Lifeboat Foundation

The quest to understand the enigma of photosynthesis, how water is involved, and its critical role on Earth has taken a significant leap forward.

A recent breakthrough in visual technology has resulted in the capture of high-resolution images beyond any achieved before, shedding never-before-seen light on this essential life process.

Our story begins within the walls of a renowned institution, Umeå University, where diligent researchers embarked on a fascinating journey to understand the positions of hydrogen atoms and water molecules in photosynthesis.

Increased atmospheric moisture may alter critical weather patterns over Africa, making it more difficult for the predecessors of many Atlantic hurricanes to form, according to a new study published this month. The work is published in the Journal of Advances in Modeling Earth Systems.

The research team, led by scientists from the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR), used an innovative model that allows for higher-resolution simulations of hurricane formation than ever before. This allowed researchers to study the effects of increased regional moisture over Africa, which is the birthplace of weather systems that later produce hurricanes over the Atlantic.

Past research has suggested that warmer ocean water and a moister atmosphere could cause hurricanes to become more intense with greater amounts of rainfall. But how atmospheric moisture, which is predicted to increase in a warming climate, may be impacting hurricane formation itself has not been studied in detail until now.

Chinese researchers say their innovation could lead to hybrid human-robot intelligence.

Researchers at China’s Tianjin University and the Southern University of Science and Technology have reportedly developed a robot with a lab-grown artificial brain.

Brain-on-chip technology has been used to train the machine to perform various tasks, according to local media.

Continue reading “Robot with lab-grown brain developed in China, performs critical tasks” »

The ambitious plan involves catching the falling Super Heavy boosters using the launch tower’s “chopstick” arms. This innovative approach aims to revolutionise rocket recovery and enhance the reusability of the company’s Starship system.

Recent footage shared by SpaceX showcases tests of the chopstick mechanism at their Starbase facility in Texas. The company has been observed clamping the tower arms around a portion of a Super Heavy booster to evaluate the system’s parameters.

This testing is crucial for verifying the forces the chopsticks will need to withstand during an actual catch attempt.

The breakthrough could lead to more durable—and drastically safer—buildings.

MIT just produced three groundbreaking innovations that allowed them to map whole hemispheres of the human brain.

Computer vision, one of the major areas of artificial intelligence, focuses on enabling machines to interpret and understand visual data. This field encompasses image recognition, object detection, and scene understanding. Researchers continuously strive to improve the accuracy and efficiency of neural networks to tackle these complex tasks effectively. Advanced architectures, particularly Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), play a crucial role in these advancements, enabling the processing of high-dimensional image data.

One major challenge in computer vision is the substantial computational resources required by traditional CNNs. These networks often rely on linear transformations and fixed activation functions to process visual data. While effective, this approach demands many parameters, leading to high computational costs and limiting scalability. Consequently, there’s a need for more efficient architectures that maintain high performance while reducing computational overhead.

Current methods in computer vision typically use CNNs, which have been successful due to their ability to capture spatial hierarchies in images. These networks apply linear transformations followed by non-linear activation functions, which help learn complex patterns. However, the significant parameter count in CNNs poses challenges, especially in resource-constrained environments. Researchers aim to find innovative solutions to optimize these networks, making them more efficient without compromising accuracy.

NASA Glenn engineers Chirs Kantzos and Tim Smith can now call themselves inventors, too. They are the minds behind NASA’s breakthrough material, a superalloy…

Positioned between microwaves and infrared light, terahertz waves are key to pioneering advancements in imaging and diagnostic technologies. A recent discovery at Tohoku University of a material that can emit these waves more intensely promises to catalyze significant breakthroughs across a spectrum of industries.

Terahertz waves are being intensely studied by researchers around the world seeking to understand the “terahertz gap.” Terahertz waves have a specific frequency that put them somewhere between microwaves and infrared light. This range is referred to as a “gap” because much remains unknown about these waves. In fact, it was only relatively recently that researchers were able to develop the technology to generate them. Researchers at Tohoku University have brought us closer to understanding these waves and filling in this gap of knowledge.

Breakthrough in Terahertz Wave Generation.