Lifeboat Foundation

Emerging technologies are shaking up how we grow food, distribute it, and even what we’re eating. We are seemingly on the cusp of a food revolution and undoubtedly, technologies including artificial intelligence will play a huge role in helping people grow healthier, more resilient food faster and with less energy than ever before.

Rob Nail, Singularity University’s CEO and Associate Founder, provides a few examples of how robotics, automation, and drones are transforming agriculture in this short video:

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“This ingenious cooling system circulates cooled air in an endless loop—all without any electricity.”

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The novel its a bit older, but it‘s an incredible vision!

When Star Trek’s Scotty warns the Captain that the engines can’t “take it”, he might just be best off switching fuel — a new book claims that humanity could reach the stars using vast spacecraft harnessing the energy of black holes with the power to “eat planets”.

Continue reading “Warp Factor 11 — ships powered by BLACK HOLES to ‘outpace Enterprise’, say scientists” »

Substantially smaller and longer-lasting batteries for everything from portable electronic devices to electric cars could be come a reality thanks to an innovative technology developed by University of Waterloo researchers.

Zhongwei Chen, a chemical engineering professor at Waterloo, and a team of graduate students have created a low-cost battery using silicon that boosts the performance and life of lithium-ion batteries. Their findings are published in the latest issue of Nature Communications.

Waterloo’s silicon battery technology promises a 40 to 60 per cent increase in energy density, which is important for consumers with smartphones, smart homes and smart wearables.

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Site — http://goo.gl/oORnr
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Genre: docudrama
Type: documentary
Year: 2011
Director: Misha Kostrov
Creative director: Eugene Sannikov
Producer: Victor Mirsky, Sergey Sozanovsky
Creative producer: Oksana Maidanskaya
Director of photography: Vladimir Kratinov
Scriptwriter: Nataliya Doilnitsyna
Аwards: Platinum Remi Award, WorldFest Houston 2013

The film tacks together two tales: a historical account of Tesla’s eventful life and his pioneering research into physics and bold experiments with electricity.

Continue reading “Free energy of Tesla. Film (Dubbed into English)” »

A new approach developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo could hold the key to greatly improving the performance of commercial lithium-ion batteries. The scientists have developed a new type of silicon anode that would be used in place of a conventional graphite anode, which they claim will lead to smaller, lighter and longer-lasting batteries for everything from personal devices to electric vehicles.

Graphite has served the lithium-ion battery world as material for negative electrodes well so far, but also presents something of a roadblock for improved capacity. This is due to the relatively small amount of energy it can store, which comes in at around 370 mAh/g (milliamp hours per gram). Silicon has become an increasingly popular substitute for battery researchers looking to up the ante, with a specific capacity of 4,200 mAh/g. However, it isn’t without its limitations either.

As silicon interacts with lithium inside the cell during each charge cycle, it expands and contracts by as much as as 300 percent. This immense swelling brings about cracks that diminish the battery’s performance over time, leading to short circuits and ultimately cell failure. Other recent attempts to overcome this problem have turned up battery designs that use sponge-like silicon anodes developed at the nanoscale, silicon nanowires measuring only a few microns long and ones that bring graphene and carbon nanotubes into the mix.

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A Hall thruster is powering many of the satellites moving around Earth right now. It needs 100 million (yes, you read that right, 100 million) times less fuel than chemical thrusters. But it was never remotely sturdy enough to get anything to Mars—until now.

Typical chemical thrusters are pretty simple. Fuel combusts, gases shoot one way, and a rocket shoots the other way.

Ion thrusters are a little different. They contain charged electrodes, an anode and a cathode, and allow positively charged ions to shoot from the anode to the cathode. Thanks to momentum, the ions will “overshoot” the cathode. Under regular circumstances they’d be sucked back, but once they’ve cleared the cathode, they’re hit by a beam of electrons, neutralizing them and allowing them to go on their way without interference from the charged cathode. So the neutralized atoms shoot one way, and the rocket shoots another.

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Samsung’s latest battery prototypes could lead not only to more powerful wearables, but also to unusual ones. The first model called Band is meant to be attached to smartwatch straps, as its name implies, to add as much as 50 percent of the device’s original battery life. Stripe, on the other hand, is the thin, bendy strip the model above is holding in her hands — and the more versatile between the two. Since it’s extremely thin (it has a depth measuring 0.3mm), it could be used to create all kinds of wearables, such as smart necklaces and headbands, or even interactive clothing designs. According to Samsung, it has higher energy density than current comparable batteries, though it didn’t name any particular brand and model.

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