Virginia Tech College of Engineering researchers have unveiled a life-like, autonomous robotic jellyfish the size and weight of a grown man, 5 foot 7 inches in length and weighing 170 pounds, as part of a U.S. Navy-funded project. The prototype robot, nicknamed Cyro, is a larger model of a robotic jellyfish the same team – …
Doctors typically diagnose cancer via a biopsy, which can be invasive and expensive. A better way to diagnose the disease would be to detect telltale tumor cells floating in the bloodstream, but such a test has proved difficult to develop because stray cancer cells are rare, and it’s difficult to separate them from the mélange …
Virginia Tech researchers liberates high-purity hydrogen under mild reaction conditions at 122 degree Fahrenheit and normal atmospheric pressure. The biocatalysts used to release the hydrogen are a group of enzymes artificially isolated from different microorganisms that thrive at extreme temperatures, some of which could grow at around the boiling point of water. This discovery is …
A dramatic expansion of U.S. production could push global spare capacity to exceed 8 million barrels per day, at which point OPEC could lose price control and crude oil prices would drop, possibly sharply,” the U.S. intelligence community’s internal think tank, the National Intelligence Council, said in its “Global Trends 2030” report in December. “Such …
China is about 30 years from catching up to US miltary spending and about 40-50 years from catching up with a comparable military capability. Even after catching up on budgets, China would lag in training and other factors that would take time to mature. China currently has developed some anti-ship missiles which pose a possible …
1. Russia’s state arms exporter Rosoboronexport has signed a framework agreement with China on the joint development and construction of four non-nuclear Amur-1650 conventional submarines for the Chinese Navy. The contract, worth $2 billion, is expected to be finalized by the parties around 2015. Russian media and experts predicted the two countries may go much …
China’s defense spending will expand by 10.7 percent this year, reaching an official figure of $115.7 billion in 2013. The Pentagon adjusts China’s military budget to about $130-190 billion (an average of $160 billion). China is about 30 years from catching up the USA on military spending but was double the spending of the number …
Economic growth is necessary but not sufficient to accelerate reduction of hunger and malnutrition. Progress has been made against world hunger. However, the number of people suffering from chronic undernourishment is still unacceptably high, and eradication of hunger remains a major global challenge. Economic growth takes time to reach the poor, and may not reach …
In December 2012, Nextbigfuture proposed bringing world extreme poverty below 3% by 2025. Yesterday (April 2, 2013) World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim outlined a bold agenda for the global community toward ending extreme poverty by 2030 and promoting shared prosperity to boost the incomes of the poorest 40 percent of the population in …
A comparison of the global small modular (SMR) projects that are under development in the United States, South Korea, Russia and China. The economics of SMRs challenges the widely held belief that nuclear reactors are characterized by significant economies of scale. According to the standard scaling function, the hypothetical overnight cost (per unit of installed …
First concrete was poured for China’s commercial scale HTR-PM 210 MWe pebble bed reactor on December, 2012 This is scheduled to be completed in 2017 and China is planning factory mass production and further technology refinement for later versions. Future of HTR Development Commercialization: * Duplication, mass production Next project steps: * Super critical steam …