The Economist magazine uses the McDonald’s Big Mac as a simple proxy for the purchasing power parity exchange rate. If this accurately reflects what the long term exchange rate should be in 10-20 years, then Chinese Yuan should eventually convert at 3.39 yuan to the US dollar instead of 8.0 where it currently is. Applying …
Advancing control and improving processes for the creation of quantum dots could enable vastly superior solar cells. In a paper published in a May, 2005 issue of the American Chemical Society’s Nano Letters journal, an NREL team found that tiny “nanocrystals,” also known as “quantum dots,” produce as many as three electrons from one high-energy …
This is movement towards the transition stage of molecular nanotechnology. If the goals described here are achieved (automated three dimensional pick and place of atoms) and that is then sped up and made massively parallel that level of technology would be the level of transition stage molecular manufacturing. The article is from late 2003. The …
In my predictions I discuss MNT being used to create an artificial island larger than Manhattan There are already huge artificial islands that are being made or are being planned The largest island/peninsula is the Palm islands in Dubai The largest of those is the Palm Deira, which will be 80 square kilometers Manhattan is …
The robotic hand mimics the movements of a person’s real hand, based on real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) of their brain activity. It marks another landmark in the advance towards prosthetics and computers that can be operating by thought alone. An fMRI machine probes activity within the brain by monitoring blood flow to different …
IBM researchers have made an important breakthrough: arranging nanotube transistors for complex circuits. Researchers at IBM have overcome an important obstacle to building computers based on carbon nanotubes, by developing a way to selectively arrange transistors that were made using the carbon molecules. The achievement, described in the current issue of Nano Letters, could help …
Anyone making such a cloak would have to choose what form of radiation one wanted invisibility from. The invisibility would work both ways–a person hidden from the visible light spectrum would have to use infrared or sonar or microwaves to see out. Note: I believe they could leave a pinhole in the visible spectrum which …
Carbon nanotubes collapse with powerful force when bombarded by electrons and have potential as nanoscale extruders, cylinders, and jigs Engineers use a variety of tools to manipulate and process metals. For example, handy “jigs” control the motion of tools, and extruders push or draw materials through molds to create long objects of a fixed diameter. …
China announces new military modernization plans for the next 15 years Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and …
Precise and creative control of material below the wavelength of a radiation (like visible light 390 to 780 nanometers) can be used to create invisibility. Better nanoprecise materials help facilitate this. radio and radar wave invisibility is projected for 18 months and visible light in 5 years. Pendry and his co-authors also propose using metamaterials …
A 322 meter wire developed by the SuperPower team yielded a performance of 70,520 amp-meters, according to parent company Intermagnetics General Corp. (Nasdaq: IMGC). The previous record was 52,087 amp-meters using technology developed by a Japanese research and development organization. SuperPower have demonstrated a significantly enhanced performance milestone, a production rate eight times faster than …