Lifeboat Foundation

https://youtube.com/watch?v=rozda1m1l1A

A groundbreaking project to tackle one of the world’s most pressing and complex health challenges—antimicrobial resistance (AMR)—has secured a $1 million boost. UTS will lead a consortium of 26 researchers from 14 organisations in the development of an AMR ‘knowledge engine’ capable of predicting outbreaks and informing interventions, supported by a grant from the Medical Research Future Fund.

“AMR is not a simple problem confined to health and hospital settings,” explains project Chief Investigator, UTS Professor of Infectious Disease Steven Djordjevic. “Our pets and livestock rely on many of these same medicines, so they find their way into the food chain and into the environment through animal faeces.”

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Scientists have discovered a new material that could hold the key to unlocking the potential of hydrogen powered vehicles.

As the world looks towards a gradual move away from fossil fuel powered cars and trucks, greener alternative technologies are being explored, such as electric battery powered vehicles.

Another ‘green’ technology with great potential is hydrogen power. However, a major obstacle has been the size, complexity, and expense of the fuel systems—until now.

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Pew pew o.o

“High energy laser weapons have been a system that the United States has wanted to add into their defense portfolio since the invention of the laser,” said senior VP of contracts at Dynetics Ronnie Chronister in a press release.

The system was designed to defend against missiles, rockets and artillery, according to Defense News. It could also prove useful against military drones and other unmanned aircraft.

Continue reading “The U.S. Military Is Buying a $130 Million Laser Weapon” »

Experts at Vanderbilt University are working on exoskeleton suits for everyday life.

It’s the first brain-computer interface to synthesize an entire sentence.

According to the Australian Koala Foundation, there are only 80,000 koalas left on the continent. The marsupials may now be “functionally extinct.”

A mathematician from the University of Bristol has found a solution to part of a 64-year old mathematical problem – expressing the number 33 as the sum of three cubes.

Since the 1950s, mathematicians have wondered if all whole numbers could be expressed as the sum of three cubes; whether the equation k = x³+ y³+ z³ always has a solution.

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A prime number theory equation by mathematics professor emeritus Carl Pomerance turned up on The Big Bang Theory, where it was scrawled on a white board in the background of the hit sitcom about a group of friends and roommates who are scientists, many of them physicists at the California Institute of Technology.

In a recent paper, “Proof of the Sheldon Conjecture,” Pomerance, the John G. Kemeny Parents Professor of Mathematics Emeritus, does the math on a claim by fictional quantum physicist Sheldon Cooper that 73 is “the best number” because of several unique properties. Pomerance’s proof shows that 73 is indeed unique.

The Big Bang Theory is known for dressing the set with “Easter eggs” to delight the self-avowed science nerds in the audience. When UCLA physics professor David Saltzberg, technical consultant for The Big Bang Theory, heard about the Sheldon proof, he contacted Pomerance to ask if they could use it in the show, which was broadcast April 18.

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As the number of electronics devices increases around the world, finding effective methods of recycling electronic waste (e-waste) is a growing concern. About 50 million tons of e-waste is generated each year and only 20% of that is recycled. Most of the remaining 80% ends up in a landfill where it can become an environmental problem. Currently, e-waste recycling involves mechanical crushers and chemical baths, which are expensive, and manual labor, which can cause significant health and environmental problems when not performed properly. Thus, researchers from Kumamoto University, Japan have been using pulsed power (pulsed electric discharges) to develop a cleaner and more efficient recycling method.

Pulsed power has been shown to be successful in processing various waste materials, from concrete to waste water. To test its ability to be used in e-waste recycling, researchers examined its effectiveness in separating components found in one of the most prolific types of e-waste, CD ROMs. In previous work, they showed that complete separation of metal from plastic occurred using 30 pulses at about 35 J/pulse (At the current price of electricity in Tokyo, this amount of energy costs about 0.4 Yen for recycling 100 CD ROMs). To examine the mechanism of material separation using this method, researchers performed further analyses by observing the plasma discharge with a high-speed camera, by taking schlieren visualizations to assess the shock wave, and using shadowgraph images to measure fragment motion.

Images at the early stage of electrical discharge showed two distinct light emissions: blue-white and orange. These indicated excitation of aluminum and upper protective plastic materials respectively. After the plasma dissipated, fragments of metal and plastic could be seen flying away from the CD ROM sample.

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