Lifeboat Foundation

Funded by Russian entrepreneur Yuri Milner and with the blessing of Stephen Hawking, Breakthrough Starshot aims to send probes to Alpha Centauri in a generation.

By Lee Billings on April 12, 2016.

Could benefit China and their own efforts in 2017.

Deltion Innovations aims to design a drill that would prospect for water, ice and resources on the moon and beyond.

Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) is located at Central Taiwan Innovation and Research Park in Nantou, Taiwan. It is expected to become the central facility of the Science Park to be built in this region. Noiz Architects and Bio Architecture Formosana won the competition to design the building in 2010. During the development phase, the project site had to be relocated once during the design development phase, and the construction finally completed in September 2014.

Related: Japanese research center fuses natural design elements with energy efficiency.

Continue reading “Taiwanese research institute is wrapped in an undulating skin of 4,000 aluminum fins” »

Electric car batteries are getting cheaper.

Will we all drive electric cars one day? http://wef.ch/1MaNk4I

Researchers have created an edible treat from plastic waste. For real.

In a bold but scientifically sound proposal, NASA-funded research has laid out a roadmap toward spacecraft with relativistic speeds for the exploration of nearby stars (Credit: NASA). View gallery (8 images)

How do you send man-made probes to a nearby star? According to NASA-funded research at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), the answer is simple: assemble a laser array the size of Manhattan in low Earth orbit, and use it to push tiny probes to 26 percent the speed of light. Though the endeavour may raise a few eyebrows, it relies on well-established science – and recent technological breakthroughs have put it within our reach.

Innovations expert Sandy Plunkett joins panellists in criticising government’s controversial NBN model, but Wyatt Roy says it’s about separating ‘rhetoric and reality’.

CRACUNS, an innovative drone being developed by Johns Hopkins University, can be launched from under water and live completely submerged for as long as two months. http://voc.tv/14JQHoo