As of June 2, 2011, all PDF versions of books published by the National Academies Press (NAP) will be downloadable to anyone free of charge. There are more than 4,000 books plus future reports produced by NAP–publisher for the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council. If …
Keith Henson has an update of his plan for space based solar power up at the Oildrum. Power satellites convert sunlight (via photovoltaic or thermal cycle) to electrical power and then turn the power into microwaves beamed to the ground and converted back to electrical power. Critical to achieving costs of $100/kg or less to …
1. Pandora Media Inc., the Internet- music company that’s lost $92.1 million since it started in 2000, is seeking to raise as much as $123.2 million in a U.S. initial public offering. The Oakland, California-based company will offer 13.7 million shares for $7 to $9 each, 2. MGM China Holdings Ltd., the Macau venture between …
Incentives prizes have been successfully used for centuries in order to solve various technical and engineering problems. In the 20th century the Ortega prize resulted in the Lindbergh transatlantic flight. In 1995 the X-Prize foundation was founded with the express purpose of fostering a series of prizes to stimulate technological development. In an interview with …
A pilot project to see if cash crops can be grown in the salty ground of India’s coastal areas was launched in 2010. The area in Tamil Nadu state will house dozens of species of halophytes – or salt-loving plants – that can be used for producing cash crops. Halophytes can be used to produce …
A view of the internals of the Moneta storage array with phase change memory modules installed A University of California, San Diego faculty-student team is about to demonstrate a first-of-its kind, phase-change memory solid state storage device that provides performance thousands of times faster than a conventional hard drive and up to seven times faster …
About $16 billion a year is spent on AIDS in poor and middle-income countries. Half is generated locally and half is foreign aid. A report in this week’s Lancet suggests a carefully crafted mixture of approaches that does not involve treating all those without symptoms would bring great benefit for not much more than this—a …
a, Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of a device (qubit and SQUID shown) with identical design parameters as the one measured during this work [1]. b, Schematic. Qubit loop (shaded) and galvanically coupled read-out SQUID. The crosses are Josephson junctions; R, bias resistors; C, shunt capacitances; L, inductances. Researchers at MIT, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Japan’s Institute …
A major predictor of wealth is one’s earning a high income before the age of 34. Households earning between $100,000 and $199,999, identified as the “Emerging” tier, have a far greater chance of eventually crossing the golden threshold of $200,000 than those who achieve household income of $100,000 later in life, identified above as “Aspiring.” …
1. Saudi Arabia plans to construct 16 nuclear power reactors over the next 20 years at a cost of more than 300 billion riyals ($80 billion), according to Abdul Ghani bin Melaibari, coordinator of scientific collaboration at King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy. Speaking during the Gulf Environment Forum in Jeddah, he said, …
San Francisco-based VentureLoop reports that job openings at venture-backed startups in the Bay Area have more than doubled to 3,609, compared with 1,739 before the financial crisis, in 2008. That compares with a 69 percent increase to 3,311 from 1,961 over the same period nationwide. The index relies on data from 13 top venture-capital firms, …