Lifeboat Foundation

Titles are chosen by editors and not journalists or experts. I fought my editor over the above title. Yes, I address the teaser—and I explain a solid altcoin investment model. But, that comes after the break. The first part of this article should be titled “Why would anyone quote cost or value in Bitcoin?”. The subjects are highly related, so bear with me…

Today, a reader asked this question:

Some financial sites discuss value in Bitcoin terms, rather
than dollars or Euros. Why would I calculate the value of a
new car, my rent or an investment in this way? It’s hard to
understand how much money I need!

Answer: Your right! It’s difficult to estimate the value of a car or your rent in terms of Bitcoin. You are paid in dollars or Euros—and your landlord quotes rent in the same currency.

Continue reading “Revenue Neutral model reduces altcoin investment risk” »

This would be a nice way to get rid of having to use salt on the roads.

Never shovel your driveway again! ❄️ (via CNBC Technology)

It is wartime. You and your fellow refugees are hiding from enemy soldiers, when a baby begins to cry. You cover her mouth to block the sound. If you remove your hand, her crying will draw the attention of the soldiers, who will kill everyone. If you smother the child, you’ll save yourself and the others.

If you were in that situation, which was dramatized in the final episode of the ’70s and ’80s TV series “M.A.S.H.,” what would you do?

The results of a new UCLA study suggest that scientists could make a good guess based on how the brain responds when people watch someone else experience pain. The study found that those responses predict whether people will be inclined to avoid causing harm to others when facing moral dilemmas.

Continue reading “Mirror neuron activity predicts people’s decision-making in moral dilemmas, study finds” »

Internet of Things trends for 2018. Our expert Ahmed Banaf reviews how this tech trend will evolve this year: dat analytics, fog computing and blockchain.

The development of ultra-intense lasers delivering the same power as the entire U.S. power grid has enabled the study of cosmic phenomena such as supernovae and black holes in earthbound laboratories. Now, a new method developed by computational astrophysicists at the University of Chicago allows scientists to analyze a key characteristic of these events: their powerful and complex magnetic fields.

In the field of high-energy density physics, or HEDP, scientists study a wide range of astrophysical objects—stars, supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies and galaxy clusters—with laboratory experiments as small as a penny and lasting only a few billionths of a second. By focusing powerful lasers on a carefully designed target, researchers can produce plasmas that reproduce conditions observed by astronomers in our sun and distant galaxies.

Planning these complex and expensive experiments requires large-scale, high-fidelity computer simulation beforehand. Since 2012, the Flash Center for Computational Science of the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at UChicago has provided the leading open computer code, called FLASH, for these HEDP simulations, enabling researchers to fine-tune experiments and develop analysis methods before execution at sites such as the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory or the OMEGA Laser Facility in Rochester, N.Y.

Continue reading “Computational astrophysics team uncloaks magnetic fields of cosmic events” »

Scientists are using X-ray tech to read this sealed document without opening it.

I guess the idea works, but there’s one little snag.

Putting solar panels into our roads isn’t the craziest idea, but we may as well admit that it poses some unique challenges. For instance, people may want to walk away with pieces of it. That’s what happened in China, anyway, just five days after authorities opened up what they claim is the world’s first solar panel-paved highway.

As reported by the Qilu Evening News (and noted by TechNode), the experimental kilometer-long stretch of road in Shandong is covered in more than 10,000 solar panels, sandwiched between an insulating layer on the bottom and a durable, transparent one on top — less than 3 cm thick all told. There are coils that can charge electric cars as they drive over it, and the system can even warm up in order to melt snow and ice. It opened to use on December 28.

Continue reading “Someone stole a piece of China’s new solar panel-paved road less than a week after it opened” »

China is not the only country with a nuclear bunker for its top leaders. Governments of major powers built similar bunkers during the cold war era, and while several have since been abandoned or opened to tourists, some are still used for defence purposes.

Scientists shed light on Beijing’s nuclear bunker located in ‘world’s most deeply buried karst caves’.