Lifeboat Foundation

When Artemis I launched on Wednesday, November 16, NASA

Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. Its vision is “To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity.” Its core values are “safety, integrity, teamwork, excellence, and inclusion.”

A s of 1 February 2021, there are about 280 million domestic LPG (liquified petroleum gas) consumers in India, according to Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan. By March 2022, the Government of India expects that there will be over 300 million consumers. Indian Oil, the country’s largest fuel refiner, claims that it will import 50% more cooking gas to ensure the supply of LPG remains uninterrupted for its bottling plants.

It’s imperative to find heating solutions that are more efficient.

Moreover, the Government of India has been encouraging wider adoption of LPG to replace coal and firewood to improve air quality as well. But according to researchers at IIT-Guwahati, the thermal efficiencies of conventional domestic LPG cooking stoves available in the market are low (60–68%), and emissions are high (CO: 220–550 ppm, NOx: 5–25 ppm).

“The likelihood of a cyber-attacks on Twitter feel very high right now and their ability to be able to counteract that feels very low,” Radcliffe said. “The amount of information that they have on users is considerable and I think that that’s a potential source of concern, particularly in countries in the Middle East and other places where once the information is on the open market and in the public domain it could potentially be harmful to users.”

Partnering with individuals or groups close to authoritarian regimes raises concerns over how Twitter might react should it be pressured by supply information on dissidents or to quell opposition speech. They also raise questions about Musk’s potential conflict of business interests concerning Tesla and Space X’s availability in certain markets.

Such questions have already been brought up by at least one member of the US Congress. But experts say they’re much more concerned about data security should Twitter go under.

Microsoft today announced that it acquired Lumenisity, a U.K.-based startup developing “hollow core fiber (HCF)” technologies primarily for data centers and ISPs. Microsoft says that the purchase, the terms of which weren’t disclosed, will “expand [its] ability to further optimize its global cloud infrastructure” and “serve Microsoft’s cloud platform and services customers with strict latency and security requirements.”

HCF cables fundamentally combine optical fiber and coaxial cable. They’ve been around since the ’90s, but what Lumenisity brings to the table is a proprietary design with an air-filled center channel surrounded by a ring of glass tubes. The idea is that light can travel faster through air than glass; in a trial with Comcast in April, a single strand of Lumenisity HCF was reportedly able to deliver traffic rates ranging from 10 Gbps to 400 Gbps.

“HCF can provide benefits across a broad range of industries including healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, retail and government,” Girish Bablani, CVP of Microsoft’s Azure Core business, wrote in a blog post. “For the public sector, HCF could provide enhanced security and intrusion detection for federal and local governments across the globe. In healthcare, because HCF can accommodate the size and volume of large data sets, it could help accelerate medical image retrieval, facilitating providers’ ability to ingest, persist and share medical imaging data in the cloud. And with the rise of the digital economy, HCF could help international financial institutions seeking fast, secure transactions across a broad geographic region.”

The UK government has announced it will collaborate with Italy and Japan to develop the Tempest, a new fighter jet featuring a plethora of futuristic technologies.

Environmentalists are up in arms.

The U.K. has approved its first coal mine in 30 years, despite climate concerns. The British government approved the move on Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2022, just one year after it hosted the major climate summit, COP26, reported the BBC

The mine, near Whitehaven in Cumbria, will take two years to build and is set to produce around 2.8 tonnes of coking coal per year, according to the Washington Post.

Continue reading “The UK approves its first coal mine in decades. But what about the climate?” »

Government support is needed, however, to help consumers overcome heat pumps’ higher upfront costs relative to alternatives. The costs of purchasing and installing a heat pump can be up to four times as much as those for a gas boiler. Financial incentives for heat pumps are now available in 30 countries.

In the IEA’s most optimistic scenario – in which all governments achieve their energy and climate pledges in full – heat pumps become the main way of decarbonising space and water heating worldwide. The agency estimates that heat pumps have the potential to reduce global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions by at least 500 million tonnes in 2030 – equal to the annual CO₂ emissions of all cars in Europe today. Leading manufacturers report promising signs of momentum and policy support and have announced plans to invest more than US$4 billion in expanding heat pump production and related efforts, mostly in Europe.

Opportunities also exist for heat pumps to provide low-temperature heat in industrial sectors, especially in the paper, food, and chemicals industries. In Europe alone, 15 gigawatts of heat pumps could be installed across 3,000 facilities in these three sectors, which have been hit hard by recent rises in natural gas prices.

SpaceX revealed a new business segment called Starshield aimed at U.S. national security government agencies. “While Starlink is designed for consumer and commercial use, Starshield is designed for government use, with an initial focus on three areas: Earth observation, communications and hosted payloads,” the company said on its website.

This is a big deal as SpaceX is currently burning through $2 billion/year as it works to develop Starlink and Starship. So SpaceX wouldn’t mind some extra cash!

WASHINGTON — SpaceX on Dec. 2 revealed a new business segment called Starshield aimed at U.S. national security government agencies.

Continue reading “SpaceX rolls out new business line focused on military satellite services” »

The UK government has announced that artificial intelligence algorithms that come up with new technologies will not be able to patent their inventions.

The Intellectual Property Office said on Tuesday that it also plans to tweak existing laws to make it easier for people and institutions to use AI, machine learning and data mining software in order to rapidly advance research and innovation without requiring extensive permissions from copyright owners.