Lifeboat Foundation

Innovation is all the buzz in Asia. Australia, China, Korea, Vietnam, and now lets look at India.

Personally, I believe there is great potential in India for some amazing innovations. Just look at their own historical sites and artifacts, art, etc.; no one can claim creativity, imagination, etc. does not exist. And, not to mention the engineering feats that have been proven by India many times.

India has moved 16 rungs up the global ranking for innovation in 2016, as compared to 2015, but still remains a lowly 66th, well below Malaysia and Vietnam, leave alone China in the middle-income category and far below countries like South Korea and Japan, and other high-income innovation hubs like Switzerland, the US, the UK and Singapore. What can be done to make India a hub of innovation? Improve the quality of education across all levels. A technology policy that incentivises genuine R&D is required. Ease of entry and exit of firms, competition, a vibrant financial sector that allocates capital to new profit potential, a culture of entrepreneurship and an end to failure-shaming would help. The least obvious requirement is political empowerment of the common man.

Continue reading “How to make India an innovation hub” »

If you’re interested in one day creating your own eco-house using open source tech, this kit is great place to start:

Picture this: you own a small piece of land. Nothing fancy — just a small plot. A group of people shows up, sets up a workshop in your shed, and within five days, using materials available at your local hardware store or made from the raw resources of your land, builds you a small starter house kitted out with state-of-the-art eco features for less than $25,000.

Sound crazy? Well, open source advocate and maker Catarina Mota and inventor Marcin Jakubowski (see their TED Talks, “Play with smart materials” and “Open-sourced blueprints for civilization,” respectively), are making the dream of accessible, affordable eco-housing come true with their Open Building Institute Eco-Building Toolkit. They’ve already built several prototypes and tested the concept through a series of educational builds.

Continue reading “How to Build Your Own Starter House in Just 5 Steps — for $25,000” »

Next to the medical field, as we follow the significant impacts 3D printing is making on the world, that of aerospace is right at the top of the list. While some are still confused about the actual importance of 3D printing as it hasn’t really affected them personally yet, it’s important to think on a much bigger scale. And there’s not much of a bigger scale than space.

For those who are cynical about the technology, pointing back to the continual supply of keychains and figurines (we all have to start somewhere, thank you!) being pumped out in plastic at the desktop, when you take a look at how long NASA has been involved with additive manufacturing—and how many parts they are using now—well, that’s impressive. Not only that, because of numerous 3D printed parts, larger components are being made that would not have been possible previously, and certainly not with such a level of customization, speed, and affordability.

Continue reading “Aerojet Rocketdyne to Mature 3D Printed MPS-130 CubeSat Propulsion System for NASA” »

Interesting read; like the plug by Rajeev Alur about how the insights from the ExCAPE project has helped advance making QC programmable. Like Alur, I too see many synergies across multiple areas of science & tech. For example, the work on singularity is being advance by the work performed around anti-aging, cancer research, etc. and vice versa. Truly one of my biggest enjoyments of research and innovation is taking a accept or vision, and guessing where else can the concept be leveraged or even advancing other industries.

NSF’s mission is to advance the progress of science, a mission accomplished by funding proposals for research and education made by scientists, engineers, and educators from across the country.

Nice — another step forward for all things connected.

Scientists can now talk to and even command living cells–to a limited degree at the moment, but with massive implications for the future. MIT biological engineers have created a computer code that allows them to basically hijack living cells and control them. It works similarly to a translation service, using a programming language to create a function for a cell in the form of a DNA sequence. Once it’s scalable, the invention has major ramifications. Future applications could include designing cells that produce a cancer drug when a tumor is detected or creating yeast cells that halt their own fermentation if too many toxic byproducts build up.

Continue reading “Scientists Create Language to Program Living Cells” »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HZsFMqqGJo

KEPLER 186F — LIFE AFTER EARTH — 2014 Documentary
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Imagine a future where there is no need to cut down a tree and and reshape that raw material into a chair or table. Instead, we could grow our furniture by custom-engineering moss or mushrooms. Perhaps glowing bacteria will light our cities, and we’ll be able to bring back extinct species, or wipe out Lyme disease—or maybe even terraform Mars. Synthetic biology could help us accomplish all that, and more.

That’s the message of the latest video in a new mini-documentary Web series called Explorations, focusing on potentially transformative areas of scientific research: genomics, artificial intelligence, neurobiology, transportation, space exploration, and synthetic biology. It’s a passion project of entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, founder of OS Fund and the payments processing company Braintree.

Continue reading “How Scientists Plan to Grow Cities Out of Living Organisms” »

Nice.

Summary: “Nano satellite missions are low-cost and can do multiple jobs with a greater degree of accuracy. “It will be an advanced nano satellite weighing about one kg designed for a specific task of conducting oceanographic studies. S Satheesh Chandra Shenoi, Director, Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) and National Institute of Ocean Technology, said it’s good that educational institutions are venturing into space programmes. Close on the heels of the successful launch of SATHYABAMASAT, which the students of Sathyabama University worked on since 2009 to monitor the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere, the Academy of Maritime Education and Training (AMET) is working on an ocean observation “AMETSAT — Nano Satellite Project” with the national space agency. Also, the incidences of aircrafts such as the Indian Air Force AN-32 going missing leaving no clues warrant more ocean observation satellites, though with little larger life span, unlike nano satellites which usually have a life space of 6 months, another AMET faculty member said.

CHENNAI: With the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) opening its arms to educational institutions and private industry to participate in space exploration missions, there is a renewed enthusiasm among researchers and student community. Close on the heels of the successful launch of SATHYABAMASAT, which the students of Sathyabama University worked on since 2009 to monitor the greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere, the Academy of Maritime Education and Training (AMET) is working on an ocean observation “AMETSAT — Nano Satellite Project” with the national space agency. G Thiruvasagam, Vice-Chancellor, AMET, made the announcement during the sixth convocation held here on Wednesday. The deemed university has also bagged a project on “Marine Exploration of Submerged Poompuhar and Dwarka”. N Manoharan, Director, Research of AMET, told Express on the sidelines of the convocation that the project was in an early stage.

Continue reading “Ocean observation nano satellite in the making” »

If human beings are ever to colonise other planets – which might become necessary for the survival of the species, given how far we have degraded this one – they will almost certainly have to use generation ships: spaceships that will support not just those who set out on them, but also their descendants. The vast distances between Earth and the nearest habitable planets, combined with the fact that we are unlikely ever to invent a way of travelling that exceeds the speed of light, ensures that many generations will be born, raised and die on board such a ship before it arrives at its destination.

A generation ship would have to be a whole society in microcosm, with hospitals and schools, living quarters and perhaps entertainment districts, a security force, maybe even a judiciary. It would need to be able to provide food for its crew, and that might require agriculture or aquaculture, perhaps even domestic animals (which might also be needed for the colonisation effort). Its design therefore presents a major challenge: not just to engineers but also to social scientists. How should the crew be selected and the environment structured to minimise interpersonal conflict? What size of population is optimal for it to remain committed to the single overarching project of colonising a new planet without too much of a risk of self-destructive boredom or excessive narrowing of the gene pool? Does mental health require that a quasi-natural environment be recreated within the ship (with trees, grass and perhaps undomesticated birds and small animals)?

As well as the technological and social challenges confronting the designers of such ships, there are fascinating philosophical and ethical issues that arise. The issue I want to focus on concerns the ethics of a project that locks the next generation into a form of living, the inauguration of which they had no say over, and that ensures their options are extremely limited.

Continue reading “Would it be immoral to send out a generation starship?” »