Lifeboat Foundation

Experts argue the jaws of an ancient European ape reveal a key human ancestor.

This week, I discuss something rarely talked about, how human beings have an advantage over AI and automation and the great opportunities that this technology revolution will bring.

The good news is, this is a time of great opportunity, but it’s also a time of massive change and disruption for many people and a lot of companies.

This knife uses ultrasonic waves to cut through virtually anything with ease.

This electric vehicle could become your future mode of transportation 😍 via @kittyhawkaero

Technology in today’s day and age progresses at an incredible speed! But did you know it moved THIS fast?

The Orca Helix moves up and down so that it is easy to get on and off when high, easy on the body when low.

Many things have changed in the last hundred years, but one thing that has hardly changed at all is the toilet. And as we have been saying on TreeHugger for what feels like a hundred years, it’s all wrong. Our bodies are designed to squat, yet instead, we sit on 14 inch high seats, which actually makes it hard to poop. As we get older, or fatter, people have trouble even getting on a 14 inch seat and buy “comfort height” toilets, which make it even harder to poop. It is exactly the wrong thing to do, causing constipation, haemorrhoids and worse.

Ivan pondering toilets / Lloyd Alter/CC BY 2.0

Continue reading “This could be the biggest advance in toilet design in over a hundred years” »

Nearly two million tiny tremors could help explain the inner workings of key faults.

• By Shannon Hall on April 18, 2019

On Monday, a UPenn spokesperson confirmed to NPR that the institution’s researchers have officially started using CRISPR on humans — marking a national first that could lead to a more widespread use of the technology in the future.

Last Resort

The spokesperson told NPR that the UPenn team has thus far used CRISPR to treat two cancer patients, one with multiple myeloma and one with sarcoma. Both had relapsed after standard cancer treatments.

Continue reading “The US Has Officially Started Using CRISPR on Humans” »

Aerogel–aerogel composites are prepared by embedding highly insulating granular silica aerogel (1–2 mm, 5–58 vol.%) into ambient pressure dried resorcinol-formaldehyde (RF) aerogel. The organic RF aerogel matrix is synthesized via a sol–gel reaction of resorcinol (1,3-dihydroxybenzene) and formaldehyde in deionized water with Na₂CO₃ as the catalyst. Plates around 90 × 195 mm² with a thickness of 19–25 mm are obtained and can be processed for application by sawing and grinding. A theoretical model for the volume-based surface area was used to show that the matrix aerogel around the silica aerogel grains is affected by their presence. Composites have a density 0.19 ≤ ρ ≤ 0.27 g/cm³ and a thermal conductivity at room temperature between 0.026 and 0.053 W/mK. Composites can be used as thermal insulation material in a normal temperature range < 200 °C due to the decomposition of the organic phase above 200 °C.