Category: New Discoveries

Impact Lab > New Discoveries
Crazy Stuff, Globalism, Historical Perspectives, New Discoveries, New Viewpoints, People Making a Difference

Richard Branson to explore the Center of the Earth – April Fools Day Joke

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What will the view be on the inside?

(Sorry, this was so brilliantly outrageous, we thought we’d play along.)

After filmmaker James Cameron set a depth record for exploring the Marianna Trench and Jeff Bezos found the engines from Apollo 11, entrepreneur Richard Branson felt a need to do something even more spectacular. The head of Virgin galactic is preparing to launch a journey to the center of the earth! The new company Virgin Volcanic, an offshoot of Virgin Galactic, has developed a vehicle called the VVS1 to tackle one of the Eight Grand Challenges – the Race to the Core.

Using patented carbon-carbon materials pioneered for deep space exploration, Virgin is proud to announce a revolutionary new vehicle, VVS1, which will be capable of plunging three people into the molten lava core of an active volcano…

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Analysis, New Discoveries, Science & Technology News

Creating liquid fuel with electricity

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Researchers have generated isobutanol from CO2 using a genetically engineered microorganism with solar electricity the sole energy input.

Electric vehicles have come a long way in the past decade, but they still have many disadvantages when compared to internal combustion engine-driven vehicles. The lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles have a much lower energy storage density when compared to liquid fuel, they take longer to “refuel,” and they lack the supporting infrastructure that has built up around conventional vehicles over the past century. Now researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have developed a process that could allow liquid fuel to be produced using solar generated electricity.

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Analysis, Animals, Education, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, New Discoveries

Bees ‘Self-Medicate’ when infected with some pathogens

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When faced with pathogenic fungi, bees line their hives with more propolis – the waxy, yellow substance seen here.

Research from North Carolina State University shows that honey bees “self-medicate” when their colony is infected with a harmful fungus, bringing in increased amounts of antifungal plant resins to ward off the pathogen…

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Insects, New Discoveries, Science & Technology News

Insect inspires super-buoyant aerogel

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Water strider inspires super-buoyant material.

Among the lightest solid materials in existence are Aerogels, and they are created by replacing the liquid component of a gel with a gas – this results in their extremely low density, and has earned them the nickname of “frozen smoke.” Now, scientists have created a new type of aerogel that is inspired by the feet of the water strider. The material is reportedly so buoyant, that a boat made from one pound (454 grams) of it could carry about 1,000 pounds (454 kg) of cargo.

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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, Current Events, Historical Perspectives, New Discoveries, New Viewpoints

Physicists add 11 colors to the rainbow by tearing apart atoms

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New colors found utilizing lasers and ion cascades.

True, the pink is a lie. But a UC Santa Barbara research team has honestly just generated eleven new hues using lasers and ion cascades.

The team created the new colors by aiming a pair of lasers—one high-frequency, the other low-frequency—at a slab of semiconductor material, a gallium arsenide nanostructure. The high-frequency beam separates an electron from its host atom, generating what’s known as an exciton (a bonded pair consisting of a negatively-charged electron and a positively-charged host). The powerful, low frequency wave then accelerates the freed electron, which goes crashing into the electron-less atom in front of it. Since the electron has extra energy from the acceleration when it recombines with the host atom in front of it, that energy is radiated as light. Previously unseen frequencies of light…
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Analysis, Breakthrough Thinking, New Discoveries, New Inventions

Transparent, flexible ‘3-D’ memory chips may be the next big thing in small memory devices

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A flexible, transparent memory chip created by researchers at Rice University.

New memory chips that are transparent, flexible enough to be folded like a sheet of paper, shrug off 1,000-degree Fahrenheit temperatures — twice as hot as the max in a kitchen oven — and survive other hostile conditions could usher in the development of next-generation flash-competitive memory for tomorrow’s keychain drives, cell phones and computers, a scientist reported March 27…

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Insects, New Discoveries, Photo Perspectives, Science & Technology News

‘King of Wasps’ – giant new species of wasp discovered in Indonesia

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Two-and-a-half inch monster has jaws longer than its legs.

A new species of wasp discovered on the Indonesian island Sulawesi is two-and-a-half inches long, and has jaws so vast that its discoverer admits, ‘I don’t know how it can walk.’ (Pics)

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Analysis, Brain, Breakthrough Thinking, Education, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Human Behavior, New Discoveries

Brain size may determine whether you are good at keeping friends

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Are you good at keeping friends?

Researchers are suggesting that there is a link between the number of friends you have and the size of the region of the brain — known as the orbital prefrontal cortex — that is found just above the eyes. A new study shows that this brain region is bigger in people who have a larger number of friendships…

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Analysis, Food, Health & Fitness, Historical Perspectives, Latest News, New Discoveries

Scientific proof that popcorn is healthier than fruit and vegetables

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Popcorn. It’s whats for dinner.

Next time you’re stuffing your face with popcorn, don’t feel guilty; a new scientific study shows that, far from being junk food, popcorn packs a better nutritional punch than fruit or vegetables. Kind of.

The study, conducted at the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania, shows that popcorn has more antioxidants in it than fruit or vegetables. Not just that, but those pesky little husks—the ones that get stuck right between your teeth—contain incredibly high concentrations of both antioxidants and fiber. “Those hulls deserve more respect,” explains Joe Vinson, one of the researchers. “They are nutritional gold nuggets.”

In fact, Vinson seems pretty bowled over by popcorn. Speaking to Science Daily, he explains…

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Analysis, Health & Fitness, New Discoveries, Science & Technology News

Discovery of a new hair-loss protein brings hope to balding men

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New protein discovery could lead to treatments to stop baldness.

A hair-loss protein has been discovered by scientists in a development that could pave the way for a cure for male-pattern baldness. The discovery could mean treatments are developed to suppress the protein and to stop baldness, although it would not reverse the effects to reverse hair loss.

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