Lifeboat Foundation

The electronics were also improved with a new full-color touchscreen interface and a modular wiring system. An RGB LED lighting system adds nice ambiance and could help users create more exciting time lapse videos of their prints. Prusa is even considering releasing an official, though unsupported, Klipper firmware for those users who have grown to love Klipper in other CoreXY printers.

The most exciting feature by far, however, is the new swappable toolhead system. This is similar to the E3D ToolChanger design and lets the printer switch between different extruders during a print, allowing for multicolor or multi-material prints. An innovative calibration routine ensures that quality doesn’t suffer after a tool change.

Prusa Research hasn’t yet announced an official release date, but you can reserve a pre-order by placing a $200 deposit right now. A semi-assembled Prusa XL with a single toolhead will cost $1,999. A Prusa XL with dual toolheads will cost $2,499 and a Prusa XL with five toolheads will cost $3,499.

Unexpectedly high demand for Switzerland’s first crypto stamp has created headaches for the national postal service. Swiss Post announced it had to deal with technical issues when numerous orders hit its online shop all at once on the day the innovative offering was made available.

Demand for First Crypto Stamp Overwhelms Swiss Post’s Online Store

Swiss Post announced the “crypto stamp” initiative in September when it was presented as an attempt to “bridge the gap between the physical and digital worlds in philately.” The state-owned company joined forces with blockchain services provider Inacta to produce the stamp, a first of a kind for the Alpine nation.

Circa 2019

Cellular enhancement in banana leaves

Banana Leaf Technology started in 2010 when Tenith Adithyaa, then 11 years old, saw farmers in Southern India dump heaps of banana leaves as trash due to the lack of a preservation technology. The spark ignited when the question came to the mind, ‘can these leaves be enhanced biologically?’ By trial and error, he succeeded in preserving the leaves for about a year without using any chemicals. For four years, he perfected his technology of cellular enhancement. He received his first international award for this technology in 2014, at the global invention fair in Texas.

Continue reading “Processed banana leaves, an eco-friendly packaging solution” »

Urban Aeronautics, the Israel-based aerospace company behind the world’s first compact, wingless electric vertical takeoff, and landing (eVTOL) vehicle, is getting closer to turning its groundbreaking concept into reality. The company said it has raised the first $10 million of a $100 million funding round this week towards CityHawk from private investors in the US, Brazil, and Israel.

According to the company, the car-sized, six-seater CityHawk has more in common with birds than with nearly every other eVTOL prototype in existence. With a distinct, wingless exterior and patented fully-enclosed Fancraft rotor system, the CityHawk is mainly designed for commercial air charters and emergency medical services (EMS). It will be fueled by hydrogen, the most sustainable technology in development today. This means it must be able to conduct multiple trips within a city per day with zero emissions and minimal noise.

Continue reading “World’s first wingless, compact eVTOL aircraft moves a step closer to reality” »

NVIDIA’s recent AI innovation GuaGAN2 allows users to use simple shapes and words to generate photorealisting images in real time.

T turns out Britain was ripe for the birth of the Industrial Revolution.

Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in Britain? Was it because they are particularly ingenious and industrial people or just a happenstance of history?

Various theories have been proposed over time, but which, if any, hit the nail on the head?

Continue reading “Why Did the Industrial Revolution Start in Britain?” »

Cost-slashing innovations are underway in the electric power sector and could give electricity the lead over fossil-based combustion fuels in the world’s energy supply by mid-century. When combined with a global carbon price, these developments can catalyze emission reductions to reach the Paris climate targets, while reducing the need for controversial negative emissions, a new study finds.

“Today, 80 percent of all energy demands for industry, mobility or heating buildings is met by burning—mostly fossil—fuels directly, and only 20 percent by electricity. Our research finds that relation can be pretty much reversed by 2050, making the easy-to-decarbonise electricity the mainstay of global energy supply,” says Gunnar Luderer, author of the new study and researcher the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “For the longest time, fossil fuels were cheap and accessible, whilst electricity was the precious and pricier source of energy. Renewable electricity generation—especially from solar photovoltaics—has become cheaper at breath-taking speed, a pace that most climate models have so far underestimated. Over the last decade alone prices for solar electricity fell by 80 percent, and further cost reductions are expected in the future. This development has the potential to fundamentally revolutionize energy systems.

With feature updates galore, paradigm-changing DDR5 memory, and much more, the technology backing Intel’s 12th Generation Core CPUs is just as interesting as the chips themselves. We’ve got a breakdown.

In a new FLEET theoretical study published recently in Physical Review Letters, the so called ‘smoking gun’ in the search for the topological magnetic monopole — also known as the Berry curvature — has been found.

The discovery is a breakthrough in the search for topological effects in non-equilibrium systems.

The group, led by UNSW physicist and Associate Professor, Dimi Culcer, identified an unconventional Hall effect, driven by an in-plane magnetic field in semiconductor hole systems that can be traced exclusively to the Berry curvature.