Radically new and powerful things are being done with sound. Part of what I think is the growing trend of greater control of all information, light, energy, matter and magnetism. (ILEMM) Molecular nanotechnology and advanced metamaterials would be milestones in the control of matter which will also provide greater control of energy. Better material devices …
This is a major development for enabling mechanical control at the molecular level. Robert Freitas (who wrote nanomedicine) told Kurzweilai.net that he felt this was an evolutionary step towards the creation of a factory-style ‘mechanical ribosome’ system that could assemble biological parts via positional assembly. New York University chemistry professor Nadrian C. Seeman and his …
Coal is projected to increase 50% in the AEO2007 reference case, particularly for electricity generation. Coal consumption is projected to increase from 22.9 quadrillion Btu (1,128 million short tons) in 2005 to more than 34 quadrillion Btu (1,772 million short tons) in 2030, with significant additions of new coal-fired generation capacity over the last decade …
India is targeting 24 GW on nuclear power by 2020 and 50 GW by 2030. Two thirds of the nuclear fuel should be thorium. As per the present plan of the Bhabha Atomic Research Corporation (BARC) and the Nuclear Power Corporation, the capacity by 2020 is expected to be increased to 24,000 MW. ‘There is …
From physorg.com, the CSIRO ICT Centre today announced that it has achieved over six gigabits per second over a point to point wireless connection with the highest efficiency (2.4bits/s/Hz) ever achieved for such a system. At the demonstration, the team will transmit 16 simultaneous streams of DVD quality video over a 250 metre link with …
Virginia Tech researchers used novel methodology and the university’s System X supercomputer to carry out what is probably the first simulation that explores full range of motions of a DNA strand of 147 base pairs, the length that is required to form the fundamental unit of DNA packing in the living cells — the nucleosome. …
Spintronic memory advance: New research suggests a new route for developing high density magnetic memory chips which will not lose information when the power is switched off. For the first time data will be written and read very fast using only electrical currents. Physicist at the Universities of Bath, Bristol and Leeds have discovered a …
Professor Andrew Blakers, director of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems at the Australian National University, says ‘sliver technology’ could reduce the price of solar power by 60% and is over 20% efficient. The system works by taking a standard solar cell about 1 millimetre thick and cutting it into tiny slices that are just …
From EETimes, Nanometer chip design is becoming so compute-intensive that it needs supercomputer-like capability, according to Mentor Graphics Corp. and Mercury Computer Systems Inc. In particular, optical proximity correction (OPC) can best be performed by hardware acceleration based on the Cell Broadband Engine processor, the companies claim. Mentor and Mercury had looked at a number …
The latest Newsweek magazine has an article about life extension, Resveratrol and Sirtuins by David Sinclair, Ph.D. and Anthony L. Komaroff, M.D. At the end of the article it makes the case for a crash research program for life extension. A 1% reduction in cancer mortality would be worth $500 billion. This is the life …
Freeman Dyson talks about world war 2 and includes some information about traffic accidents. His point about traffic accidents (which kill 1.2 million people per year worldwide and about 44,000 per year in the USA) :Smeed (Dysons boss in WW2) also had a fatalistic view of traffic accidents. He collected statistics on traffic deaths from …