Lifeboat Foundation

Imagine that instead of adding a motor to a bicycle, parts of the bicycle are designed to function as the motor.

In this case the wheel rim contains the motor magnets and the frame houses the inductive coils. The inductive coils use energy from the battery (hidden in the frame downtube) to repel the magnets on the rim to make the wheel spin.

Lightweight calls this “Maglev Transrapid technology” and they claim that this Velocité eBike can go up to 100 kph (62 mph) with its 500 watts of power! They are currently limiting it to 45 kph (28 mph) to fall with in the limits of a speed pedelec.

Continue reading “Lightweight Velocité‘Maglev’ Hidden Motor Electric Bike” »

Circa 2017

Researchers are looking at advanced materials for roads and pavements that could generate electricity from passing traffic.

Engineers from Lancaster University are working on smart materials such as ‘piezolectric’ ceramics that when embedded in road surfaces would be able to harvest and convert vehicle vibration into electrical energy.

The research project, led by Professor Mohamed Saafi, will design and optimise energy recovery of around one to two Megawatts per kilometre under ‘normal’ traffic volumes—which is around 2,000 to 3,000 cars an hour.

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For years, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been one of the most challenging disorders to diagnose. Traditional methods, like one-on-one clinical interviews, can be inaccurate due to the clinician’s subjectivity, or if the patient is holding back their symptoms.

Now, researchers at New York University say they’ve taken the guesswork out of diagnosing PTSD in veterans by using artificial intelligence to objectively detect PTSD by listening to the sound of someone’s voice. Their research, conducted alongside SRI International — the research institute responsible for bringing Siri to iPhones— was published Monday in the journal Depression and Anxiety.

According to The New York Times, SRI and NYU spent five years developing a voice analysis program that understands human speech, but also can detect PTSD signifiers and emotions. As the NYT reports, this is the same process that teaches automated customer service programs how to deal with angry callers: By listening for minor variables and auditory markers that would be imperceptible to the human ear, the researchers say the algorithm can diagnose PTSD with 89% accuracy.

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https://youtube.com/watch?v=8NAHqBXoCZs

The method behind the madness is actually quite sound.

And you don’t need an engineering degree to assemble it.

Circa 2015

I’m sure many of you have experienced that sinking feeling when you’re running out to your car to drive to work only to discover a flat tire. The cause: usually a nail your drove over the night before. It’s 2015, tires shouldn’t suffer punctures anymore, right? Well, they may not for much longer if this prototype tire from Japan makes it to mass production.

The tire is called Coreseal and it has been developed by Japanese company Sumitomo Rubber Industries Ltd. It looks like any other tire fitted on vehicles today, but it has one big advantage. If you drive over a nail and cause a puncture, the tire won’t deflate. In fact, it will repair itself and you’ll likely never know it happened.

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We should challenge the cult of Singularity. AI won’t take over the world.

After 20 years of dedicated research, scientists have cracked the chemical code of an incredibly complex ‘anti-tumour antibiotic’ known to be highly effective against cancer cells as well as drug-resistant bacteria, and have reproduced it synthetically in the lab for the first time.

This major breakthrough and world-first could hail a new era in the design and production of new antibiotics and anticancer agents.

The ‘super substance’—kedarcidin—was discovered in its natural form by a pharmaceutical company when they extracted it from a soil sample in India almost 30-years-ago. Soil is the natural source of all antibiotics developed since the 1940s but in order for them to be developed as potential drug treatments they must be produced via chemical synthesis.

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Researchers from Osaka University have developed a technique for improving accuracy of laser beam shaping and wavefront obtained by conventional methods with no additional cost by optimizing virtual phase grating. The results of their research were published in Scientific Reports.

A high quality square flattop beam is in demand for various fields, such as uniform laser processing and medicine, as well as ultrahigh intensity laser applications for accelerators and nuclear fusion. Beam shape is key to realizing the laser’s potential abilities and effects. However, since beam shape and wavefront vary by laser, beam shaping is essential for producing the desired shapes to respond to various needs.

Static and adaptive beam shaping methods have been developed for various applications. With Diffractive Optical Element (DOE) as a static method, edge steepness and flatness are low and wavefront becomes deformed after shaping. (Figure 1 (a)) In addition, computer-generated hologram (CGH) as a typical adaptive method has the same difficulties.

Continue reading “Quality of laser beam shaping can be enhanced at no extra cost” »