Lifeboat Foundation

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – A new highly efficient power amplifier for electronics could help make possible next-generation cell phones, low-cost collision-avoidance radar for cars and lightweight microsatellites for communications.

Fifth-generation, or 5G, mobile devices expected around 2019 will require improved power amplifiers operating at very high frequencies. The new phones will be designed to download and transmit data and videos faster than today’s phones, provide better coverage, consume less power and meet the needs of an emerging “Internet of things” in which everyday objects have network connectivity, allowing them to send and receive data.

Power amplifiers are needed to transmit signals. Because today’s cell phone amplifiers are made of gallium arsenide, they cannot be integrated into the phone’s silicon-based technology, called complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS). The new amplifier design is CMOS-based, meaning it could allow researchers to integrate the power amplifier with the phone’s electronic chip, reducing manufacturing costs and power consumption while boosting performance.

Continue reading “High-efficiency power amplifier could bring 5G cell phones” »

“We have developed a hydrogel based rapid E. coli detection system that will turn red when E. coli is present,” says Professor Sushanta Mitra, Lassonde School of Engineering. “It will detect the bacteria right at the water source before people start drinking contaminated water.”

The new technology has cut down the time taken to detect E. coli from a few days to just a couple of hours. It is also an inexpensive way to test drinking water (C$3 per test estimated), which is a boon for many developing countries, as much as it is for remote areas of Canada’s North.

“This is a significant improvement over the earlier version of the device, the Mobile Water Kit, that required more steps, handling of liquid chemicals and so on,” says Mitra, Associate Vice-President of Research at York U. “The entire system is developed using a readily available plunger-tube assembly. It’s so user-friendly that even an untrained person can do the test using this kit.”

The crew of the Proteus has one desperate chance to save a man’s life. Shrunk to the size of a large bacterium, the submarine contains a team of scientists and physicians racing to destroy a blood clot in the brain of a Soviet defector. The group journeys through the body, evading giant white blood cells and tiny antibodies while traveling through the heart, the inner ear and the brain to reach and destroy the blockage.

Although events in the film Fantastic Voyage were far-fetched when it was released in 1966, they’re now being realized every day in labs around the world, particularly in cancer treatment. A growing field called nanotechnology is allowing researchers to manipulate molecules and structures much smaller than a single cell to enhance our ability to see, monitor and destroy cancer cells in the body.

Tens of thousands of patients have already received chemotherapy drugs delivered by nanoparticles called liposomes, and dozens of other approaches are currently in clinical trials. Within the next five to 10 years, our bodies’ biggest defenders may be tinier than we could have ever imagined.

Continue reading “How nanotechnology could detect and treat cancer” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=W0YgV1TgnF8

Luv this as long as it doesn’t pollute space.

Space seeds could bring high-bandwidth Internet connectivity to the globe at less expense than the cost of putting one satellite into space.

Continue reading “Seeding space with nanosatellites for affordable Internet” »

Improving energy efficiencies — nice.

The remarkable properties researchers at the Australian National University (ARC Centre of Excellence CUDOS) and the University of California Berkeley have discovered in a new nano-metamaterial could lead to highly efficient thermophotovoltaic cells. The new artificial material glows in an unusual way when headed.

As shown in the image, the metamaterial comprises 20 stacked alternating layers of 30-nm-thick gold and 45-nm-thick magnesium fluoride dielectric, perforated with 260 × 530 nm holes that are arranged into a 750 × 750 nm square lattice.

Continue reading “Magnetic Hyperbolic Optical Metamaterial Could Advance Thermophotovoltaics” »

Nice!

Our skin is our largest organ. A gateway between our brain and the rest of the world.

Imagine then a scene where skin could communicate what’s going on inside a human body. It could inform surgeons, provide alerts when our body is about to fall ill, or even diagnose diseases inside another human being, simply through the sense of touch.

Continue reading “The bionic skin that can feel a tumor” »

The next time that you decide to run barefoot in the rain, etc. there is a health benefit that you’re receiving in the form of enhancing your brain.

FRIDAY, May 13, 2016 (HealthDay News) — Runners who want to boost their brain function should consider taking their running shoes off, new research suggests.

The study found that after running barefoot, participants saw improvements in working memory, or the ability to recall or process information. Running in shoes, however, didn’t result in the same advantage, researchers said.

Continue reading “A Barefoot Run Might Be a Brain Booster” »

Theoretical chemists at Princeton University have pioneered a strategy for modeling quantum friction, or how a particle’s environment drags on it, a vexing problem in quantum mechanics since the birth of the field. The study was published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters (“Wigner–Lindblad Equations for Quantum Friction”). “It was truly a most challenging research project in terms of technical details and the need to draw upon new ideas,” said Denys Bondar, a research scholar in the Rabitz lab and corresponding author on the work.

Researchers construct a quantum counterpart of classical friction, a velocity-dependent force acting against the direction of motion. In particular, a translationary invariant Lindblad equation is derived satisfying the appropriate dynamical relations for the coordinate and momentum (i.e., the Ehrenfest equations). Numerical simulations establish that the model approximately equilibrates. (© ACS)

Continue reading “Theorists smooth the way to modeling quantum friction” »

So, the US Military has developed a way to eliminate bad memories/ PTSD and another method to restore memories. Wish the US Government would make their minds up on this one — LOL.

A scientist in DARPA’s biological technologies offices explains how the agency is developing implants that could bring back memories.