Lifeboat Foundation

Art imitated in life again.

A 3D-printed, 20-foot Stargate portal replica is the centerpiece of a new exhibition at Belgium’s Musée royal de Mariemont.

Interesting.

3D design and 3D printing technologies have finally become viable tools for the nuclear sector, and various research projects have shown that they have the potential to greatly increase maintenance efficiency and reduce production costs.

Technology can be confusing when it begins moving at such an accelerated rate, perfectly exemplified by the 3D industry, and encompassing all that goes with it, from 3D scanning to 3D printing and then peripheral industries that are often connected too such as augmented and virtual realities. We’ve barely digested all the stunning innovations making impacts in so many different sectors, from 3D printed medical models that allow for more complex surgeries, to 3D printed parts for a suspension system that make racing bikes go faster, all the way to incredible toys for your kids using augmented reality systems.

Yet, while work is definitely just beginning in the 3D realm, scientists have already begun exploring a range of uses for 4D technology that should prove offer impacts in just as many applications, from the medical field to electronics and far beyond. It might seem like a lot all at once, but the two technologies definitely work together, with the 4D emphasis adding a more intuitive, smart angle to fabrication.

As we’ve seen in other studies using the application of heat, it would appear that 3D printed objects can be treated or manipulated to cause shapes to morph according to their environment, as well as remembering their previous state and going back to it in the appropriate conditions. Now, teams from both MIT and the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) are employing light in their endeavors to create smart structures. They’ve had good success too, if the amount of torturing they’ve put these materials through is any indication. According to the engineers, they’ve twisted, bent, and stretched everything from small coils to flowers fabricated out of numerous materials, and even a replica they made of the Eiffel tower. As is the case with structures being pushed into the 4D realm, all of the above materials reverted.

A team of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers has demonstrated the 3D printing of shape-shifting structures that can fold or unfold to reshape themselves when exposed to heat or electricity. The micro-architected structures were fabricated from a conductive, environmentally responsive polymer ink developed at the Lab.

In an article published recently by the journal Scientific Reports (link is external), Lab scientists and engineers revealed a strategy for creating boxes, spirals and spheres from shape memory polymers (SMPs), bio-based “smart” materials that exhibit shape-changes when resistively heated or when exposed to the appropriate temperature.

Continue reading “Going beyond 3D printing to add a new dimension for additive manufacturing” »

Brain maps seem to come out in rapid succession these days. They take various forms: a map for word concepts, a map of individual cells’ activity, a map based on the organ’s physical contours.

What they share in common is the aspiration to take the lumpy mass of the brain and categorize it, somehow, into useable areas — not unlike the textbook brain images with their colored denotations of “occipital lobe” and “frontal cortex.”

But these maps often come along with a problem: They may not sync up with the other maps. Now a group of scientists have managed to sync up two of the most commonly used types of brain maps — for gene expression and brain structure — and they’re releasing their methods to any and all in the scientific community.

Los Angeles-based tech company Kernel is working on a ‘memory prosthesis’ to be placed in the hippocampus.

There is a computing revolution coming, although nobody knows exactly when. What are known as “quantum computers” will be substantially more powerful than the devices we use today, capable of performing many types of computation that are impossible on modern machines.

But while faster computers are usually welcome, there are some computing operations that we currently rely on being hard (or slow) to perform.

Specifically, we rely on the fact that there are some codes that computers can’t break – or at least it would take them too long to break to be practical. Encryption algorithms scramble data into a form that renders it unintelligible to anyone that does not possess the necessary decryption key (normally a long string of random numbers).

Continue reading “How quantum computers will change the world of hacking” »

A discussion that I have had often.

In Beyond Science, Epoch Times explores research and accounts related to phenomena and theories that challenge our current knowledge. We delve into ideas that stimulate the imagination and open up new possibilities. Share your thoughts with us on these sometimes controversial topics in the comments section below.

The Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) wrote in “Ethics I”: “Nothing in Nature is random. … A thing appears random only through the incompleteness of our knowledge.”

Continue reading “Is Anything Truly Random or Is There an Underlying Order to Everything?” »

Hmmmm.

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on a new generation of electronic warfare systems that are based on artificial intelligence (A.I.). If the program were to prove a success, the new A.I.-driven systems would provide the United States military a way to counter evermore-capable Russian and Chinese radars.

“One of our programs at DARPA is taking a whole new approach to this problem, this is an effort we refer to as cognitive electronic warfare,” DARPA director, Dr. Arati Prabhakar, told the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities on February 24. “We’re using artificial intelligence to learn in real-time what the adversaries’ radar is doing and then on-the-fly create a new jamming profile. That whole process of sensing, learning and adapting is going on continually.”

Continue reading “Revealed: Pentagon’s Plan to Defeat Russian and Chinese Radar With A.I” »