Lifeboat Foundation

Amputee Dennis Aabo Sørensen is the first person in the world to recognize texture (smoothness vs. roughness) using an artificial “bionic” fingertip surgically connected to nerves in his upper arm. The experimental system was developed by EPFL (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne) and SSSA (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna).

“The stimulation felt almost like what I would feel with my hand,” says Sørensen. “I felt the texture sensations at the tip of the index finger of my phantom hand.”

Russia could drastically shorten the flight time to Mars, if it can find the rubles to pay for its nuclear fission engine.

The co-founder of Planetary Resources reveals plans to harvest the cosmos for resources humanity needs — water, precious metals and diamonds.

300 Times the Coverage!

UK’s biggest threat to their own economy is cybercrimes.

In the next decade NASA plans to catch and redirect an asteroid. The question is, how will astronauts lasso and move around on a space rock? One option is using a space anchor, according to a Missouri University of Science & Technology design.

Missouri S& T students are working to design an anchoring device that will allow astronauts to clip in and move around on a wrangled asteroid. The device could be used during a human mission as part of NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission or ARM. The ARM objective is to visit a large near-Earth asteroid, collect a sample and redirect it into orbit around the moon. The same techniques could be used for Martian missions in the 2030s, according to NASA.

Now back to the whole walking around on a moving asteroid objective.

Continue reading “Put an anchor in it: How astronauts could tackle walking on asteroids” »

“A common challenge to the ideas presented in this book is that these exponential trends must reach a limit, as exponential trends commonly do.” –Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near

Much of the future we envision today depends on the exponential progress of information technology, most popularly illustrated by Moore’s Law. Thanks to shrinking processors, computers have gone from plodding, room-sized monoliths to the quick devices in our pockets or on our wrists. Looking back, this accelerating progress is hard to miss—it’s been amazingly consistent for over five decades.

But how long will it continue?

Continue reading “Will the End of Moore’s Law Halt Computing’s Exponential Rise?” »

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The Roll-Array is easily towable by a standard 4×4 vehicle such as a Land Rover. When connected to the back of the car, the flexible solar panels are pulled out of a spool and create ground cover in a matter of minutes. On their website, Renovagen claims the panels will be able generate up to 100kWp – 10 times more power than other transportable solar panels on the market today.

Continue reading “Solar energy rolls out like a carpet with groundbreaking Roll-Array photovoltaics” »