Lifeboat Foundation

Metamaterials, which are engineered to have properties not found in nature, have long been developed and studied because of their unique features and exciting applications. However, the physics behind their thermal emission properties have remained unclear to researchers—until now.

In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, Sheng Shen, an associate professor in Carnegie Mellon’s department of mechanical engineering, and his student Jiayu Li, a Ph.D. candidate, have created a new scale law to describe the thermal emission from metasurfaces and metamaterials.

“With this new scale law uncovering the underlying physics behind the collective thermal emission behavior of metamaterials, researchers could easily utilize existing design and optimization tools to achieve desired thermal emission properties from metamaterials, instead of blindly searching for the best solution through mapping the entire design space,” Li said.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) presents with a broad clinical spectrum, varying from asymptomatic infection to severe pneumonitis, leading to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and death(Guan, et al 2020). Accumulating evidence suggests that in severe COVID-19, an acute hyperinflammatory syndrome characterised by fever, hypoxia and increased serum inflammatory markers, occurring 5–10 days from the first symptoms, is the major driver of morbidity and death(Zhou, et al 2020b). Hyperinflammation is not specific to COVID-19. Similar syndromes were previously described in respiratory disease associated with other coronaviruses, including the severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus (SARS-CoV) in 2003 and Middle East respiratory syndrome-coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in 2012(Castilletti, et al 2005, Tseng, et al 2005).

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I shared about this startup in January, now it’s hitting US Markets. The Israeli startup Sonovia, which sped up efforts to manufacture masks using its anti-pathogen fabric at the start of the coronavirus crisis in Israel, has launched commercial sales.

“When coronavirus started, we were an Israeli startup,” Dr. Jason Migdal, a research scientist with Sonovia, told The Jerusalem Post. “Now, we are a commercial business that is having success internationally.”

Sonovia developed an almost-permanent, ultrasonic, fabric-finishing technology for mechanical impregnation of zinc oxide nanoparticles into textiles.

Continue reading “Israeli masks designed with unique anti-pathogen fabric enter US market” »

India’s recent move to curb foreign direct investment (FDI) from countries including China may stymie the expansion of Chinese technology giants in the country, leaving start-ups in the world’s second most populous nation scrambling for funding and hi-tech know-how, experts say.

The stakes of Chinese firms like Alibaba and Tencent in some of India’s most lucrative start-ups, such as Paytm and Dream11, may be threatened by new investment restrictions, experts say.

As if this contagion movie we are living can not get any more strange. A University of Pittsburgh researcher who claimed to have been on the verge of a significant breakthrough in his research on the coronavirus was killed in what appears to me a murder-suicide…

While police are treating the death as a homicide, they have yet to find any evidence that it was related to his research.

Tesla has made even more battery improvements on its new ‘million-mile battery’ now with less cobalt, which could result in lower cost and even more energy density.

Last year, we were the first to report on Tesla’s battery research partner, Jeff Dahn and his team at Dalhousie University, unveiling the impressive results of tests on a new battery cell that could last over 1 million miles in an electric vehicle.

Continue reading “Tesla improves on its ‘million-mile battery’ with less cobalt and higher energy density” »

Just about everyone has had the experience of blinking while having their picture taken. The camera clicks, your eyes shut, and by the time they open again, the photo is ruined. A new ultrafast camera developed at Caltech, were it aimed at your lovely face, could also capture you looking like a dunce with your eyes shut, except instead of taking just one picture in the time it takes you to blink, it could take trillions of pictures.

The new camera developed in the lab of Lihong Wang, Bren Professor of Medical Engineering and Electrical Engineering in the Andrew and Peggy Cherng Department of Medical Engineering, is capable of taking as many as 70 trillion frames per second. That is fast enough to see waves of light traveling and the fluorescent decay of molecules.

The camera technology, which Wang calls compressed ultrafast spectral photography (CUSP), is similar in some respects to previous fast cameras he has built, such as his phase-sensitive compressed ultrafast photography, or pCUP, device, which can take 1 trillion frames per second of transparent objects and phenomena.

Others believe it is the same Kim saying he only looks different because he has had plastic surgery.

And, to add to the mystery, the claims come as the North Korean leader missed yet another high-profile event.

He was noticeably absent as Russia awarded him a medal to mark the 75th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany.

O,.o!

Armed Army robot vehicles conducted reconnaissance, called for indirect fire and then, when directed by human decision-makers, attacked and destroyed enemy targets in a recent experiment designed to assess the technical maturity and readiness of autonomous ground drones.

“We had four robot vehicles conduct a tactical mission while humans were safe in defilade. We built four robots that are refurbished M113 tracked vehicles and we’ve taken two Bradleys — gutted them — and turned them into two control vehicles with all kinds of sensors on them,” Jeff Langhout, Director, Ground Vehicle Systems Center, told reporters in October at the Association of the United States Army Annual Symposium, Washington, D.C.

Continue reading “Soldier-controlled autonomous robots call for fire in test, attack targets” »