Dwave’s Quantum computer Presentation from SC07

Dwave systems CTO Geordie Rose has published his slides from the SC07 conference, where he demonstrated there latest 28 qubit system. Dwave system is a web services QUBO solver Dwave to a computer scientist. QUBO is NP-hard. the decision version is NP complete Real physical systems dwave device schematic: nobium cjj rs-squid flux qubit Dwave …

Read more

Continuing discussion of an $80 billion Wind powered supergrid

The $80 billion european wind powered electrical supergrid would make wind energy more practical I think this project makes sense and a similar power grid build out would be good for North America as well. It would work in combination with nuclear power and anything that is not coal or oil. The average price of …

Read more

Congress pushes for re-examination of Thorium nuclear power

MIT Technology review reports that Senators representing several Western states, including Utah’s Orrin Hatch and Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, are working on legislation to promote thorium. I am a big supporter of developing Thorium fission reactors and in particular molten salt reactors. I support the upcoming legislation from Orrin Hatch and Harry …

Read more

Cancer resistant mouse with Par-4 gene

A mouse resistant to cancer, even highly-aggressive types, has been created by researchers at the University of Kentucky. The breakthrough stems from a discovery by UK College of Medicine professor of radiation medicine Vivek Rangnekar and a team of researchers who found a tumor-suppressor gene called “Par-4” in the prostate. The researchers discovered that the …

Read more

Up to 96.7 percent efficient home furnaces

A high-efficiency furnace (90% plus) furnace should save you between 20 and 25 percent on your home heating bill The best choice is to choose a furnace with an AFUE rating of over 90 percent. These “condensing furnaces” recover extra heat by extracting water from the combustion gases within a special corrosion-resistant heat exchanger. The …

Read more

DOE funds solar power research and several projects use nanowires, nanostructures and plasmonics

The DOE funded 25 projects as part of the Next Generation Photovoltaic Devices & Processes program to make solar power cost competitive with coal and nuclear power by 2015. Here are several of the funded projects: Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, NY) project will develop PV cells for solar concentrator applications using high efficiency nanostructures. …

Read more

Carbon 60, fullerene, thin film electronics closer to electronic billboards

Using room-temperature processing, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have fabricated high-performance field effect transistors with thin films of Carbon 60, also known as fullerene. The ability to produce devices with such performance with an organic semiconductor represents another milestone toward practical applications for large area, low-cost electronic circuits on flexible organic substrates. Previous …

Read more

Near term lifeboat technology: integrated and seamless robustness

AlFin’s excellent blog points out that “nuclear batteries” could be used for a near term civilization lifeboat. The initial goal would not be creating fully resistant civilization lifeboats that could handle destruction of the biosphere but hardened points of key civilization services like databases, medical facilities, food services, water services and electricity. The goal would …

Read more

Cooper pairs make superinsulators as well as superconductors

A Brown University researcher, James Valles, claims to have discovered Cooper pairs in superinsulators that, when cooled near absolute zero, offer infinite resistance–acting as perfect blocks to conduction. Superinsulators may someday be wired together with superconductors to create supercircuits that generate zero heat. The researchers are currently developing a theory to rival the theory of …

Read more