Lifeboat Foundation

A new technology solution that will provide low-power systems for use in bionic eyes, has been jointly developed by academics from the Harbin Institute of Technology in China and Northumbria University.

Working in partnership with a research group led by Professor PingAn Hu from the Harbin Institute, Northumbria’s Professor Richard Fu described their newly developed method for controlling the artificial synaptic devices used in bionic retinas, robots, and visual prostheses, as a “significant breakthrough.”

The team discovered that injecting elements of the soft metal, indium, into a two-dimensional (2D) material called molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), could improve electrical conductivity and reduce power consumption of the optical synapses used in the development of bionic eyes.

Most toilet models flush away waste with gallons of water. Instead, the BeeVi toilet – a portmanteau of the words’ bee’ and ‘vision’ – use a vacuum pump to suck shit into an underground bioreactor, which means it uses less water. The energy-producing toilet system is much smaller than the existing flushable toilets, as it treats human excrement without using water.

The system utilizes a natural biological process to break down human waste into a dehydrated odorless compost-like material. Once these powdered feces are transferred to the Microbial Energy Production system, they can later be converted to methane, which becomes a source of energy for the building, powering a gas stove, hot-water boiler, and solid oxide fuel cell.

“If we think out of the box, faeces has precious value to make energy and manure. I have put this value into ecological circulation,” the inventor Cho Jae-weon said.

Berkeley Lab engineers have developed an all-season smart roof coating that keeps homes warm during the winter and cool during the summer without consuming natural gas or electricity. The all-season roof coating automatically switches from keeping you cool to warm, depending on outdoor air temperature.

The problem with many cool-roof systems currently on the market is that they continue to radiate heat in the winter, which drives up heating costs, explained Junqiao Wu, a faculty scientist who led the study. “Our new material – called a temperature-adaptive radiative coating (TARC) – can enable energy savings by automatically turning off the radiative cooling in the winter, overcoming the problem of overcooling,” he said.

The key to the technology is a strange compound called vanadium dioxide (VO2). In 2017, Wu and his research team discovered that electrons in vanadium dioxide behave like metal to electricity but an insulator to heat. Below about 67 degrees Celsius, vanadium dioxide is also transparent to thermal-infrared light. But once vanadium dioxide reaches 67 degrees Celsius, the material switches to a metal state, becoming absorptive of thermal-infrared light. This ability to switch from one phase to another – in this case, from an insulator to metal – is characteristic of what’s known as a phase-change material.

The model describing a material where order doesn’t disappear as heat is applied also has implications for our understanding of the early universe.

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A wind power company, SheerWind, from Minnesota USA has announced its new Invelox wind power generation technology. The company says its turbine could generate six times more energy than the amount produced by traditional turbines mounted on towers.via: News Direct

Source/image: News Direct

There a spacecraft so far away in space it has become the first humanmade object to reach interstellar space. It is traveling out there among the stars, far from Earth, far from home. Voyager 1 is set to never return to our star system, let alone Earth. Its mission; to explore the most distant reaches of space.

September 5, 2020, marked 43 since NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral. In 2012, the probe became the first object to enter an uncharted, never-before-seen region of space; interstellar space. More precisely, on August 25, 2012, at 122 astronomical units, the probe left the so-called heliopause, and so became the first to reach interstellar space.

Continue reading “15 Things You Should Know About Voyager 1, Mankind’s First Interstellar Spaceship” »

A combination of soon-to-be released Biotechnology is expected to extend of lifespans almost tenfold with the help through emerging technologies such as CRISPR or Senolytics. These Anti Aging treatments are meant to stop and even reverse the aging process so that anyone could get young and healthy again. Many companies such as SENS or Jeff Bezos, but even countries like Japan are working on it to deal with an aging population.
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TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 A new Beginning for Longevity.
00:44 Direct Gene Editing.
02:32 Anti Aging Vaccines.
04:44 Longevity Gene Therapy.
07:39 How does Aging work?
09:49 Last Words.
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#longevity #biotech #futurology

New kidney research from the University of Virginia School of Medicine is raising concerns that long-term use of drugs commonly prescribed to treat high-blood pressure and heart failure could be contributing to kidney damage.

Patients should continue taking the medications, which include the well-known and widely used ACE inhibitors, the researchers say. But the scientists are urging studies to better understand the drugs’ long-term effects.

Our studies show that renin-producing cells are responsible for the damage. We are now focusing on understanding how these cells, which are so important to defend us from drops in blood pressure and maintain our well-being, undergo such transformation and induce kidney damage. What is needed is to identify what substances these cells make that lead to uncontrolled vessel growth.

According to recent studies, more than a third of astronauts become momentarily anemic during space travel due to the enormous loss of red blood cells, including that of Tim Peake. Since the symptoms only appear with gravity, this does not cause problems until they arrive.

A new study reveals that populating other planets, like those envisioned by entrepreneur Elon Musk, may be more complex than previously assumed, based on the discovery of “space anemia.”

In addition, they suggested that it might deter those predisposed to heart illness, such as angina, from participating in the growing space tourism industry.