Folding Kayak - HYPAR. In few minutes, HYPAR transforms from compact, light Box into a sleek Kayak that has excellent speed and control ability. HYPAR folds back into a compact box, designed to be carried as a light-weight backpack - making it incredibly easy to handle, transport and amazingly convenient to store. The modular design of HYPAR ensures easy reconfiguration from kayak to canoe, sailing boat or dinghy - even a solar boat and more! The perfectly streamlined, graceful hull des...

Inspired by the structure of wood, engineers at the University of Maryland have used modified wood as a unique architecture for the negative electrode of a lithium metal battery, seeking to prevent some of the key factors that lead to battery failure. Lithium ion shuttling in rechargeable batteries provides energy to power phones, laptops, and even light bulbs. When the battery is charged, the lithium metal expands; and when it is discharged, the lithium metal deflates. This rapid c...

GoSun Stove is a portable, tube-shaped solar oven that's billed as being powerful enough to cook a full meal, even on cloudy days. Much like the Solar Kettle, this solar cooker uses parabolic mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a glass cylinder and cook the contents inside. But while the Solar Kettle was built for heating up beverages and boiled eggs, the GoSun Stove sports a slightly larger set of mirrors and a stainless steel tray for food, allowing it to act as a portable convection oven for...

Alpha Centauri has launched its first prototype, which aims to combine the luxury of a superyacht tender with the speed of a hydroplaning raceboat. This 8.3 metre speedster was designed to be the Lamborghini Miura of the seas, and can serve as either a superyacht toy or a super-fast tender. Seating capacity is for just four passengers, accessed via a fighter jet-style lifting canopy. The British company behind this super-fast tender is unapologetic about its single-minded design: “It's imp...

Consuming saturated animal fats increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes Consuming saturated animal fats is associated with a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes. In particular, the consumption of butter, which is rich in saturated fatty acids and trans fats, has been related to a high risk of suffering from this disease. In contrast, the consumption of whole fat yoghurt is associated with a lower risk. These are the findings of study on more than 3,000 men and women aged between 50 and 80 who are ...

NASA officially has launched a new resource to help the public search and download out-of-this-world images, videos and audio files by keyword and metadata searches from NASA.gov. The NASA Image and Video Library website consolidates imagery spread across more than 60 collections into one searchable location. https://images.nasa.gov NASA Image and Video Library allows users to search, discover and download a treasure trove of more than 140,000 NASA images, videos and audio files ...

As the complexity and volume of global digital data grows, so too does the need for more capable and compact means of processing and storing data. To address this challenge, DARPA has announced its Molecular Informatics program, which seeks a new paradigm for data storage, retrieval, and processing. Instead of relying on the binary digital logic of computers based on the Von Neumann architecture, Molecular Informatics aims to investigate and exploit the wide range of structural characteristics a...

Emmanuel College scientists, Martin Nowak and Ben Allen (Researcher) developed an algorithm to predict whether a social structure is likely to favor cooperation. Their findings suggest strong pairwise relationships, rather than loose scattered networks, are more favorable for cooperation. Professor Allen and his collaborators have derived a condition for when cooperative behaviors will be able to spread across a network via natural selection. Using mathematical modeling, they have found that ...

A Purdue University study shows that the bacteria Listeria monocytogenes can live inside the tissue of romaine lettuce, suggesting that conventional post-harvest sanitization practices might not be sufficient to kill the potentially lethal pathogen. Research led by Amanda Deering, clinical assistant professor in the Department of Food Science, showed that the bacteria could live within lettuce in every stage of the plant growth process, residing inside the plant tissue. L. monocytogenes can gai...

Transboard is a three wheel foldable electric kick scooter or self balancing scooter. The Transboard will have about 25 miles of range from the detachable 48V 8.6Ah battery and the 500W motor makes it capable of speeds up to 22mph.  Capable of carrying a 220lb rider, it weighs a somewhat hefty 53 pounds – but when folded it can be rolled like a rolling suitcase since it already has a built-in handle and wheels, so wheeling it around shouldn’t be too difficult. Transboard" gives you easy ac...

What goes on inside your brain as you solve a really hard math problem, or watch a really funny movie? In the past, researchers might have measured electrical brain activity or scanned a patient’s head to find out. Now, neuroscientists are teaming up with software companies to create a “glass brain” – special software that lets a person see their thoughts as they think them. University of California has developed 'Glass Brain' that provides real-time insights into the brain activity visually. ...

As far as housing goes, an egg is a pretty good place for a frog embryo. It offers physical protection and it keeps its inhabitant from drying out. But like many homes with great curb appeal, eggs aren’t always the ideal dwelling. For some frog eggs, being packed in a gelatinous mass, or “clutch,” can limit the supply of oxygen. Eggs can be swept away by floods or killed by fungal pathogens, and they make a nice lunch for predators like snakes and wasps. Faced with such peril, it might seem t...

Imagine if your sex was determined not at birth, but by the amount of food available in the early stages of your life. That if you had access to a wider range of choices you'd increase the chance of becoming one gender over the other. And that if you were well fed and ate when the slightest hunger struck, your likelihood of becoming female would increase. While not a possibility for humans, this does appear to be the case for a particular species of fish that is – and has been – imperiling...

The Beijing–Shanghai High-Speed Railway (or Jinghu High-Speed Railway from its Chinese name) is a 1,318-kilometre (819 mi) long high-speed railway that connects two major economic zones in the People's Republic of China, the Bohai Economic Rim and the Yangtze River Delta. Under former Minister of Railways Liu Zhijun, the railway line was the first one designed for a maximum speed of 380 km/h in commercial operations. The non-stop train from Beijing South to Shanghai Hongqiao was expected to f...

A team of researchers led by physicists at the University of Maryland-based Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) have created the world’s first time crystal using a chain of atomic ions. Crystals such as ice or diamond are made of atoms arranged in a repeating pattern in space. These new time crystals have atoms follow a repeating pattern, but in time rather than space. The UMD-led team’s creation brings to life the exotic idea that it might be possible to create such time crystals that was prop...

The early-stage research, by scientists at Imperial College London, suggests these microcracks may reduce mechanical strength of the bone. In the study, published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers studied bone samples from 16 people who had been diagnosed with the weak bone condition osteoporosis. This research suggests that, in a small number of patients, rather than protecting against fractures bisphosphonates may actually may make bones more fragile. All of...

University of Tokyo researchers have demonstrated that babies not yet able to speak affirm protective behavior defending the weak from the strong, suggesting that such tendencies are inherent in humans. Whether an infant understands and affirms third-party interventions protecting victims from aggressors is considered a fundamental human characteristic involving morality, justice, and highly social behavior benefiting society. Interventions by a third party to protect those under attack are g...

By measuring brainwaves, it is possible to predict what a child’s reading level will be years in advance, according to research from Binghamton University, State University of New York. Binghamton University researchers Sarah Laszlo and Mallory Stites measured the brain activity of children and then compared it to their report cards, their vocabulary and other signs of reading success two years later, as part of the National Science Foundation-funded Reading Brain Project. Laszlo and Stites...

Brain size in primates is predicted by diet, an analysis by a team of New York University anthropologists indicates. These results call into question “the social brain hypothesis,” which has posited that humans and other primates are big-brained due to factors pertaining to sociality. The findings, which appear in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution, reinforce the notion that both human and non-human primate brain evolution may be driven by differences in feeding rather than in socializa...

Plants, like other organisms, are facing multiple mechanical constraints generated both in their tissues and by the surrounding environments. They need to sense and adapt to these forces throughout their lifetimes. To do so, different mechanisms devoted to force transduction have emerged. Here we focus on fascinating proteins: the mechanosensitive (MS) channels. Mechanosensing in plants has been described for centuries but the molecular identification of MS channels occurred only recently All o...