Lifeboat Foundation

Base Power is led by Zach Dell — the son of Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell — and Justin Lopas.

The company provides a distributed battery storage to homeowners, which allows them to have a “reliable and affordable” backup source if there is an outage. The battery itself, according to Lopas, allows the grid to be more efficient.

Continue reading “New energy company hopes to boost Texas’ fragile power grid” »

(Inside Science) – Primitive “protocells” like those that evolved into the first living cells can form in bubbles on mineral surfaces that were plentiful on the early Earth, according to new research.

The researchers created artificial protocells that they believe may be similar to the protocells that may have formed on Earth about 3.8 billion years ago. The artificial protocells can absorb other small molecules by forming a barrier membrane around them — behavior that is strikingly like that of modern living cells when they absorb cellular fuel and other essential materials while blocking off harmful substances.

And the artificial protocells also exhibit a primitive form of “division,” where the outer membrane of a protocell ruptures and leaves behind several “daughter” protocells with the same capabilities.

As the electric vehicle market booms, the demand for lithium—the mineral required for lithium-ion batteries—has also soared. Global lithium production has more than tripled in the last decade. But current methods of extracting lithium from rock ores or brines are slow and come with high energy demands and environmental costs. They also require sources of lithium which are incredibly concentrated to begin with and are only found in a few countries.

A research team in China has initiated and successfully developed a jet origin identification technology which can significantly enhance the scientific discovery capabilities of high-energy collider experiments.

Russian organizations are at the receiving end of cyber attacks that have been found to deliver a Windows version of a malware called Decoy Dog.

Cybersecurity company Positive Technologies is tracking the activity cluster under the name Operation Lahat, attributing it to an advanced persistent threat (APT) group called HellHounds.

“The Hellhounds group compromises organizations they select and gain a foothold on their networks, remaining undetected for years,” security researchers Aleksandr Grigorian and Stanislav Pyzhov said. “In doing so, the group leverages primary compromise vectors, from vulnerable web services to trusted relationships.”

Experts from Germany believe their most recent breakthrough advances the quality of solid-state, sodium-ion batteries.

It’s technology that many researchers are pursuing as a replacement for common lithium-ion power packs, with the hope of finding a better-performing and cheaper alternative.

Continue reading “Researchers make performance breakthrough with sodium-ion battery technology: ‘A highly promising material for future energy-storage solutions’” »

Optical waves propagating through air or multi-mode fiber can be patterned or decomposed using orthogonal spatial modes, with far-ranging applications in imaging, communication, and directed energy. Yet the systems that perform these wavefront manipulations are cumbersome and large, restricting their utilization to high-end applications.

An Israeli startup has developed a way to make lead acid batteries last four times longer, disrupting a multi-billion-dollar industry and potentially making them the rechargeable – and recyclable – energy storage method of choice around the world.

Lead acid is the second most common battery technology worldwide and the power cells are currently used as the starter batteries in cars, trucks and motorcycles.

The batteries have a positive plate made of lead dioxide on one end, and a spongy lead negative plate on the other end, with sulfuric acid flowing between them both to conduct the electricity.

Converting CO₂ into fuel and chemicals using electricity, also known as electrochemical conversion of CO₂, is a promising way to reduce emissions. This process allows us to use carbon captured from industries and the atmosphere and turn it into resources that we usually get from fossil fuels.