Lifeboat Foundation

The Fed is expected to raise interest rates as early as next week to counteract rocketing inflation.

Converting the nation’s 40 million acres of ethanol corn farms into solar-plus-food facilities would generate 1.5 times our nation’s electricity needs, while also powering a 100% electrified passenger vehicle fleet.

The human brain, fed on just the calorie input of a modest diet, easily outperforms state-of-the-art supercomputers powered by full-scale station energy inputs. The difference stems from the multiple states of brain processes versus the two binary states of digital processors, as well as the ability to store information without power consumption—non-volatile memory. These inefficiencies in today’s conventional computers have prompted great interest in developing synthetic synapses for use in computers that can mimic the way the brain works. Now, researchers at King’s College London, UK, report in ACS Nano Letters an array of nanorod devices that mimic the brain more closely than ever before. The devices may find applications in artificial neural networks.

Efforts to emulate biological synapses have revolved around types of memristors with different resistance states that act like memory. However, unlike the brain the devices reported so far have all needed a reverse polarity electrical voltage to reset them to the initial state. “In the brain a change in the chemical environment changes the output,” explains Anatoly Zayats, a professor at King’s College London who led the team behind the recent results. The King’s College London researchers have now been able to demonstrate this brain-like behavior in their synaptic synapses as well.

Zayats and team build an array of gold nanorods topped with a polymer junction (poly-L-histidine, PLH) to a metal contact. Either light or an electrical voltage can excite plasmons—collective oscillations of electrons. The plasmons release hot electrons into the PLH, gradually changing the chemistry of the polymer, and hence changing it to have different levels of conductivity or light emissivity. How the polymer changes depends on whether oxygen or hydrogen surrounds it. A chemically inert nitrogen chemical environment will preserve the state without any energy input required so that it acts as non-volatile memory.

While hydroelectric dams are capable of generating a lot of electricity, they drastically disrupt the environment. Scientists have now proposed a simpler but still effective alternative, in which electric trucks replace such dams.

In a typical hydroelectric facility, a dam is built across a river, causing a reservoir to form directly upstream of that dam. When a gate in the dam is opened, water from the reservoir flows through and drops down to a lower elevation. As it does so, it spins up turbines which generate electricity.

Unfortunately, formation of the reservoir involves the flooding of land which may previously have contained forests, crops, or even people’s homes.

Fabien Cousteau has a vision for how humans can live and work in the ocean. He imagines that long-term stays under the waves could be enabled through the construction of underwater habitats, which would look and feel like houses, as opposed to just sealed, submarine-like bubbles.

These habitats would have a galley, kitchen, workspace, and sleeping quarters, he describes. And of course, there would be windows, or viewports, to the outside world, and a front door in the form of a moon pool that will actually be on the bottom of the house. This would allow easy access into and out of the facility.

Continue reading “Jacques Cousteau’s grandson is building a network of ocean floor research stations” »

Jones Food Company Ltd wants permission to change the use of the former JD Norman Foundry in Lydney to provide an indoor hydroponic farming facility gloucestershirelive.

Tags: tree spade, tree transplanting, tree spade machine, tree transplantation techniques, tree transplanting in India, tree transplanting machine, tree transplanting tools, tree transplanter, tree transplanter machine, tree relocation India, tree relocation machine, tree relocation in japan, tree relocation, tree spade truck, tree planting machine, tree planting machinery, tree planter machine, planting machinery, plant transplanting techniques, plant transplanter tool.

#TeaSpade #TreeTransplantingMachine #TreeRelocationMachine #machine #Agriculture #Farming #DiscoveryAgriculture

Circa 2013

Can the food industry avoid the mistakes of GM and put nanoketchup on the UK’s menu?

Circa 2013 o.o

Katharine Sanderson answers the big questions about the tiny technology on its way to your plate.