Lifeboat Foundation

I hate that I am going to miss the Farnborough airshow.

The Farnborough airshow begins next week and will feature a number of announcements from the 3D printing industry. The show only takes place once every 2 years and will see a flurry of news and displays of the latest aviation technology. These include Boeing’s 737 MAX airliner with its 3D printed LEAP engines and also demonstrations by the first Lockheed Martin F-35 Lighting II, or Joint Strike Fighter, stealth jets to arrive in the UK.

Additive manufacturing company Norsk Titanium (NTi) hopes their announcements will make an equally large splash. During 2016 a number of press releases by the company have piqued the interest of insiders in the 3D printing industry and also in the aerospace industry. Outside of this group, the name Norsk Titanium may be relatively unknown.

Continue reading “Stealthy 3D Printing at Airshow?” »

Definitely the longer term goal with security bots.

With its Cyber Grand Challenge—a battle of autonomous security software—DARPA is taking us inside the machine.

Tetris #1 fan.

This giant homemade machine runs at 8kHz.

Continue reading “Man Builds Half Ton Tetris Computer Because Why Not” »

IARPA is interested in proposals ranging four broad topics – anticipatory intelligence, analysis, operations and collection – to better integrate intelligence.

Nice.

“Our study suggests for the first time that the doping-induced modulation of the charge carrier density in graphene influences its wettability and adhesion,” explained SungWoo Nam, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at Illinois. “This work investigates this new doping-induced tunable wetting phenomena which is unique to graphene and potentially other 2D materials in complementary theoretical and experimental investigations.”

Graphene, being optically transparent and possessing superior electrical and mechanical properties, can revolutionize the fields of surface coatings and electrowetting displays, according to the researchers. A material’s wettability (i.e. interaction with water) is typically constant in the absence of external influence and are classified as either water-loving (hydrophilic) or water-repelling (hydrophobic; water beads up on the surface). Depending on the specific application, a choice between either hydrophobic or hydrophilic material is required. For electrowetting displays, for example, the hydrophilic characteristics of display material is enhanced with the help of a constant externally impressed electric current.

Continue reading “Tunable wetting and adhesion of graphene demonstrated” »

The tiny artificial stingray is the first step to bigger, more complex tissue-engineered robots, scientists say. Belinda Smith reports.

Biocomputing/ living circuit computing/ gene circuitry are the longer term future beyond Quantum. Here is another one of the many building blocks.

The tiny molecule responsible for transmitting the genetic data for every living thing on earth could be the answer to the IT industry’s quest for a more compact storage medium. In fact, researchers from Microsoft and the University of Washington recently succeeded in storing 200 MB of data on a few strands of DNA, occupying a small dot on a test tube many times smaller than the tip of a pencil.

The Internet in a Shoebox.

Continue reading “Microsoft Testing DNA’s Data Storage Ability With Record-Breaking Results” »

Interesting and plausible perspective about the future of air travel.

The Boeing Co. is turning 100 on July 15. Throughout the year, The Daily Herald is covering the people, airplanes and moments that define The Boeing Century. More about this series.

New method for solar cells.

New solar cells could lead to improved light-emitting diodes, lasers and sensors.

Mercouri G. Kanatzidis.

Continue reading “Flipping Crystals Improves Solar-Cell Performance” »