Lifeboat Foundation

A box full of $50 and $100 bills, totaling $180,000, was sent to the physics department at City College of New York. An enclosed note from the mysterious donor asked the school to use the cash to fund scholarships for needy students.

When a City College physics professor opened an ordinary box that had been sitting in the mailroom, he was startled by its contents.

Continue reading “A Box of Cash, a Secret Donor and a Big Lift for Some N.Y.C. Students” »

A single treatment with room temperature plasma could accelerate repair of large bone defects.

So the bristle worm jaw is both metal-like and yet not. As Zelaya-Lainez puts it, “Here we are dealing with a completely different material, but interestingly, the metal atoms still provide strength and deformability there, just like in a piece of metal.”

Observing the creation of a metal-like material from biological processes is a bit of a surprise and may suggest new approaches to materials development. “Biology could serve as inspiration here,” says Hellmich, “for completely new kinds of materials. Perhaps it is even possible to produce high-performance materials in a biological way — much more efficiently and environmentally friendly than we manage today.”

Scientists have used state-of-the-art 3D printing and microscopy to provide a new glimpse of what happens when taking magnets to three-dimensions on the nanoscale—1000 times smaller than a human hair.

The international team led by Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory used an advanced 3D printing technique they developed to create magnetic double helices—like the double helix of DNA—which twist around one another, combining curvature, chirality, and strong magnetic field interactions between the helices. Doing so, the scientists discovered that these magnetic double helices produce nanoscale topological textures in the magnetic field, something that had never been seen before, opening the door to the next generation of magnetic devices. The results are published in Nature Nanotechnology.

Magnetic devices impact many different parts of our societies, magnets are used for the generation of energy, for data storage and computing. But magnetic computing devices are fast approaching their shrinking limit in two-dimensional systems. For the next generation of computing, there is growing interest in moving to three dimensions, where not only can higher densities be achieved with 3D nanowire architectures, but three-dimensional geometries can change the magnetic properties and offer new functionalities.

While AI can provide real-time analysis of enormous amounts of data, an AI system coupled with blockchain technology can provide a transparent data governance model for quicker validation amongst various stakeholders through smart contracts and DAOs.

Blockchain benefits can address AI’s shortcomings

Applying the benefits of blockchain technology can help address various shortcomings of AI and help in increasing people’s trust in AI-based applications. With Blockchain, AI applications acquire the qualities of decentralization, distributed data governance, data immutability, transparency, security, and real-time accountability. Many AI-enabled intelligent systems are criticized for their lack of security and trust levels. Blockchain technology can essentially help in addressing the security and trust deficit issues to a significant extent. Enormous challenges remain for both blockchain technology and Artificial Intelligence. Still, when combined, they display tremendous potential and will complement each other to restore the trust factor and improve efficiency at large.

NASA and the Russian space agency Roscosmos are finalizing an agreement to launch the first cosmonaut on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, agency officials confirmed on Monday (Dec. 20).

Tesla has launched Free Holiday Supercharging during off-peak hours for the Holiday Season. From December 23 to December 26, Tesla will offer free Supercharging in various locations across the U.S. when charging before 10 AM or after 7 PM.

Tesla will offer the free off-peak Supercharging in eleven states across the U.S.: California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, and Pennsylvania. All four of Tesla’s vehicles will be eligible for the free Supercharging promotion. 75 Supercharging stations will be online for free Supercharging during the off-peak times.

“Avoid the rush this holiday season and charge for free during off-peak hours at Superchargers along select travel routes in the United States,” Tesla wrote on their website. Charging during off-peak hours is usually a less expensive experience, to begin with, because it puts less stress on the grid. However, the Holidays are a high travel time. Despite Tesla’s expansive Supercharger network with over 25,000 locations globally, things will still get pretty congested, especially as AAA estimates that 109.5 million travelers will hit the road to celebrate the Holidays with family this year.

New natural-source e-ink biodegrades once discarded.

Theoretical “lumps” called Q balls formed in the moments after the Big Bang.

One of the biggest cosmological mysteries is why the universe is made up of way more matter than antimatter, essentially why we exist. Now, a team of theoretical physicists says they know how to find the answer. All they need to do is detect the gravitational waves produced by bizarre quantum objects called Q balls.

Every kind of ordinary matter particle has an antimatter partner with opposing characteristics — and when matter interacts with antimatter, the two annihilate each other. That fact makes our existence a mystery, as cosmologists are pretty sure that at the dawn of the universe, equal amounts of matter and antimatter were produced; those matter and antimatter partners should have all annihilated each other, leaving the universe devoid of any matter at all. Yet matter exists, and researchers are slowly uncovering the reasons why.