Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: sustainability

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8QMOYnWBq0

Urban Produce High Density Vertical Growing System is a patented technology that was developed taking advanced hydroponic technology and automating it. Urban Produce has the capacity to grow 16 acres of produce on 1/8 of an acre with just one of it’s High Density Vertical Growing Systems. Our mission is to build our patented systems across the U.S. to provide both locally grown sustainable produce to Urban Cities while also stimulating the local economies. We are 21st century growing! www.urbanproduce.com

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By 2050, the world will need to feed an additional 2.5 billion people living in cities. Yet as the demand for food rises, the amount of land available for agriculture in developed countries is expected to decline. In Japan, at the Fujitsu factory of Aizu-Wakamatsu which still manufactures semiconductor chips for computers, a different project is underway which may offer a solution to this problem. The company has converted an unused part of the factory into a farm to grow food — and more specifically, to grow lettuce. Fujitsu has focused on growing a low-potassium variety, which is sold to people with kidney problems who cannot process the mineral properly. Join Rachel Mealey in Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture to visit the sun-free and soil-free urban farms of the future.

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Food deserts, lack of arable land, and the frozen months of winter are all obstacles we face in our mission to keep people fed. Urban Produce is excelling in this mission by licensing its patented indoor vertical farming technology, which can produce 16 acres of organic, leafy greens in just 1/8 acre of space.

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Q-Dots ORNL style.

VIDEO: A method to produce significant amounts of semiconducting nanoparticles for light-emitting displays, sensors, solar panels and biomedical applications has gained momentum with a demonstration by researchers at Oak Ridge National… view more

Credit: Jenny Woodbery, ORNL

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The study, published in the journal Nature, relies on data on past ice levels of the Totten Glacier in East Antarctica to evaluate the rate of melting. Without intense efforts to stem man-made global warming, the glacier’s melting process could cross the point of no return within the next 100 years, according to report. The result would add more than 6.6 feet (2 meters) of sea level rise over the coming several centuries, in addition to several feet of rise from other sources.

“The evidence coming together is painting a picture of East Antarctica being much more vulnerable to a warming environment than we thought,” said study author Martin Siegert, an Imperial College London researcher, in a press release. “This is something we should worry about.”

Read More: See How Your City May Be Affected by Rising Sea Levels.

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Nice.

NILES, Ill., May 18, 2016 /PRNewswire/ — MicroLink Devices is proud to announce that Airbus Defence and Space has issued a production contract for MicroLink’s epitaxial liftoff (ELO)-based multijunction solar sheets for use on the new Zephyr S platform.

Photo — http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160517/368562

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Friends have been asking me to write something on space exploration and my campaign policy on it, so here it is just out on TechCrunch:

When people think about rocket ships and space exploration, they often imagine traveling across the Milky Way, landing on mysterious planets and even meeting alien life forms.

In reality, humans’ drive to get off Planet Earth has led to tremendous technological advances in our mundane daily lives — ones we use right here at home on terra firma.

I recently walked through Boston’s Logan International Airport; a NASA display reminded me that GPS navigation, anti-icing systems, memory foam and LED lights were all originally created for space travel. Other inventions NASA science has created include the pacemaker, scratch-resistant lenses and the solar panel.

These types of advancements are one of the most important reasons I am hoping our next U.S. president will try to jump-start the American space program — both privately and publicly. Unfortunately, it doesn’t appear any of them are talking about the issue. But they should be. As we enter the transhumanist age — the era of bionic limbs, brain implants and artificial intelligence — space exploration might once again dramatically lead us forward in discovering the most our species can become.

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The future of movies and manufacturing may be in 3D, but electronics and photonics are going 2-D; specifically, two-dimensional semiconducting materials.

One of the latest advancements in these fields centers on (MoS2), a two-dimensional semiconductor that, while commonly used in lubricants and steel alloys, is still being explored in optoelectronics.

Recently, engineers placed a single layer of MoS2 molecules on top of a photonic structure called an optical nanocavity made of aluminum oxide and aluminum. (A nanocavity is an arrangement of mirrors that allows beams of light to circulate in closed paths. These cavities help us build things like lasers and optical fibers used for communications.)

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