Lifeboat Foundation

Now Playing: Star Trek: The History of Jean-Luc Picard.

There’s a lot happening in the Star Trek TV universe, and much of it will feature at the franchise’s San Diego Comic-Con event later today, Saturday, July 20. Details of what fans can expect from the various Star Trek panels have now been announced. [Update: The panels are ongoing, but we’ve already learned a lot. Check out the links below for all of our coverage.].

A glove focused on user experience in interacting with virtual objects is in the news. This virtual reality glove is the topic of a research article. The researchers described their virtual reality glove in detail in their paper, “Pneumatic actuator and flexible piezoelectric sensor for soft virtual reality glove system,” in Scientific Reports.

No, this is hardly the first instance of researchers able to reproduce texture but this attempt is noteworthy. As pointed out in natureasia.com, the glove system in this instance is one that allows the wearer to manipulate a virtual hand, pick up an object in virtual reality and feel its shape.

Continue reading “Virtual reality glove system takes shape in digital realm” »

Two divers caught a jellyfish as big as a human on camera this weekend.

SUBSCRIBE to Barcroft TV: http://bit.ly/Oc61Hj

BIRTHDAY celebrations are usually a time for decadence and partying until the small hours – that is unless you’re a fitness obsessed octogenarian! Jacinto Bonilla, 80, from New York, celebrated his eightieth birthday on 3 July by completing 80 double-unders on a jump rope, followed by 80 squats, 80 push-ups, 80 pull-ups, 80 wall ball shots, 80 kettlebell swings, 80 deadlifts with a 90-pound weight – ending with another round of 80 double-unders. Every year since he turned 69, the so-called “grandfather of CrossFit” has added one rep to his brutal trademark birthday workout – the Jacinto Storm. Follow his story here:
https://www.instagram.com/crossfit1939

Continue reading “The 80-Year-Old CrossFitter | TRULY” »

Surgeons in Australia have managed to restore arm function in paralysed patients, allowing them to feed themselves, use tools and handle electronic devices, according to the results of a groundbreaking study released Friday.

Thirteen young adults who had suffered spinal injuries rendering them tetraplegic underwent several operations and intense physiotherapy in the largest ever application of a technique known as nerve transfer surgery.

A team of surgeons succeeded in attaching individual nerves from above the zone of the spinal injury to nerves below the trauma site. The functioning nerves were then used to stimulate paralysed muscles below the injury zone.

The Falcon Heavy payload fairing goes blue (da ba dee, da ba daa).

Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences have designed and tested a prototype cathodoluminescent lamp for general lighting. The new lamp, which relies on the phenomenon of field emission, is more reliable, durable, and luminous than its analogues available worldwide. The development was reported in the Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B.

While LED lamps have become commonplace, they are not the only clean and power-saving alternative to incandescent lamps. Since the 1980s, engineers around the world have been looking into the so-called cathodoluminescent lamps as another option for general lighting purposes.

Shown in figure 1, a lamp of this kind relies on the same principle that powered TV cathode-ray tubes: A negatively charged electrode, or cathode, at one end of a vacuum tube serves as an electron gun. A potential difference of up to 10 kilovolts accelerates the emitted electrons toward a flat positively charged phosphor-coated electrode—the anode—at the opposite end of the tube. This electron bombardment results in light.