Lifeboat Foundation

Designing an autonomous, learning smart garden.

In the first episode of Build Out, Colt and Reto — tasked with designing the architecture for a “Smart Garden” — supplied two very different concepts, that nevertheless featured many overlapping elements. Take a look at the video to see what they came up with, then continue reading to see how you can learn from their explorations to build your very own Smart Garden.

Both solutions aim to optimize plant care using sensors, weather forecasts, and machine learning. Watering and fertilizing routines for the plants are updated regularly to guarantee the best growth, health, and fruit yield possible.

Continue reading “Building a Garden that Cares for Itself” »

COVID 19 pandemic, automation and 6G could end the metropolitan era from building high sky scrapers for companies. Companies can operate like a network from home to home without going to office. This will help a lot to bring down Urban Heat Islands and make our cities more efficient in transportation and communication to send the data even faster.

Tom Marzetta is the director of NYU Wireless, New York University’s research center for cutting-edge wireless technologies. Prior to joining NYU Wireless, Marzetta was at Nokia Bell Labs, where he developed massive MIMO. Massive MIMO (short for “multiple-input multiple-output”) allows engineers to pack dozens of small antennas into a single array. The high number of antennas means more signals can be sent and received at once, dramatically boosting a single cell tower’s efficiency.

Massive MIMO is becoming an integral part of 5G, as is an independent development that came out of NYU Wireless by the center’s founding director Ted Rappaport: Millimeter waves. And now the professors and students at NYU Wireless are already looking ahead to 6G and beyond.

Continue reading “Heres What 6G Will Be, According to the Creator of Massive MIMO” »

The next time you see a spider crawling around your house, look at the bright side. It’s probably feasting on a bunch of other insects and providing you with free pest control.

A new study released on Tuesday says that spiders eat an estimated 400 to 800 million metric tons of insects every year.

For comparison, the entire human population consumes about 400 million tons of meat and fish every year.

Rift Valley fever used to mostly affect livestock in Africa. But the virus that causes it is also spread by mosquitoes whose habitats are expanding because of climate change. If it were to make its way to the rest of the world, it would decimate livestock causing agricultural collapse as well as affecting human health.

In 2015 the Zika virus triggered a global health crisis that left thousands of parents devastated. The virus can cause serious problems in pregnancy, leading to babies with birth defects called microcephaly and other neurological problems. But Zika is not the only virus that can be devastating to pregnant women and their babies; there is another with pandemic potential that could be even more deadly – Rift Valley fever.

The placenta that encases the baby acts as a fortress against many pathogens, but a few can evade its defences. Rift Valley fever is one of them – a 2019 study shows that the virus has the ability to infect a specialised layer of placental cells that carry nutrients to the baby, something that even Zika may not be capable of. In cattle and other livestock, in which the virus spreads, infection can cause more than 90% of pregnant cows to miscarry or deliver stillborn calves. Although the virus kills fewer than 1% of people it infects, it is the risk to babies, and the lasting neurological effects in adults, that is of great concern.

What is really going on with Virgin Galactic, Get the inside scoop from the initial developer of the engine technology who worked for Burt Rutan on SpaceShipOne and also worked SpaceShipTwo-Tim Pickens, See why he, and I are concerned about Virgin Galactic.
Tim Pickens is an entrepreneur, inventor, innovator, engineer and educator. He specializes in commercial space, technical product development and solutions, and business consulting and strategy for space and technical companies. He is known for applying a lean philosophy to develop creative solutions and innovative partnerships to provide responsive, low-cost products and services for government and private industry. Pickens’ 25+ years of experience in the aerospace industry, specializing in the design, fabrication and testing of propulsion hardware systems, has earned him a reputation as one of the industry’s leaders in these areas. Early in his career, Pickens served as propulsion lead for Scaled Composites on SpaceShipOne, winner of the $10 million Ansari X Prize. He also worked for small hardware-rich aerospace companies in Huntsville, and later supported the Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo venture.

You can support Galactic Gregs by supporting the sister channel Green Gregs by clicking the links below:
For your space habitat garden buy worms at greengregs.com!
See the Special Deals at My Patriot Supply (great space mission food): www.PrepWithGreg.com.
For gardening in your space habitat (or on Earth) Galactic Gregs has teamed up with True Leaf Market to bring you a great selection of seed for your planting. Check it out: http://www.pntrac.com/t/TUJGRklGSkJGTU1IS0hCRkpIRk1K

See how we developed Hybrid rockets and launched them from high altitude balloon initially with the Huntsville Alabama L5 Society (HAL5)‘s High Altitude Lift-Off (HALO) Program and later with our High Altitude Research Corporation (HARC). See our Balloon Launch Return Vehicle (BLRV) and our HARC Cheap Access to Space (CATS) Prize rocket. Hear some of our war stories from these adventures. A balloon launched rocket is known as a rockoon.

Watch next week for a related interview, The Inside Scoop on Virgin Galactic with Tim Pickens.

Continue reading “HALO & HARC Balloon Launched Hybrid Rockets with Bill Brown” »

As climate change fuels more intense storms, Deltec and other companies build hurricane-proof homes.

China’s Chang’e 5 spacecraft completed a historic delivery of moon rocks to Earth late last year, but the mission is still continuing with experiments in deep space, with a visit to Sun-Earth Lagrange point 1.

Got milk?

Hoping to capitalise on a surge in demand for home deliveries, a Singapore technology company has deployed a pair of robots to bring residents their groceries in one part of the city state.

Developed by OTSAW Digital and both named “Camello”, the robots’ services have been offered to 700 households in a one-year trial.

Continue reading “Run out of milk? Robots on call for Singapore home deliveries” »