Lifeboat Foundation

The enormous impact of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, together with other diseases or chronic health risks, has significantly prompted the development and application of bioelectronics and medical devices for real-time monitoring and diagnosing health status. Among all these devices, smart contact lenses attract extensive interests due to their capability of directly monitoring physiological and ambient information. Smart contact lenses equipped with high sensitivity sensors would open the possibility of a non-invasive method to continuously detect biomarkers in tears. They could also be equipped with application-specific integrated circuit chips to further enrich their functionality to obtain, process and transmit physiological properties, manage illnesses and health risks, and finally promote health and wellbeing. Despite significant efforts, previous demonstrations still need multistep integration processes with limited detection sensitivity and mechanical biocompatibility.

Recently, researchers from the University of Surrey, National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Harvard University, University of Science and Technology of China, Zhejiang University Ningbo Research Institute, etc. have developed a multifunctional ultrathin contact lens sensor system. The sensor systems contain a photodetector for receiving optical information, imaging and vision assistance, a temperature sensor for diagnosing potential corneal disease, and a glucose sensor for monitoring glucose level directly from the tear fluid.

Dr. Yunlong Zhao, Lecturer in Energy Storage and Bioelectronics at the Advanced Technology Institute (ATI), University of Surrey and Senior Research Scientist at the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL), who led this research stated, “These results provide not only a novel and easy-to-make method for manufacturing advanced smart contact lenses but also a novel insight of designing other multifunctional electronics for Internet of Things, human machine interface, etc.” Dr. Zhao added, “our ultrathin transistors-based serpentine mesh sensor system and fabrication strategy allow for further incorporation of other functional components, such as electrode array for electrophysiology, antennas for wireless communication, and the power modules, e.g. thin-film batteries and enzymatic biofuel cell for future in vivo exploration and practical application. Our research team at ATI, University of Surrey and NPL are currently working on these fields.”

“For example, a number of animals benefit from solar-powered molecules. The pea aphid produces pigments that, with the aid of light, generate adenosine triphosphate, or ATP, the compound that powers reactions with cells. In addition, a stripe of yellow pigment on the exoskeleton of the Oriental hornet (Vespa orientalis) converts light to electricity, which could help to explain why these insects become more active during the middle of the day. Other animals make use of actual photosynthesis, using sunlight, water and carbon dioxide to produce sugars and other vital compounds. Plants and algae rely on chloroplasts, structures within their cells, to carry out photosynthesis, but Elysia sea slugs can steal chloroplasts from algae they graze on, to help them live solely on photosynthesis for months… Many other animals reap benefits from photosynthesis by forming partnerships instead. For instance, most corals partner with photosynthetic symbiotic microbes known as zooxanthellae, while the eggs of spotted salamanders receive valuable oxygen from algae.”

If humans had green skin, for instance, what if it granted us the ability to perform photosynthesis, which plants use to live off of sunlight?

The new facility is a product of the partnership between Danish startup Nordic Harvest and Taiwanese tech company YesHealth Group. It’s an indoor farm that covers an area of over 75000 square feet, situated just on the outskirts of Copenhagen. Featuring a 14-shelf grow rack system, it boasts an annual production capacity of about 1000 tons of greens. That’s almost equivalent to the capacity of farms covering an area that’s the size of 20 soccer fields!

Polarons are fleeting distortions in a material’s atomic lattice that form around a moving electron in a few trillionths of a second, then quickly disappear. As ephemeral as they are, they affect a material’s behavior, and may even be the reason that solar cells made with lead hybrid perovskites achieve extraordinarily high efficiencies in the lab.

Now scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have used the lab’s X-ray laser to watch and directly measure the formation of polarons for the first time. They reported their findings in Nature Materials today.

“These materials have taken the field of solar energy research by storm because of their high efficiencies and low cost, but people still argue about why they work,” said Aaron Lindenberg, an investigator with the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences (SIMES) at SLAC and associate professor at Stanford who led the research.

The world is far from perfect, and 2020 did throw the proverbial spanner is the works, but the improvements we have made are not to be ignored!!

We are winning…

Continue reading “The Sustainable Development Goals Explained Clean Water And Sanitation” »

The Orion is a sub-orbital electric aircraft equipped with an air-breathing magneto-plasma jet propulsion engine that could go from the tarmac to an altitude of 24000 metres and cruise at about 800 km/h.

It would bring passengers to the edge of black space with stunning views from its ultra-wide panoramic windows. Its new plasma pulse detonation engine could become the standard of this nascent industry.

It’s obvious that sub-orbital jets will become in demand as Earth’s population and wealth continues to rise. There’s already a lot of demand for jets capable of reaching this kind of altitude, but one major barrier has been the engine’s performance and overall costs. The Orion concept is all about introducing a new type of propulsion (plasma jet) and seeing how it could benefit various industries.

Circa 2019

The University of Illinois has announced that NASA is underwriting a project to develop a cryogenic hydrogen fuel cell system for powering all-electric aircraft. Funded by a three-year, US$6 million contract, the Center for Cryogenic High-Efficiency Electrical Technologies for Aircraft (CHEETA) will investigate the technology needed to produce a practical all-electric design to replace conventional fossil fuel propulsion systems.

The jet engine in all its variations has revolutionized air travel, but with airline profit margins running wafer thin in these ecologically conscious times, there’s a lot of interest in moving away from aircraft powered by fossil fuels and toward emission-free electric propulsion systems that aren’t dependent on petroleum and its volatile prices.

Continue reading “NASA backs development of cryogenic hydrogen system to power all-electric aircraft” »

The tiny house we’re going to discuss today won’t buy you freedom like trailer-based models, but it compensates for that with its own AI assistant. It’s smart, it’s tiny, it can be solar powered if you want, and it’s still very chic. It’s dubbed the next-generation tiny house: the Cube Two from Nestron.

You don’t have to actually live large in order to live large. Tiny houses are a good option when it comes to minimizing your footprint, downsizing costs and not sacrificing anything but space you probably wouldn’t be using either way.

AUSTIN, Texas — Producing clean water at a lower cost could be on the horizon after researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and Penn State solved a complex problem that had baffled scientists for decades, until now.

Desalination membranes remove salt and other chemicals from water, a process critical to the health of society, cleaning billions of gallons of water for agriculture, energy production and drinking. The idea seems simple — push salty water through and clean water comes out the other side — but it contains complex intricacies that scientists are still trying to understand.

The research team, in partnership with DuPont Water Solutions, solved an important aspect of this mystery, opening the door to reduce costs of clean water production. The researchers determined desalination membranes are inconsistent in density and mass distribution, which can hold back their performance. Uniform density at the nanoscale is the key to increasing how much clean water these membranes can create.