Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers used magnetically driven microrobots to carry cells to predetermined spots within living zebrafish and mice, they report in Science Robotics today (June 27). The authors propose using these hair-width gadgets as delivery vehicles in regenerative medicine and cell therapy.

The scientists used a computer model to work out the ideal dimensions for a microrobot; spiky, porous, spherical ones were deemed best for transporting living cells. They printed the devices using a 3D laser printer and coated the bots with nickel and titanium to make them magnetic and biocompatible, respectively. An external magnetic field applied to the animal then leads the microrobots.

To begin with, the research team tested the ability for the robots to transport cells through cell cultures, blood vessel–like microfluidic chips, and in vivo in zebrafish. Further, they used these microrobots to induce cancer at a specific location within mice by ferrying tumor cells to the spot. The team observed fluorescence at the target site as the labeled cancer cells proliferated.

Continue reading “Magnetic Microrobots Deliver Cells Into Living Animals” »

With millions of cameras and billions of lines of code, China is building a high-tech authoritarian future. Beijing is embracing technologies like facial recognition and artificial intelligence to identify and track 1.4 billion people. It wants to assemble a vast and unprecedented national surveillance system, with crucial help from its thriving technology industry.

Beijing is putting billions of dollars behind facial recognition and other technologies to track and control its citizens.

They say outer space is a lonely place, but a new chart shows that some regions have gotten a bit crowded. It purports to show the positions of all the space probes now at work snapping photos and collecting data in our solar system.

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A diagram, updated once a month, of active space missions beyond Earth orbit.

Continue reading “Amazing Map Shows Every Space Probe Now Exploring Our Solar System” »

Today marks not one but two milestones in planetary exploration. It is the 25th anniversary of Voyager 2’s flight past Neptune, the most distant planet ever seen up close. It is also the exact day that the New Horizons spacecraft is crossing Neptune’s orbit on its way to Pluto, the mysterious world that marks the boundary between the solar system we know and the one we don’t.

As of today, July 10, 2018. There are 3081 Exoplanets discovered and confirmed so far… Exoplanets are planets orbiting other stars or found outside our solar system.

These planets orbiting from 2842 stars. We consider these as other solar systems from which 633 of these stars have multiple planets orbiting around them just like our own solar system.

UC Berkeley engineers have given new meaning to the term “working paper.” Using inexpensive materials, they have fabricated foldable electronic switches and sensors directly onto paper, along with prototype generators, supercapacitors and other electronic devices for a range of applications.

Research to develop paper electronics has accelerated in the last 10 years. Besides its availability and low cost, paper offers an intriguing potential: simply folding it could switch circuits on and off or otherwise change their activity—a kind of electronic origami.

But most efforts to fabricate electrodes onto paper with sufficient conductivity for practical use have employed expensive metals such as gold or silver as the conducting material, swamping the potential savings of paper as a substrate.

Continue reading “Engineers develop origami electronics from cheap, foldable paper” »

Packed cells may help explain why some cancerous tumors stay put while others break off and spread through the body.

The subtle mechanics of densely packed cells may help explain why some cancerous tumors stay put while others break off and spread through the body.

Thomas Sterling has retracted his prediction that we will never reach ZettaFLOP computers. He now predicts zettaFLOPS can be achieved in less than 10 years if innovations in non-von Neumann architecture can be scaled. With a change to cryogenic technologies, we can reach yottaFLOPS by 2030.

John Bucknell created the pre-conceptual design for the SpaceX Raptor engine. It will be the advanced full-flow staged combustion rocket engine for the SpaceX BFR. He designed and built the subscale Raptor rocket for proof of concept testing able to test eighty-one configurations of main injector.

John Bucknell says the nuclear turbo rocket technology and his designs are ready for development. The air-breathing nuclear thermal rocket will enable 7 times more payload fraction to be delivered to low-earth orbit and it will have 6 times the ISP (rocket fuel efficiency) as chemical rockets. The rocket will have two to three times the speed and performance of chemical rockets for missions outside of the atmosphere.

The fully reusable nuclear rocket will be a single stage to orbit system which will be able to make space-based solar power several times cheaper than coal power. Using the 11-meter diameter version of this rocket to build space-based solar power will enable solar power at less than 2 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Continue reading “X-SpaceX Raptor designer has ready for development designs for nuclear rocket that will be up to 7 times better than BFR” »