Will anti-carbon rules start to kill coal?

Businessweek magazine and Vinod Khosla are talking down coal power Vinod Khosla is a major venture capitalist and has made several big green energy bets. Solar thermal power and biofuels. Here’s Khosla’s argument: Much of the developed world has already imposed curbs on greenhouse gas emissions, and the U.S. is likely to follow suit. The …

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Diamond Mechanosynthesis may need cooling to 80K

From the Lifeboat Foundation and Robert Freitas is a proposal for grant to study if free roaming grey goo is impossible because of problems operating at room temperature. Any working grey goo may need to supply its own refridgeration. Recent research by Freitas (using the methods of computational chemistry including Density Functional Theory) examining specific …

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Conditions could become ripe for better choices

Hopefully Wired magazine is correct and the political situation could shift to better science and technology R&D funding and deal for caps on emissions and new nuclear power From the article:With the Bush administration pushing for a new generation of nuclear plants (the current ones account for around 20 percent of U.S. electricity generation), the …

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Healthcare havens for lower casts and faster development

Here is an article about outsourcing healthcare With an estimated 45 million uninsured Americans, some 500,000 trekked overseas last year for medical treatment, according to the National Coalition on Health Care. Asian hospitals in Thailand, India and Singapore have long been swarmed by medical tourists looking for tummy tucks and face lifts, but many glitzy, …

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Breakthrough in focusing terahertz radiation

T-ray applications are presently limited by the relatively poor ability to focus the rays, which is achieved using the conventional means of lenses and mirrors to focus the radiation. This limits the spot size of focused T-rays to a substantial fraction of a millimetre and this has made studies of small objects such as biological …

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solar power comparable to nuclear power in 2030

Japan’s Sharp Corp. the world’s biggest maker of solar cells, expects the cost of generating solar power to halve by 2010 and to be comparable with that of nuclear power by 2030, Sharp’s president said. Solar electricity currently costs about $0.50 per kilowatt hour to produce, more than eight times as much as that produced …

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Muscle wasting can be prevented

Muscle wasting due to age is prevented by protein blocker Plus mice muscles were made twice as strong. 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, …

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More than 10% wind power causes power reliability issues

If you have more than 10% of overall power from wind then there are issues keeping power supply stable Mr. Frost, of the Alberta system operator, said European countries such as Denmark and Germany have been able to maintain a high proportion of wind power in their electricity systems mainly because they have multiple connections …

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Wind power the problems scaling up

China alone is spending 45billion on wind power over the next 15 years. They are targeting 30GW of power. Part of a 180 billion clean energy program. Some analyst doubt the 30GW target will be met. China will need 950-1230GW of power by 2020.Even if China was able to double its wind target. That is …

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