Lifeboat Foundation

The proposed system could lead to breakthroughs in currently unsolvable problems.

• By Elizabeth Gibney, Nature on February 2, 2017

A new method for printing on paper using light promises to be much cheaper, and easier on the environment than the traditional ink-based printing we’re used to.

Scientists have developed a special nanoparticle coating that’s easy to apply to normal paper and changes colour when ultraviolet (UV) light shines on it. The colour change can be reversed when the coating is heated to 120 degrees Celsius (248 degrees Fahrenheit), and allows for up to 80 rewrites.

The team of researchers from the US and China say that their new high-resolution light printing technique could be used everywhere from newspapers to labels, saving on the cost of ink and paper, and on the environmental cost of their recycling and disposing.

Continue reading “Scientists Have Found a Crazy New Way to Print on Paper Using Light” »

In Brief

• China has spent $168 million on cloud seeding technology to hopefully manipulate the weather and combat drought and extreme weather due to climate change
• Cloud seeding technology has existed for a long time, however because of early false claims and deep-rooted skepticism, there isn’t sufficient research to back up the tech

The China Meteorological Administration wants to increase rainfall and snow across 960,000 square kilometers of the country. A more effective way of making this happen that doesn’t involve a ritualistic rain dance? Spending $168 million on cloud seeding technology that they hope will allow them to manipulate the weather.

Here’s how it works. The money will be invested into four new aircrafts, upgrading eight existing planes, and launching 900 rocket systems that will allow them to sprinkle substances above the clouds that could induce the rainmaking process. These substances range from silver iodide to dry ice. Adding these chemicals into clouds might lower their temperature and speed up the condensation process.

Continue reading “China’s New ‘Weather-Controlling Tech’ Could Make it Rain on Demand” »

In Brief

• A new phone concept designed by Philippe Starck and Jerome Olivet is a voice activated, gelatinous, transparent futuristic vision of where smartphones could go.
• Continuing with the trend of subtracting hardware, the phone contains no screen but will be capable of projecting 3D holograms.

The words gelatinous and smartphone might not seem like they belong in the same sentence together. In fact, they barely belong in the same dictionary together. But the Alo smartphone, an unfinished, unreleased technology, is described as a gelatinous, ergonomically shaped to fit the hand well, voice-activated and controlled smartphone. Designed by Jerome Olivet and Phillippe Starck, this design promises to be the future of smartphone technology.

This phone is unlike any current model, and its most notable feature (that we know of yet) is that it will be able to project holograms. Yes, you read that right. Any messages, photographs, or even movies would be able to be viewed as 3D holograms. And while an entirely voice-controlled smartphone might seem a little bit strange and difficult to use, it is supposedly designed to be remarkably user-friendly.

Continue reading “Could This Weird, Gelatinous Gadget be the Phone of the Future?” »

The delivery company is using drones to complement trucks, not replace them.

“The Pitch,” a podcast which launched its second season in January, aims to deliver a more realistic version of “Shark Tank.”

A major medical organization has endorsed human genetic modification for the first time. THe panel suggested that trials be limited at the moment.

Three months ago, Google announced it would in early 2017 launch support for high-end graphics processing units (GPUs) for machine learning and other specialized workloads. It’s now early 2017 and, true to its word, Google today officially made GPUs on the Google Cloud Platform available to developers. As expected, these are Nvidia Tesla K80 GPUs, and developers will be able to attach up to eight of these to any custom Compute Engine machine.

These new GPU-based virtual machines are available in three Google data centers: us-east1, asia-east1 and europe-west1. Every K80 core features 2,496 of Nvidia’s stream processors with 12 GB of GDDR5 memory (the K80 board features two cores and 24 GB of RAM).

Continue reading “Google launches GPU support for its Cloud Platform” »

Self-driving cars are about to face their toughest test.