Lifeboat Foundation

From precision GPS to batteries for one of the world’s first commercial all-electric airplanes, NASA technology turns up in nearly every corner of modern life. The latest edition of NASA’s Spinoff publication features dozens of commercial technologies that were developed or improved by the agency’s space program and benefit people everywhere.

“NASA works hard, not only to develop technology that pushes the boundaries of aeronautics and space exploration, but also to put those innovations into the hands of businesses and entrepreneurs who can turn them into solutions for challenges we all face here on Earth,” said Jim Reuter, acting associate administrator of the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. “These are sometimes predictable, like the many NASA technologies now adopted by the burgeoning commercial space industry, but more often they appear in places that may seem unrelated, like hospitals, farms, factories and family rooms.”

Continue reading “New Spinoff Publication Highlights NASA Technology Everywhere” »

Oops, duh, Eureka… shouted Archimedes… Or something.

Corn leaves are teaming with bacteria communities (the leaf “microbiome”) that influence plant health and performance, and scientists are still figuring out how. A team of scientists led by Dr. Jason Wallace recently published a study in the open access Phytobiomes Journal that advances what we know about these bacterial communities by investigating their relationships with corn genetics. According to Dr. Wallace, “the end-goal of all this research is to understand how crops interact with their microbial communities so we can harness them to make agriculture more productive and sustainable.”

In one of the largest and most diverse leaf microbe studies to date, the team monitored the active bacteria on the leaves of 300 diverse lines of corn growing in a common environment. They were especially interested to see how corn genes affected bacteria and found there was little relationship between the two — in fact, the bacteria were much more affected by the environment, although genetics still had a small role.

This is an interesting discovery that “breeding probably isn’t the best way to address this,” Dr. Wallace says. Instead, “the leaf community is probably better changed through farmer management.” That is, farmers should be able to change growing practices to enhance their current crops rather than seek out new plant varieties.

Converting excess wind and solar power into hydrogen can extend renewable energy’s reach.

• By Peter Fairley on April 1, 2019

Another possibility for an alternative to traditional plastics?

A substance made by solitary bees.

Sometimes the answers to life’s most complicated questions are hidden in the smallest details. That’s a truth Veronica Harwood-Stevenson discovered when she found there might be a way to create a sustainable alternative to plastic products by mimicking a natural substance produced by bees.

Continue reading “EHF Fellow: Veronica Harwood-Stevenson” »

Fluids with zero viscosity seemingly defy the laws of physics and they have endless applications. But they’ve been hard to make, until now. The secret? Bacteria!

Scientists’ Crazy Plan to Power Solar Panels With E. Coli — https://youtu.be/_XZGrZ3DeLg

Continue reading “This Superfluid Is Alive, And It Could Power Machines of the Future” »

In what may be the most exciting news of the week, University of Texas at Austin researchers have engineered a solar-powered device that absorbs moisture from the air and turns it into clean water.

SEE ALSO: 5 WELL ENGINEERED WATER PURIFICATION SYSTEMS COMBATING THE GLOBAL WATER CRISIS

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Spiders, mushrooms and algae may help build the next Hilfiger, Levi and Chanel.

Organisms are the great designers of our planet, producing materials in distinct patterns to serve a specific function. Bees produce hexagonal honeycombs to store honey, spiders weave symmetrical webs to capture prey, and nautiluses form a logarithmic spiral shell to protect their insides. Synthetic biologists, ever inspired by nature, are leveraging these unique abilities, harnessing nature’s potential to revolutionize apparel by guiding structural assemblies at the molecular level.

Here are three examples of innovative companies — in Tokyo, New York, and Berkeley — that are letting nature show the way to better, more sustainable materials in a quest to alter the fashion and apparel industries forever.

Continue reading “Biotechnology meets fashion and sports performance: Trends in the apparel industry” »

By 2050, two-thirds of us wil be living in cities, so architects are taking inspiration from nature to build more sustainable skylines.

How Eyes Evolved to See the World Differently

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Aside from harvesting solar, wind, and hydrogen energy to produce electricity, many energy experts believe that developing compact fusion facilities can give humankind a stable and sustainable source of power that can last forever.

Jon Menard, a physicist from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), has reportedly examined the possibility of expediting the development of compact fusion facilities to generate safe, clean, and limitless energy.

In his study, Menard looked into the concept of creating a compact tokamak powered by high-temperature superconducting magnets.

Continue reading “New Research Boosts Potential of Compact Fusion Power” »