Lifeboat Foundation

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.

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.”

The U.S. Navy is teaming up with DARPA to develop autonomous, robotic ships that are completely human free. The NOMARS (No Mariners Required Ship) concept, if successful, would be a huge leap over current unmanned surface vessel development efforts. The result could be a warship able to do the tedious, dangerous, and dirty jobs all by itself, keeping human-crewed ships safe from harm—and boredom.

The Navy, struggling to grow the fleet on a flat defense budget, is making a big push into unmanned surface vessels, or USVs. The Navy plans to build ten Large Unmanned Surface Vehicle ships, 200 to 300 foot long vessels displacing 2,000 tons, in five years. LUSV would act as a scout, sailing ahead of the fleet to detect threats early, or floating magazine, carrying a large load of missiles. LUSV would ideally be autonomous, or optionally manned with a small crew.

“You want to engage as many targets as you can at longer range so what you get at short range is a few leakers, not the whole swarm,” says McGovern.

Coyote 2 has entered service with the U.S. military and Raytheon are now offering it to international customers. The attack on Abqaiq, and mass drone assaults on the Russian airbase at Khmeimim in Syria, show how easily swarms of drones can be deployed even by non-state actors. Such attacks can rapidly deplete stocks of expensive missiles, or overwhelm them. Any drones that get through can attack with lethal effects.

In future conflicts, drone swarm versus interceptors is likely to become an increasingly key battle. Whoever has the fastest, most agile, and most numerous drones is likely to come out the winner. Coyote 2 may help defenders stay ahead of the threat.

Crispr could lead to skin that color changes for humans in the military.

The masters of marine masquerade can morph from rough to smooth in less than a second.

The future of air combat?

By Sebastien Roblin

Recent events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the use of chemical weapons in the Syria conflict have provided a stark reminder of the plethora of chemical and biological threats that soldiers, medical personnel and first responders face during routine and emergency operations.

Personnel safety relies on protective equipment which, unfortunately, still leaves much to be desired. For example, high breathability (i.e., the transfer of water vapor from the wearer’s body to the outside world) is critical in protective military uniforms to prevent heat-stress and exhaustion when soldiers are engaged in missions in contaminated environments. The same materials (adsorbents or barrier layers) that provide protection in current garments also detrimentally inhibit breathability.

To tackle these challenges, a multi-institutional team of researchers led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientist Francesco Fornasiero has developed a smart, breathable fabric designed to protect the wearer against biological and chemical warfare agents. Material of this type could be used in clinical and medical settings as well. The work was recently published online in Advanced Functional Materials and represents the successful completion of Phase I of the project, which is funded by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency through the Dynamic Multifunctional Materials for a Second Skin “D[MS]²” program.

“In the 1960s, Italian media uncovered evidence that the Vatican had invested in entities that conflict directly with the church’s holy mission, including Istituto Farmacologico Serono, a pharmaceutical company that made birth control pills, and Udine, a military weapons manufacturer. There have also been unconfirmed rumor of church money in firearms manufacturer Beretta and companies with activities in gambling and pornography. It has been linked to dealings with Nazi gold during World War II as well.”

How much real estate does the Catholic Church own? What are its equity holdings? These questions, and more, not answered.

Author: Emily StewartPublish date:

Continue reading “How Rich Is the Catholic Church? It’s Impossible to Tell” »

The next flight of the U.S. military’s reusable X-37B spaceplane — scheduled for liftoff May 16 from Cape Canaveral — will carry more experiments into orbit than any of the winged ship’s previous missions, including two payloads for NASA and a small deployable satellite built by Air Force Academy cadets.

Military officials announced new details about the upcoming X-37B mission Wednesday, and confirmed its target launch date of May 16. The Boeing-built spaceplane was mounted on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket Tuesday inside the Vertical Integration Facility at Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 launch pad.

The unpiloted spacecraft launches inside a payload shroud on top of a conventional rocket, unfurls a power-generating solar array in orbit to generate electricity, and returns to Earth for a runway landing like NASA’s retired space shuttle.