Lifeboat Foundation

Robot arms have come a long way since the 1960’s when George C. Devol and Joseph Engelberger created the earliest industrial models. Those had two-finger grippers that, in retrospect, look fit to pluck a rubber ducky out of a bin in a carnival game, but nothing too sophisticated.

By now, robots in factories and warehouses can adjust their grip like human hands, or use suction and pliable materials to move objects wherever they need to go. Problems arise, however, when objects are porous, tiny, or need to be placed with great precision, as with materials handling in textiles, food, automotive and electronics manufacturing.

A startup called Grabit Inc., based in Sunnyvale, Calif., gets around problems with robot dexterity and grip by employing “electroadhesion” to move different materials. Yes, that’s the force that lifts strands of your hair away from your scalp when you rub a balloon on your head.

Continue reading “Nike-backed Grabit has quietly raised $25 million for robots that handle what others can’t grasp” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Fo46CQr3stw

Project Dragonfly is a feasibility study for a space mission to another star. It is conducted by the Initiative for Interstellar Studies I4IS. The goal is to send a robotic spacecraft to another star, in order to explore exoplanets, other star systems, the interstellar medium and discover potential life.

Bill Marlette’s wrist wore away its cartilage until his bones were grinding against each other, but a new treatment using stem cells from his own fat has rebuilt his joint.

We have a highly respected Theoretical Physicist and a pioneer of Quantum Computing, along with the Founder of one of the leading quantum computer companies, D-Wave (whose clients include Google and NASA), talking about parallel universes. Here is a key that I discovered. They are not talking about parallel universes as a theory but as something factual that exists.

An amazing article on the ability of a Quantum Computer to exploit parallel universes. This article is a MUST READ!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=amwyBmWxESA

When people post their emotional responses to social media and through their free email account(s), they are loading their human personal emotional responses, judgments, and biases into a large computer and cloud database? Everything we post and respond to is data somewhere. The truth is, hundreds of millions of people around the planet do this every day, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Are we uploading our brains to a cloud on a supercomputer and evolving into an artificially intelligent machine? This question and more…

Continue reading “Are We Building Artificial Brains And Uploading Minds To The Cloud Right Now?” »

Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory has two NASA grants.

Princeton satellite systems and Princeton Plasma Physics Lab will work on the two projects. Phase I STTRs of $125,000 each will run for one year, at which point we have the opportunity to propose Phase II work up to $750,000.

Continue reading “Small nuclear fusion space and energy systems using high efficiency RF heating” »

Vancomycin 3.0 could soon bolster our last line of defense against bacterial infections.

The SETI Institute is hosting a global, public hackathon and code challenge to find a robust signal classification algorithm for use in our mission to find E.T. radio communication.

The Data Set

Each night, the SETI Institute observes signals across the radio frequency spectrum using the Allen Telescope Array (ATA). The signal detection system at the ATA searches for narrow-band radio signals coming directly from particular targets in the sky.

Fusion-powered rockets that are only the size of a few refrigerators could one day help propel spacecraft at high speeds to nearby planets or even other stars, a NASA-funded spaceflight company says.

Another use for such fusion rockets is to deflect asteroids that might strike Earth and to build manned bases on the moon and Mars, the researchers say.

Rockets fly by hurling materials known as propellants away from them. Conventional rockets that rely on chemical reactions are not very efficient when it comes to how much thrust they generate, given the amount of propellant they carry, which has led rocket scientists to explore a variety of alternatives over the years. [Superfast Spacecraft Propulsion Concepts (Images)].

Continue reading “Will Mini Fusion Rockets Provide Spaceflight’s Next Big Leap?” »