Lifeboat Foundation

Launched in 2010, DARPA’s Living Foundries program aimed to enable adaptable, scalable, and on-demand production of critical, high-value molecules by programming the fundamental metabolic processes of biological systems to generate a vast number of complex molecules. These molecules were often prohibitively expensive, unable to be domestically sourced, and/or impossible to manufacture using traditional synthetic chemistry approaches. As a proof of concept, DARPA intended to produce 1,000 molecules and material precursors spanning a wide range of defense-relevant applications including industrial chemicals, fuels, coatings, and adhesives.

Divided into two parts – Advanced Tools and Capabilities for Generalizable Platforms (ATCG) and 1,000 Molecules – the Living Foundries program succeeded not only in meeting its programmatic goals of producing 1,000 molecules as a proof-of-concept, but pivoted in 2019 to expand program objectives to working with military mission partners to test molecules for military applications. The performer teams collectively have produced over 1,630 molecules and materials to-date, and more importantly, DARPA is transitioning a subset of these technologies to five military research teams from Army, Navy, and Air Force labs who partnered with the agency on testing and evaluation over the course of the program.

“Biologically-produced molecules offer orders-of-magnitude greater diversity in chemical functionality compared to traditional approaches, enabling scientists to produce new bioreachable molecules faster than ever before,” noted Dr. Anne Cheever, Living Foundries program manager. “Through Living Foundries, DARPA has transformed synthetic biomanufacturing into a predictable engineering practice supportive of a broad range of national security objectives.”

A novel super-white paint may be the creative solution needed to fight global warming. Read the article to learn how that might be.

Rolls-Royce’s new 2.5-megawatt hybrid-electric propulsion system delivered more than a megawatt of power only a few weeks after its first tests, a press statement reveals.

The iconic British engineering firm is developing the Power Generation System 1 (PGS1) demonstrator powertrain to test the technology for clean aircraft of the future.

Rare earth elements are essential for many of our modern day technologies. It’s used in rechargeable batteries, phones, fiber optics, wind turbines, televisions, dvd players and many others.

Some countries control majority of supply and use this as a means to pressure other countries.

Continue reading “Rare earth elements: Global battle under way for precious minerals • FRANCE 24 English” »

Tens of thousands of years ago, on the territory of the uninhabited Sahara Desert, gardens flourished, rivers flowed, ancient people cultivated fertile lands. However, we know how it all ended — today in this place is a desert scorched by the blazing sun with an area 38 times the size of Great Britain. However, humanity has a chance to return life to these lands again, and as a bonus to receive free electricity for all inhabitants of the planet.
The installation of wind and solar farms could radically change the climate in this region: more rainfall, which will lead to a revival of vegetation and a drop in temperature. At least that’s what Yang Li, the study’s author and senior researcher at the University of Illinois, says. No mystery! Wind turbines facilitate the diffusion of hot and cool air. This, in turn, will raise the average rainfall by 50%, and solar panels absorb most of the solar energy, preventing it from overheating the earth.
All this will be effective only with the global development of a lifeless desert. The process has already begun. But they tried repeatedly to tame the cruel and hot sun of the Sahara.

#inventions #technology #solar.

Continue reading “Giant solar power plants of the Sahara” »

IXPE will probe the physics behind some of the universe’s most dynamic objects: black holes and neutron stars.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — SpaceX successfully launched its 28th rocket of the year early Thursday morning (Dec. 9), ferrying an X-ray observatory into space for NASA.

A used Falcon 9 rocket blasted off at 1 a.m. (0600 GMT) from Pad 39A here at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, carrying the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer (IXPE). The mission marked the fifth flight for this particular booster.

Summary: A newly developed self-assessment test of cognitive function can help detect early signs of dementia sooner than commonly used office-based cognitive tests.

Source: Ohio State University.

Many people experience forgetfulness as they age, but it’s often difficult to tell if these memory issues are a normal part of aging or a sign of something more serious. A new study finds that a simple, self-administered test developed by researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, College of Medicine and College of Public Health can identify the early, subtle signs of dementia sooner than the most commonly used office-based standard cognitive test.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=XvuM3DjvYf0

If — or when — human civilization collapses, what will remain? Maybe parts of some cities. Or the Statue of Liberty, a la “Planet of the Apes.” Overall, though, there might not be a lot of evidence left behind about what humanity accomplished — or what resulted in its downfall.

One team of researchers wants to change that. Their solution? A massive, indestructible box that’ll record scientific data to give future civilizations insight on how exactly humanity fell.

Continue reading “Scientists Are Building a ‘Black Box’ to Record the End of Civilization” »

Microsoft has announced a new DirectX12 API for Windows which will offer a new way for apps to efficiently encode video using the GPU.

The Video Encode API is available to 3rd party apps and is native to Windows 11, and can efficiently encode video in the H264 and HEVC formats.

Microsoft says it offers a considerable number of configurable parameters are exposed by this API for the user to tweak different aspects of the encoding process and make them fit best for their scenarios such as: custom slices partitioning scheme, active (i.e. CBR, VBR, QBVR) and passive (Absolute/Delta custom QP maps) rate control configuration modes, custom codec encoding tools usage, custom codec block and transform sizes, motion vector precision limit, explicit usage of intra-refresh sessions, dynamic reconfiguration of video stream resolution/rate control/slices partitioning and more.