Lifeboat Foundation

Seoul/New York: Kim Jong Un ended his almost three-week absence from public events with a factory visit, an appearance that will ease, but not end, concern about the stability of the North Korean regime and control of its nuclear arsenal.

Kim presided over a May Day ceremony to mark the completion of the Sunchon Phosphatic Fertilizer Factory northeast of the capital Pyongyang, the official Korean Central News Agency reported early Saturday. State media released photos showing the North Korean leader in a black Mao suit cutting a ribbon outside the facility, which non-proliferation experts say could be used to help produce fissile material for nuclear bombs.

U.S. President Donald Trump declined to comment on Kim’s reemergence besides telling reporters before heading to Camp David for the weekend that he “may” speak with the North Korean leader. “We’ll have something to say about it at the appropriate time,” Trump said.

As the novel coronavirus swept through communities around the world, preying disproportionately on the poor and the vulnerable, one disadvantaged group has demonstrated a remarkable resistance. Women, whether from China, Italy or the U.S., have been less likely to become acutely ill — and far more likely to survive.

Which has made doctors wonder: Could hormones produced in greater quantities by women be at work?

Now scientists on two coasts, acting quickly on their hunches in an effort to save men’s lives, are testing the hypothesis. The two clinical trials will each dose men with the sex hormones for limited durations.

Continue reading “Can Estrogen and Other Sex Hormones Help Men Survive Covid-19?” »

A Korean research team has developed a lithium-ion battery that is flexible enough to be stretched. Dr. Jeong Gon Son’s research team at the Photo-Electronic Hybrids Research Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) announced that they had constructed a high-capacity, stretchable lithium-ion battery. The battery was developed by fabricating a structurally stretchable electrode consisting solely of electrode materials and then assembling with a stretchable gel electrolyte and stretchable packaging.

Rapid technological advancements in the electronics industry have led to a fast-growing market for high-performance wearable devices, such as smart bands and body-implantable electronic devices, such as pacemakers. These advancements have considerably increased the need for energy storage devices to be designed in flexible and stretchable forms that mimic human skin and organs.

However, it is very difficult to impart stretchability to the battery because the solid inorganic electrode material occupies most of the volume, and other components such as current collectors and separators must also be made stretchable. In addition, the problem of liquid electrolyte leakage under deformation must also be solved, as well as the problem of leaking liquid electrolyte.

Rats and equations help researchers develop a theory of how our brains keep track of when events took place.

With less than a month to go before the historic first crewed flight – and final human rating certification test – of the SpaceX Crew Dragon Demonstration 2 mission, NASA and SpaceX jointly held a full day of pre-mission press conferences on Friday, May 1st. Throughout the day many minor, but crucial, details were revealed.

Two primary technical concerns remained prior to Crew Dragon’s debut astronaut mission- the final drop test of the Crew Dragon Mark III parachutes and NASA’s clearance of SpaceX’s resolution of an in-flight engine-out anomaly suffered during the ascent phase of a previous Starlink mission.

Nobel winner who transformed condensed-matter and particle physics.

Scientists have discovered that eyes and brains in rodents seem to have uncannily similar drainage systems used for self cleaning, and there’s reason to think this might apply to us, too.

This sort of maintenance is necessary to wash away waste cells and fluids, and we know that brains make use of a tiny network of pipes known as the glymphatic system, similar to the lymphatic system that clears out rubbish from the rest of the body.

New tests on mice and rats show that the structures at the back of their eyes — like the optic nerve and the retina — take a page or two from the glymphatic system playbook. In the absence of the standard lymphatic vessels, they funnel waste products through a network a lot like the one the brain uses.

Simulations show that QGP could form in immediate aftermath of neutron star merger.

Adapting the architecture for small city cars in a cost-efficient way is proving to be challenging because of the need to strip out a third of the costs compared with the ID.3.

Engineers have looked at everything from smaller electric motors to different battery module configurations to give the small EVs the high standard of crash protection that will be expected by customers.

Continue reading “Volkswagen plans to launch a family of affordable electric cars under $22,000” »