Nuclear proliferation has not killed anyone. The only nuclear bombs (Hiroshima, Nagasaki) used in war were by the USA. Any country that has gotten them since has not used them in a conflict. Proliferation has killed no one. Fear of nuclear proliferation is used as a reason not to use more nuclear power. By not …
From the Register, Israeli boffins may be on the road to building artificial, living human brains which can function without a body to support them. Honest. Ben-Jacob and his fellow boffins apparently mounted their artificially-cultured brain tissue on “a polymer panel studded with electrodes.” (Won’t be long before they start using full-size brains in jars …
Power usage in a typical laptop is roughly evenly split between hard drive, CPU, monitor and wifi By 2009, most new laptops will use solid state drives This will reduce power usage by up to ten times from what the hard drive would have used. A 20% reduction in overall power usage. There are bigger …
Some dismiss the view that the world and the technology that will be impacting it will be substantially different (or worse) in 2030 versus now. Even a thread on betterhumans has this discussion. The original poster is confused or purposely misinterpreting various predictions related the Singularity and to life extension. digg_url= ‘http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2007/06/life-extension-2007-halfway-from-1984.html’; digg_skin =’compact’;reddit_url=’http://advancednano.blogspot.com/2007/06/life-extension-2007-halfway-from-1984.html’reddit_url=’advancednano.blogspot.com/2007/06/life-extension-2007-halfway-from-1984.html’ I …
From the New Scientist, new ways of turning heat into sound waves – and then into electricity – may be the next step toward a practical new source of alternative energy. 40% of waste heat from power plants could be converted to electricity if this works and can be scaled up and installed on power …
Carbon nanotubes have 1000 times the electrical conductance of copper From physorg, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new method of compacting carbon nanotubes into dense bundles. These tightly packed bundles are efficient conductors and could one day replace copper as the primary interconnects used on computer chips and even hasten the transition …
A simple method for robots that can self replicate is proposed and it is basically 3d cubes that are deposited like blocks in Tetris. The blocks can swivel. Sequences from the engineers’ hand-designed robotic self-reproduction. New Molecubes are deposited from the top, and each cube has the ability to swivel. Image credit: Zykov, et al. …
About an hour long presentation is made by Aubrey de Grey. Thanks to Michael Anissimov at Accelerating Future and Fight Aging for pointing it out. I have seen it and prior presentation made by Aubrey de Grey a few years ago at a Senior Associate Gathering of the Foresight Institute. Aubrey is making a slightly …
A solar shield that reflects some of the Sun’s radiation back into space would cool the climate within a decade and could be a quick-fix solution to climate change, researchers say. With a solar shield, temperatures would be roughly the same as in 1900 (c), but precipitation would drop (d). Without the shield, temperatures would …
I am all for more wind power. We should build more of it and all other power except coal. I was correcting the statement of some people on the oildrum.com and other sites who say that only 4 reactors per year are possible or that it will take a long time to ramp up reactor …
The NY Times reports that the cost of sequencing he human genome is down below $100,000 and that 1% of the genome that is considered the most relevant can be sequenced for $1000 By the end of the summer [2007], Dr. Church’s research project promises to deliver sequences to its first 10 volunteers. Unlike Dr. …