A special material called spin ice, co-discovered in 1997 by Professor Steven Bramwell of the London Centre for Nanotechnology has come close to revealing a secret of the universe. Most computer memories store information magnetically, and if there was the ability to use magnetic rather than electric charges to read and write bits to and …
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. have created an “astro-comb” to help astronomers detect lighter planets, more like Earth, around distant stars. Presentation CMII1, “Femtosecond Laser Frequency Comb for Precision Astrophysical Spectroscopy,” Chih-Hao Li et al, 3:45 p.m., Monday, June 1. Right now standard spectroscopy techniques can determine star movements to within a few …
A prototype in-plane electrophoretic display consisting of 1,000 pixels. Credit: Philips MIT TEchnology Review reports A new approach developed by Philips now offers fresh hope for color e-paper displays that are so bright and clear that even traditional liquid crystal displays (LCDs) will pale in comparison. The new approach has the potential to create color …
1. Heartland Robotics Update Rod Brooks, of Heartland Robotics, pointed out that between iRobot and Foster-Miller, New England has a virtual lock on the military robot business. Brooks wouldn’t give details about what his own company, Heartland Robotics, is up to—but he did say that it’s working on systems that will help American workers be …
Safe quantum communication will be ready for daily use with the world’s first optical quantum cryptography network completed in east China’s Anhui Province recently. The American journal Science reported about the result, which was published in the latest issue of Optic Express in April. The network allows real-time voice telephone among three users, or a …
Men who were grossly overweight at the age of 18 had nearly 50 percent less chance of being married by their 30s and 40s, an international conference on obesity heard in Amsterdam. The findings, which held true regardless of the men’s intellectual performance or socio-economic position, could suggest that women rank a man’s appearance higher …
Chemistry World is reporting that Danish researchers have made a nano-sized box out of DNA that can be locked or opened in response to ‘keys’ made from short strands of DNA. By changing the nature or number of these keys, it should be possible to use the boxes as sensors, drug delivery systems or even …
Spaceward has a page on space elevator feasibility that looks at tether strength and power to weight ratio for the power system for the space elevator climber. Based on a gradual convergence of experimental and theoretical results, the specific strength of raw CNTs will not exceed 50 MYuri [1 Mega-Yuri = 1 N/Tex = 1 …
NABsys scientists, in close collaboration with scientists at Brown University, are developing a proprietary platform to build solid state, electrically addressable nanopore arrays that can sequence DNA without amplification or labeling. This Hybridization-Assisted Nanopore Sequencing platform combines nanopore sequencing with sequencing-by-hybridization (SBH) to create what NABsys believes will be the lowest cost, fastest whole-genome sequencing …
EMC2 Fusion is the company that Dr. Richard Nebel is leading to develop IEC/Bussard Fusion. This interview was conducted by Sander Olson as an exclusive for Nextbigfuture. This site has many articles on IEC fusion and other nuclear fusion efforts. Question: Could you provide an overview of your nuclear fusion process? Answer: Our machine is …
(H/T to Torulf Greek who created several of the images of Bussard/IEC fusion) and found or created one of the tri-alpha energy images) 1. High Temperature Pebble Bed Reactors China is starting a full size 250 Megawatt high temperature pebble bed reactor this year (2009) China will be following up by developing factory mass production …