Lifeboat Foundation

The nextgen of Solar and fuel energy.

Scientists have just discovered a way to directly convert solar energy into a synthetic fuel using carbon dioxide. Current solar technologies operate in either photovoltaic solar or thermal solar. Photovoltaic solar energy is generated through solar panels, which are typically seen on the roofs of houses and many solar plants. The other method of thermal solar is typically only used in large-scale energy plants, as it used mirrors to focus solar energy to heat a liquid which then powers turbines. Both methods, however, involve the conversion of solar energy into electricity. While electricity is useful, much energy is lost in the storing of electricity, something that the conversion process to liquid fuel overcomes.

“The key to understanding why “social VR” will be important is to think about virtual (and augmented) reality as a computing platform, rather than as a PC peripheral for gaming.”

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Nice.

Elite endurance athletes could be able to keep going for longer thanks to a new drink developed to give soldiers extra energy in battle, a study using former Olympians has found.

Scientists found that cyclists using the drink, which temporarily switches the body’s energy source from glucose to ketones, could travel an extra quarter of a mile than those taking a different energy supplement.

Continue reading “How science could help cyclists to keep pedalling for longer” »

Last week, scientists funded by the NIH’s Human Connectome Project—a precursor to the BRAIN Initiative—identified 97 previously unknown areas of the brain’s cortex.

The Air Force awarded a contract for research in deceptive cyber to be used toward network defense.

Risk Assessment —

Dark Patterns are designed to trick you (and they’re all over the Web)

Continue reading “Dark Patterns are designed to trick you (and they’re all over the Web)” »

Revelations that the ‘Operation Pacifier’ child porn investigation extended to Austria too shows the extent of the FBI’s reach overseas.

Hmmm.

We can rebuild him; we have the technology—but Americans question if we should in a new survey designed to assess attitudes to modern biotechnology advances.

A new report, based on a survey of 4,700 U.S. adults coming out of the Pew Research Center, looked at a range of views on certain advances in biology, with opinions split on the ethics and long-term problems associated with enhancing human capacity.

Continue reading “U.S. wary on biotech advances; gene editing, CRISPR ‘raising urgency’” »

A team built a specialized, layered structure with tiny metallic cavities that improves the light conversion efficiency by orders of magnitude.

Artist’s rendering of an incident laser beam (top of the figure) illuminating an array of nanoscale gold resonators on the surface of a “quantum well” semiconductor (slab in figure). (A quantum well is a thin layer that can restrict the movement of electrons to that layer.) The incoming laser beam interacts with the array and the quantum wells and is converted into two new laser beams with different wavelengths. Changing the size, shape, and arrangement of the resonators can be used for beam focusing, beam steering, or control of the beam’s angular momentum. (Image: Sandia National Laboratories)

Continue reading “Getting light in shape with metamaterials” »