Lifeboat Foundation

In an interview newly published by Popular Mechanics, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk shared his thoughts on colonizing Mars — from how the first settlers will grow food to the friendly vibe he envisions at the first base on the Red Planet.

“For having an outdoorsy, fun atmosphere, you’d probably want to have some faceted glass dome, with a park, so you can walk around without a suit,” Musk told the magazine. “Eventually if you terraform the planet, then you can walk around without a suit. But for say, the next 100-plus years, you’ll have to have a giant pressurized glass dome.”

However, a shortage of hi-tech research capacity in the region is turning into a hindrance, according to analysts, with most of China’s top-notch science and engineering schools located in the northern and eastern provinces. Although Hong Kong has several universities in the world’s top 100, only a few of them have a science and technology focus.

China’s ‘Greater Bay Area’ plan aims to erase barriers between cities in the region in terms of policy, financing, logistics and talent.

Researchers from Texas A&M University, led by Dr. Akhilesh K. Gaharwar, have developed a new way to deliver treatment for cartilage regeneration.

Gaharwar, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M, said the nanoclay-based platform for sustained and prolonged delivery of protein therapeutics has the potential to impact treating osteoarthritis, a degenerative disease that affects nearly 27 million Americans and is caused by breakdown of cartilage that can lead to damage of the underlying bone.

As America’s population ages, the number of osteoarthritis incidences is likely to increase. One of the greatest challenges with treating osteoarthritis and subsequent joint damage is repairing the damaged tissue, especially as cartilage tissue is difficult to regenerate.

Continue reading “Researchers develop new therapeutic approach to treating osteoarthritis” »

Summary: Researchers have identified a previously unknown form of neural communication. They report the findings could help better the understanding of neural activity associated with specific brain processing and neurological disorders.

Source: Case Western Reserve University.

Biomedical engineering researchers at Case Western Reserve University say they have identified a previously unidentified form of neural communication, a discovery that could help scientists better understand neural activity surrounding specific brain processes and brain disorders.

The United States should devote substantially more resources to nuclear fusion research and build an ambitious prototype fusion power plant, according to a new report.

The report is the work of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Its conclusion: it’s more important than ever for the U.S. and the world to explore roads to practical fusion power.

With this new nanophotonic device, scientists might have just unlocked how to harness the data transfer potential of “twisted light”.

How Ferroelectricity Could Change the Way We Store Data- https://youtu.be/watch?v=IwT_ECJ1TEY

Continue reading “Why Twisted Light Holds the Key to Radically Faster Internet” »

Villages have spent years replanting mangroves along the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar. Now their work will go much faster, with some help from above.

“We are now racing against time to rebuild the green shield in order to protect the most vulnerable people.” [Photo: BioCarbon Engineering].

How will artificial intelligence, molecular manufacturing, biological engineering and distributed additive manufacturing change the economics of the production of goods and services?

A new chemical process could turn about 90% of the world’s grocery bags, shrink wrap, and other polypropylene waste into clean fuel.

Grocery bags and other trash could be melted down to yield useful products like oil and gas.

The problem: The world’s landfill sites and oceans are being flooded with plastic. A mere 9% of the 8.3 billion tons of plastic produced over the last 65 years has been recycled, according to the United Nations. Over eight million tons of plastic flow into our oceans every year, harming wildlife.

Continue reading “A new chemical process could turn a quarter of our plastic waste into clean fuel” »