Lifeboat Foundation

Replacements are on the way for two decrepit 55th Wing jets that give the Air Force critical information about nuclear detonations in North Korea and elsewhere in the world.

The giant defense contractor L3Harris and the Air Force’s “Big Safari” acquisitions group are scheduled to start in May converting the first of three former Air National Guard fuel tankers into WC-135R radiation-detection aircraft. Work will start on the other two next year.

When they’re finished, all three aircraft will be assigned to the 55th Wing at Offutt Air Force Base. The first is scheduled for delivery in 2022, said Maj. Malinda Singleton, an Air Force spokeswoman, with the other two following in 2023.

Ford dropped a massive media bomb yesterday with the introduction of its most powerful Mustang ever. And what a car! It packs some 1400 HP and more than 1100 lb-ft of TQ — enough to blast the car from a standstill to 170 MPH in just eight seconds with nary a sound. Meet the original, Ford’s first electric Mustang, the Cobra Jet 1400.

Evgeni Grishin (Credit: Courtesy of The Technion)

Specifically, their work explains the unique characteristics of Arrokoth, affectionately known as “the Snowman” because it is likely predominantly made of soft ice and because of its two different sized lobes interconnected with a thin neck.

Arrokoth was first photographed in 2019 by the New Horizons space mission, the same mission that provided the world’s best pictures of Pluto and its moon Charon.

Paralysis used to mean a life sentence of immobility with no way out—until now.

Back in 2010, Ian Burkhart suffered a devastating injury that would leave him mostly paralyzed. Even though he was still able to move his shoulders and elbows, he had lost sensation in his hands. That was until Patrick Ganzer at Battelle Memorial Institute fast-forwarded biotech into the future by developing a brain implant that would turn Burkhart’s life around. When the implant connects to a specialized brain-computer interface, it does something that has never been done before and has restored both movement and touch in his right hand.

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Primates found to have developed antibodies after being infected with Covid-19 – a discovery that suggests the immune system will fight back against the disease.

Atoms and molecules behave very differently at extreme temperatures and pressures. Although such extreme matter doesn’t exist naturally on the earth, it exists in abundance in the universe, especially in the deep interiors of planets and stars. — Physics HeritageDaily — Archaeology News.

Tesla’s progress with artificial intelligence and neural nets has propelled its Autopilot and Full Self Driving solutions to the front of the pack. This is the result of the brilliant work of a large team of Autopilot directors and staff, including Tesla’s Senior Director of AI, Andrej Karpathy. Karpathy presented Tesla’s methods for training its AI at the Scaled ML Conference in February. Along the way, he shared specific insights into Tesla’s methods for achieving the accuracy of traditional laser-based lidar with just a handful of cameras.

The secret sauce in Tesla’s ever-evolving solution is not the cameras themselves, but rather the advanced processing and neural nets they have built to make sense of the wide range and quality of inputs. One new technique Tesla’s AI team has built is called pseudo-lidar. It blends the lines between traditional computer vision and the powerful point map world of lidar.

Traditional lidar-based systems rely on an array of lidar hardware to provide an unparalleled view of the world around the vehicle. These systems leverage invisible lasers or similar tech to send a massive number of pings out into the world to detect surrounding objects.

They haven’t found it after a year of experiments, but they say they’re getting closer.