Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists in Hong Kong recently completed a clinical study in which they found that administering a cocktail of three different anti-viral medications to patients enduring mild coronavirus symptoms “may rapidly suppress the amount of virus in a patient’s body.”

The three-drug anti-viral cocktail is made up of the HIV medication lopinavir-ritonavir, the hepatitis therapy drug ribavirin and the multiple sclerosis treatment interferon-beta.

Scientists uncover how oral secretions of the cotton leaf worm trigger defense responses in a plant.

In nature, every species must be equipped with a strategy to be able to survive in response to danger. Plants, too, have innate systems that are triggered in response to a particular threat, such as insects feeding on them.

For example, some plants sense “herbivore-derived danger signals” (HDS), which are specific chemicals in oral secretions of insects. This activates a cascade of events in the plant’s defense machinery, which leads to the plant developing “resistance” to (or “immunity” against) the predator. But despite decades of research, exactly how plants recognize these signals has remained a bit of a mystery.

A team of research physicists at Princeton University may have found a new way to control fusion reactions inside doughnut-shaped tokamak reactors — an incremental step towards making fusion energy, the ‘holy grail of energy production’, a reality.

Many fusion reactors today use light elements in the form of plasma as fuel. The problem is that this elemental plasma is extremely hot — practically as hot as the Sun — and extremely unpredictable and difficult to control.

But there may be a way to force the plasma into doing what we want more predictably and efficiently, as detailed in a new theoretical paper published in the journal Physics of Plasmas.

A birthday party was behind a cluster of coronavirus cases in Pasadena, California, according to health officials.

A “large number” of extended family members and friends were at the party, the Pasadena Public Health Department said in <a href=“https://www.cityofpasadena.net/city-manager/news-releases/cluster-of-covid-19-cases-traced-to-birthday-party/ target=“_blank”>a news release, adding the event took place after the city issued a stay-at-home order in March.

One patient at the party was coughing and not wearing a face covering, health officials said, and other party guests were also not covering their face or social distancing…

Details have emerged about a new class of amphibious warships that Navy and Marine Corps leaders say will be essential to competing with near-peer adversaries at sea.

The Navy has released details on a proposed new class of light amphibious warships. The ships will be necessary as the sea services rise to meet growing challenges at sea, according to slides from a recent Navy-led industry day during which leaders met with two dozen companies to discuss the idea.

The lighter ships, according to the slides, will help the Navy and Marine Corps “meet new challenges,” including sea-control-and-denial operations. The light amphibious warships, the slides add, will serve as “maneuver and sustainment vessels to confront the changing character of warfare.”

Circa 2017

A brief history of Polywell progress is recounted. The present PIC simulation explains why the most recent Polywell fusion reactor failed to produce fusion energy. Synchronized variations of multiple parameters would require DC power supplies, not available in historic model testing. Even with DC power, the simulation showed that the trapping of cold electrons would ruin plasma stability during start-up. A theoretical solution to this trapping problem was found in Russian literature describing diocotron-pumping of electrons out of a plasma trap at Kharkov Institute. In Polywell, diocotron-pumping required matching the depth of the potential-well to the electron-beam current falling on a special aperture installed in one of the electromagnets. With diocotron-pumping the reactor was simulated to reach steady-state, maximum-power operation in a few milliseconds of simulated time. These improvements, validated in simulating small-scale DD reactors, were scaled up by a factor of 30 to simulate a large, net-power reactor burning p + ¹¹ B fuel. Power-balance was estimated from a textbook formula for fusion power density by numerically integrating the power density. Unity power-balance required the size of the p + ¹¹ B reactor to be somewhat larger than ITER.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FxlGPz4kyZw

The China Electricity Council (CEC) ratified and published a set of national standards for electric vehicle wireless charging, which will be based on the magnetic resonance technology developed and patented by WiTricity, a wireless power transfer specialist based in Massachusetts.

Lack of standardization was always a major obstacle for the popularization of the wireless charging, but it seems that in the near future the industry will finally introduce a general solution for all EVs — not only in China, but also globally.

Continue reading “China To Introduce EV Wireless Charging Standard Based On WiTricity Technology” »

If you really have the need for speed, you could get it on the ground. But if you’re looking more for stuff that can break the sound barrier many times over, you should consider looking up. That’s the hint casually dropped by aeronautic manufacturer Lockheed Martin, which has mulled over revisiting the idea of a hypersonic revamp. In this case, they’re reportedly looking at an upgrade of the old SR-71 “Blackbird” that first took to the air nearly 60 years ago.

Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works department has been making noises about a revival of the legendary bomber, a jet that was capable of flying up to Mach 3. That’s slightly more than 3,700 mph, about one and a half times speedier than the .220 Swift, reportedly the fastest bullet ever produced.

But the Skunk Work’s brain trust claims the SR-72 might even double the speed of its predecessor. That’s a tricky proposition considering the plane’s air intake would be brutal at those speeds, like trying to start a campfire in gale-force winds.

Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs, known as Skunk Works, has demonstrated an artificial intelligence-powered intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) pod autonomously searching out and confirming a target.

The demonstration was conducted at Edwards Air Force Base in California using an ISR pod mounted on a Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter, says the company on 8 May. The demonstration was conducted in Air Force Test Pilot School.