Lifeboat Foundation

Seven performers selected to pursue novel USV concepts and enabling technologies.

DARPA has awarded seven contracts for work on Phase 1 of the NOMARS program, which seeks to simultaneously explore two competing objectives related to unmanned surface vessels (USV) ship design: the maximization of seaframe performance when human constraints are removed; and achieving sufficient vessel maintenance and logistics functionality for long endurance operations with no human crew onboard. NOMARS aims to disrupt conventional naval architecture designs through creative trade space explorations that optimize useable onboard room considering a variety of constraints. This should pave the way for more capable, affordable small warships that can be procured and maintained in large numbers.

Autonomous Surface Vehicles, LLC, Gibbs & Cox Inc., and Serco Inc. received Phase 1 Track A awards, and will work toward developing novel NOMARS demonstrator conceptual designs. These awards will focus on maximizing vessel performance gain across new design criteria, with potential considerations to include: unusual hull forms, low freeboard, minimizing air-filled volumes, innovative materials, repurposing or eliminating “human space” exploring distributed system designs, and developing architectures optimized for depot-maintenance.

Continue reading “The No Manning Required Ship (NOMARS) Program kicks off trade space analysis and conceptual design for long-endurance Unmanned Surface Vessels (USV)” »

In 2016, I proposed LEO HTS Mega Constellation a viable solution for Australia’s broadband national coverage. I have been doing research on these constellations right from the beginning and they are inevitable!

Introduction

Utilizing the announced Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites constellations of OneWeb, SpaceX, LeoSat & Samsung to provide high speed connectivity to entire Australian continent with performance better than fiber networks. This project can eliminate high cost NBN roll out to scattered populations and will considerably improve disaster management. Providing high speed connectivity for mobile communication, internet, high resolution TV broadcast as well as utilizing technologies like IoT & Cloud for improvement in security, education, health, agriculture, livestock farming, mineral resources, wildlife, and environment without any coverage black-spots. This network will not require any infrastructure installations and will help the Government to generate revenues by issuing spectrum licenses to local as well as foreign investors for providing services directly to the end user.

Continue reading “Australlite: There have been lots of posts about SpaceX StarLink starting services in Australia” »

Partnership will use diagnostic imaging tools to explore health issues associated with microgravity, and apply this knowledge to patients on Earth.

The French Society of Radiology (SFR) and the country’s national centre for space exploration (CNES) have signed a partnership, details of which were streamed live at the Journées Francophones de Radiologie (JFR) congress on 4 October. The aim is to develop imaging solutions to be sent on space flights and to collaborate on image collection and optimization, teleradiology and training of astronauts.

France has the largest space program in Europe and the third oldest institutional space programme in history, along with Russia and the US. CNES, which has a long track record in space exploration, recognizes the great potential of diagnostic imaging for monitoring astronauts’ health while on missions, according to general director Lionel Suchet.

Continue reading “Radiologists and space experts to develop imaging tools for space missions” »

Most previous ancient DNA work involves people of European ancestry. A focus of the Emory lab, however, is exploring how environmental changes — including those caused by European contact — affected the biology of Indigenous and other populations of the Americas.

“Our work can connect people to ancestries they potentially don’t know about,” Lindo explains. “It can also give them insights into how historic, and even prehistoric, events may be affecting them today, especially in terms of health risks and disparities.”

Lindo establishes relationships with local and Indigenous people who decide whether unearthed remains from their communities will be analyzed and how the data will be used. Visiting scientists and scholars from these communities will come to the Emory lab, working alongside Emory scientists and students, exchanging knowledge, insights and perspectives.

In first-of-their-kind observations in the human brain, an international team of researchers has revealed two well-known neurochemicals–dopamine and serotonin–are at work at sub-second speeds to shape how people perceive the world and take action based on their perception.

Furthermore, the neurochemicals appear to integrate people’s perceptions of the world with their actions, indicating dopamine and serotonin have far more expansive roles in the human nervous system than previously known.

Known as neuromodulators, dopamine and serotonin have traditionally been linked to reward processing–how good or how bad people perceive an outcome to be after taking an action.

Continue reading “Scientists find neurochemicals have unexpectedly profound roles in the human brain” »

This latest IoT security warning is hard to believe…

Warnings that our IoT devices might be spying on us are nothing new—remember the smart speaker fiasco last year? But at least we expect those devices to be listening and can exercise some caution. The latest such warning, though, takes these risks to a new level. It turns out that there may be surprising little spies hiding in our living rooms.

Last December, the FBI warned that the perilous state of IoT security means that “hackers can use an innocent device to do a virtual drive-by of your digital life.” A week earlier, that same FBI office had cautioned on the danger that smart TVs can allow “manufacturers, streaming services, and even hackers an open door into your home.”

Continue reading “FBI ‘Drive-By’ Hacking Threat Just Got Real: Here’s Why You Should Be Concerned” »

An experimental new vaccine claims to be able to change human DNA and could be deployed against COVID-19 by 2021 through a biochip implant.

The most significant scientific discovery since gravity has been hiding in plain sight for nearly a decade and its destructive potential to humanity is so enormous that the biggest war machine on the planet immediately deployed its vast resources to possess and control it, financing its research and development through agencies like the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and HHS’ BARDA.

The revolutionary breakthrough came to a Canadian scientist named Derek Rossi in 2010 purely by accident. The now-retired Harvard professor claimed in an interview with the National Post that he found a way to “reprogram” the molecules that carry the genetic instructions for cell development in the human body, not to mention all biological lifeforms.

Continue reading “A DARPA-Funded Implantable Biochip to Detect COVID-19 Could Hit Markets by 2021” »

Drone solution provider MissionGO has completed the longest organ delivery by drone in Las Vegas last week with the Nevada Donor Network. The two test flights were carrying a human organ and tissue to various locations around Las Vegas.

The first of the two flights was transporting research corneas from the Southern Hills Hospital and Medical Center to Dignity Health at the St. Rose Dominican, San Martín Campus. The flight demonstrated the viability, value, efficiency gains, and delivery speed of using drones to deliver organs and medical supplies.

The second flight delivered a research kidney from an airport to a location on the outskirts of a small town in the Las Vegas desert. This second flight was the one that marked the longest organ delivery by drone. The flight beat the previous record that was set in April 2019 also by MissionGO.

Additionally, some reports have suggested that then-President Woodrow Wilson downplayed the virus, but that is a “wrong and a false trope of popular history,” Markel said. Wilson, who would later contract the virus, was organizing and commanding the U.S. effort in World War I and once the war ended, he sailed for Paris, where he stayed until April of 1919 organizing a peace treaty and the League of Nations, Markel said.

“The federal government played a very small role in American public health during that era. It was primarily a city and state role and those agencies were hardly downplaying it,” he said.

Unlike today, there was no CDC or national public health department. The Food and Drug Administration existed but consisted of a very small group of men. Additionally, there were no antibiotics, intensive care units, ventilators, IV fluids or vaccines. “You got a bed or maybe nursing care,” Markel said.