Lifeboat Foundation

The picture of a “bullet train” speeding past Mount Fuji is an iconic image of modern Japan.

In recent years, however, Japan has lost the “world’s fastest train” title to China — if only by a few miles per hour. But now, Japan plans to reclaim that crown, with a new bullet train that will whisk between cities with journey times that rival passenger jets.

The Alfa-X train, unveiled by rail company JR East, will carry passengers at up to 224 miles per hour, outpacing the fastest Japanese bullet trains in commercial service today by almost 25 miles per hour.

Continue reading “Superfast bullet train that rivals airplane flying times set to debut in Japan” »

Many ways to approach the Riemann Hypothesis have been proposed during the past 150 years, but none of them have led to conquering the most famous open problem in mathematics. A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggests that one of these old approaches is more practical than previously realized.

“In a surprisingly short proof, we’ve shown that an old, abandoned approach to the Riemann Hypothesis should not have been forgotten,” says Ken Ono, a number theorist at Emory University and co-author of the paper. “By simply formulating a proper framework for an old approach we’ve proven some new theorems, including a large chunk of a criterion which implies the Riemann Hypothesis. And our general framework also opens approaches to other basic unanswered questions.”

The paper builds on the work of Johan Jensen and George Pólya, two of the most important mathematicians of the 20th century. It reveals a method to calculate the Jensen-Pólya polynomials—a formulation of the Riemann Hypothesis—not one at a time, but all at once.

Continue reading “Mathematicians revive abandoned approach to the Riemann Hypothesis” »

The kilogram isn’t a thing anymore. Instead, it’s an abstract idea about light and energy.

As of today (May 20), physicists have replaced the old kilogram — a 130-year-old, platinum-iridium cylinder weighing 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) sitting in a room in France — with an abstract, unchanging measurement based on quadrillions of light particles and Planck’s constant (a fundamental feature of our universe).

In one sense, this is a grand (and surprisingly difficult) achievement. The kilogram is fixed forever now. It can’t change over time as the cylinder loses an atom here or an atom there. That means humans could communicate this unit of mass, in terms of raw science, to space aliens. The kilogram is now a simple truth, an idea that can be carried anywhere in the universe without bothering to bring a cylinder with you.

Continue reading “There’s a Brand-New Kilogram, And It’s Based on Quantum Physics” »

It’s a remarkable story of recovery, but it’s unclear how useful this sort of therapy could become.

The background: Isabelle Holdaway had been given less than a 1% chance of survival after a lung transplant, carried out to combat the symptoms of cystic fibrosis, left her with an antibiotic-resistant infection. She had been sent home and was in a terrible physical condition: underweight, with liver failure, and with lesions on her skin from the infection.

A breakthrough: Her consultant at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London worked with a team at the University of Pittsburgh to develop an untested phage therapy. This treatment used a cocktail of three phages, which are viruses that solely attack and kill bacteria. Two of the three phages, selected from a library of more more than 10,000 kept at the University of Pittsburgh, had been genetically engineered to be better at attacking the bacteria. The therapy was injected into her bloodstream twice daily and applied to the lesions on her skin, according to Nature Medicine.

Continue reading “Genetically engineered phage therapy has rescued a teenager on the brink of death” »

In the dark, dank depths of your home basement hangs a drab gray box that guards the building’s electrical circuits. The circuit breakers inside switch off current flow when there is risk of an overload or short circuit, keeping you safe from fires or electrocution. It’s a critical job, and one that breakers have been doing with a fairly simple, 140-year-old electromechanical technology.

But circuit breakers are about to get a digital overhaul. New semiconductor breakers that combine computing power and wireless connectivity could become the hub of smart, energy-efficient buildings of the future.

“It’s like going from a telephone that just makes calls to a smartphone with capabilities we’d never imagined before,” says Ryan Kennedy, CEO and co-founder of Atom Power in Charlotte, North Carolina. “This is a platform that changes everything in power systems.”

Continue reading “Atom Power Is Launching the Era of Digital Circuit Breakers” »

The work should lead to control one to a few hundred atoms at microsecond timescales using AI control of electron beams. The computational/analytical framework developed in this work are general and can further help develop techniques for controlling single-atom dynamics in 3D materials, and ultimately, upscaling manipulations of multiple atoms to assemble 1 to 1000 atoms with high speed and efficacy.

Scientists at MIT, the University of Vienna, and several other institutions have taken a step toward developing a method that can reposition atoms with a highly focused electron beam and control their exact location and bonding orientation. The finding could ultimately lead to new ways of making quantum computing devices or sensors, and usher in a new age of “atomic engineering,” they say.

This could help make quantum sensors and computers.

Continue reading “Advance to Controlling one to a Few Hundred Atoms at Microsecond Timescales Using AI Control of Electron Beams” »

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in France has found that amyloid fibrils lit with near-infrared radiation emit a dim, near-infrared signal. In their paper published in the journal Nature Photonics, the group describes their study of amyloid fibrils and plaques in mice and humans and what they found.

Amyloid fibrils are tiny structures that self-form in some proteins. When they clump together, they form what are known as amyloid plaques. They are associated with the development of neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. Despite years of study, it is still not known what causes them. In this new effort, the researchers sought to learn more about the early stages of fibril development by developing a way to see it happening.

Prior work had shown that when ultraviolet light shines onto tissue-containing proteins, the tissue emits blue light. Researchers have found that the emissions become stronger if there are fibrils present in the proteins. While this finding has been useful, it has only allowed for superficial study of fibril formation due to the shallow depth of UV and blue light penetration. In their experiments, the researchers tried firing near-field radiation at sample human proteins and found that and fibrils present would emit a dim, near-infrared signal. This was important, because unlike UV light, near-field radiation can penetrate relatively deeply into tissue.

Continue reading “Amyloid fibrils lit with near-infrared radiation found to emit a dim, near-infrared signal” »

If you are a working, American adult, the 2 TR3Bs you see in this video are your taxpayer dollars floating around. That is technology that Americans have paid for but nearly everyone does not even know it exists, let alone benefit from it.

The TR-3B or also called “Black Manta” is a top-secret black project aircraft of the US Air Force. There is a lot of evidence for the TR-3B. Multiple sightings have been reported e.g. over Antelope Valley, a desert in California. This desert is well-known for the testing of “black project”-related aircraft. It is in close proximity of several military research centers, such as Edwards Air Force Base and Area 42.

Continue reading “The TR-3B Is Real” »

Treating pain can be tricky for practitioners and patients with a heightened awareness of the dangers surrounding the opioid addiction epidemic in Massachusetts. One local doctor is offering an alternative: cold laser therapy, with the promise of pain relief without the pills.

Last fall, Christine Hart was facing surgery for a hip injury and osteoarthritis.