Lifeboat Foundation

Today’s vision of a smart home has more to do with what’s technologically possible than what people really need.

Thus the endless parade of internet-connected wine openers, water bottles, meat thermometers and refrigerators, and a dearth of automation that would clean and fold our laundry, pick up things around the house or assist aging people as their physical strength wanes.

Not that some tinkerers aren’t trying to come up with life-changing tools. The annual Consumer Electronics Show, which opened in Las Vegas on Tuesday, is a showcase of the latest innovations from big corporations and tiny startups. Some of these inventions could soon be useful to consumers. Others look outlandishly impractical — or maybe it’s too soon to tell.

Mining asteroids might seem like the stuff of science fiction, but there are companies and a few governments already working hard to make it real. This should not be surprising: compared with the breathtaking bridges that engineers build on Earth, asteroid-mining is a simple, small-scale operation requiring only modest technological advances. If anything is lacking, it is the imagination to see how plausible it has become. I am afraid only that it might not arrive soon enough to address the urgent resource challenges that the world is facing right now.

As an academic researcher, I work with several asteroid -mining companies to address that urgency. I depend on their funding, so there are trade secrets I cannot share. However, I can reveal the core reasons why I am optimistic about the business case for asteroid-mining, and what it will mean for our future.

Many people are skeptical of asteroid-mining because they imagine that the goal is to bring platinum back for sale in Earth’s metals market. Reporters repeatedly cite an irresistible statistic that the platinum in an asteroid can be worth trillions of US dollars, but anyone with an understanding of economics realises that bringing home a huge stash of precious metal would crash the market, reducing the valuation of the asteroid.

Continue reading “Want faster data and a cleaner planet? Start mining asteroids” »

Using detailed 3D images, researchers have shown how bacteria have evolved molecular motors of different powers to optimize their swimming.

The discovery, by a team from Imperial College London, provides insights into evolution at the molecular scale.

Bacteria use molecular motors just tens of nanometres wide to spin a tail (or ‘flagellum’) that pushes them through their habitat. Like human-made motors, the structure of these nanoscale machines determines their power and the bacteria’s swimming ability.

The Silicon Valley property management startup Zenplace wants to streamline the rental process with AI learning and robot realtor home tours.

These humanoid bots can handle tools, shoot and upload photos, catch flying objects, and navigate obstacles—even think for themselves.

Best of 2017: A breath of fresh air.

Portable hard drives seem like they’re bound to go way of the dinosaur, thanks to the rise of services like Dropbox and Google Drive. But if you wanted to take a large file home with you back in 1985, you didn’t have quite so many options. Your best bet? Maybe this hard drive from Maynard.

“Leave the computer, take the drive!” the ad said in big, bold letters in the July 1985 issue of Byte magazine. And look at just how portable that thing is!

There are a lot of people in the world that need glasses on a daily basis. Despite their often expensive price tag, they do little more than correct poor eyesight. Let Glass updates glasses for the 21st century by integrating them with smart home connectivity.

While maintaining a slim form factor, Let Glass features audio entertainment, telephone communication, and voice interaction. Using Alexa and a built-in microphone, these frames allow users to control their smartphones without fumbling through their pockets. Simply tapping the legs of the smart glasses activate remote control functions, while voice commands handle everything else. In addition to Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri and Google Now are also supported.

Continue reading “Look into the future using the first smart glasses with Alexa control” »

A team of engineers and architects from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has won the top prize for architecture in 2017’s international Mars City Design competition, which asks participants to design habitats that could one day be built on the Red Planet.

The competition, sponsored by both NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), is one of many that asks participants to come up with creative solutions to the problems these agencies anticipate in the journey to Mars.

Like other contests before it, the Mars City Design competition aims to solve the problem of building livable and sustainable spaces on the Red Planet, from either the limited cargo astronauts would be able to bring with them or indigenous Martian resources. [How Will a Human Mars Base Work? NASA’s Vision in Images].

Continue reading “MIT Team Wins Mars City Design Contest for ‘Redwood Forest’ Idea” »