of the amplifier’s design, gain, bandwidth, saturation power and noise to facilitate hitherto unavailable applications in quantum science, engineering and physics.

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Continue reading “A New Way to Achieve Nuclear Fusion: Helion” »

“The toughness of this material near liquid helium temperatures (20 kelvin, −253°C) is as high as 500 megapascals square root metres,” said Robert Ritchie, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Berkeley and study co-author. “In the same units, the toughness of a piece of silicon is one, the aluminium airframe in passenger airplanes is about 35, and the toughness of some of the best steels is around 100. So, 500, it’s a staggering number.”

The team’s new findings, alongside other recent work on HEAs, may force the materials science community to reconsider long-held notions about how physical characteristics give rise to performance.

“It’s amusing, because metallurgists say that the structure of a material defines its properties, but the structure of the CrCoNi is the simplest you can imagine – it’s just grains,” explained Ritchie.

Researchers from the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and Fujitsu have developed a new way of searching through ‘chemical space’ for materials with desirable properties.

The technique has resulted in a promising new catalyst material that could help lower the cost of producing clean hydrogen.

The discovery represents an important step toward more sustainable ways of storing energy, including from renewable but intermittent sources, such as solar and wind power.

So we designed CAR-T cells to produce IL-2 using synNotch. Now, when a CAR-T cell encounters a tumor, it produces IL-2 within the tumor instead of outside it, avoiding causing harm to surrounding healthy cells. Because synNotch is able to bypass the barriers tumors put up, it is able to help T cells amp up and maintain the amount of IL-2 they can make, allowing the T cells to keep functioning even in a hostile microenvironment.

We tested our CAR-T cells modified with synNotch on mice with pancreatic cancer and melanoma. We found that CAR-T cells with synNotch-induced IL-2 were able to produce enough extra IL-2 to overcome the tumors’ defensive barriers and fully activate, completely eliminating the tumors. While all of the mice receiving synNotch modified CAR-T cells survived, none of the CAR-T-only mice did.

Continue reading “Anti-cancer CAR-T therapy reengineers T cells to kill tumors — and researchers are expanding the limited types of cancer it can target” »

Balancing management ability and technical expertise is an active debate in the software industry, where, depending on whom you ask, an engineering manager’s interest or ability to code is dependent on whether the team is able to operate without them. Scott Berkun, the author of “Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management,” told SD Times he believed the two disciplines were somewhat oppositional: “Coding requires intense uninterrupted concentration, while management requires dealing with constant interruptions and context switching.”

“Being able to do both is not something that a lot of people can do in practice.”

Berkun isn’t wrong — the incredible focus and discipline one must have to constantly write, test, and execute code in production are very different attributes to those of a manager. And just because someone is a high-performing employee doesn’t mean they can or should become a manager. Being in charge of employees is a unique skill that requires its own form of training and knowledge. Switching between producing valuable work for the company and leading a team of employees is not for everyone. As I’ve suggested before, the ratio of managers to the people they manage should be much larger if the manager isn’t doing the actual labor — but even then, the lack of practical experience will make it harder for them to be effective. But because the managerial class has become the only avenue for real advancement at many companies, many organizations end up with a jumble of disconnected or micromanaging bosses who aren’t right for the job.