In 2012, the world economic forum produced a forecast of what could happen to Europe, the USA and China to 2030. They had a negative scenario for all three if current troubles led the countries or regions to turn inward and protectionist. The two scenarios with some positive results indicate that US adjusts well if …
Russia’s Pravda commented on two weird publications that came out of Hong Kong. The article in Frontline (Hong Kong english language political news) categorically stated that the Chinese Communist Party would collapse in three phases over the next three years, and its reign would end in 2016. First, in 2014 China’s economy will fall, and …
Cornell researchers’ improvement of the performance of lithium-sulfur batteries, a promising alternative to today’s lithium-ion batteries. Two recently published papers, both originating from the lab of Hector Abruña, the Emile M. Chamot Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, describe breakthroughs in the durability and performance of lithium-sulfur battery cathodes, one by using a component of …
In 2009, Nextbigfuture covered the curious case of Brooke Greenberg. At the time she was chronologically 16 years old but physically she was a toddler. Brooke, who passed away last Thursday at the age of 20, had the body and cognitive function of a 1-year-old. She didn’t grow after the age of 5 — and …
General Fusion has opened up its website. Previously much of website required passwords to access. General Fusion has the near-term goal of developing a full-scale prototype fusion power plant for the comparative bargain of $500 million. In September, General Fusion added some serious scientific muscle to its team, appointing two renowned names in energy and …
Brian Wang was interviewed by Sam Roudman of Motherboard for an article on nuclear fusion. Amongst the most secretive and best-financed is Tri-Alpha energy. They’ve released nothing more than a Powerpoint, but have raised somewhere over $140 million from the likes of Goldman Sachs, Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, Russian tech investment firm Rusnano, and, weirdly, …
There is a design for a new new space launch system that would leverage an inflatable tower design. Fisher Space Systems LLC has created the design for an inflated tower combined with a rotating system that will fling a reusable launch vehicle to space. It will only need a reusable upper stage. It could also …
Intel will fabricate starting in 2014 high-end Altera Stratix 10 parts that use four ARM Cortex-A53 cores and it will Intel’s 14 nm Finfet process. Industry watchers will be interested to kick the tires on the combination of Intel’s leading-edge process and ARM’s 64-bit cores. Altera claims the Stratix 10 parts in Intel’s 14nm process …
Helion Energy has announced that its fourth prototype nuclear fusion system is operational. Previous prototypes demonstrated the breakthroughs that made possible a new path toward commercial fusion and yielded significant fusion yields with Helion’s design. This prototype will take Helion one step closer to commercial scale fusion. Helion Energy also won a Clean Tech competition. …
On October 18th it announced an agreement in principle between Canada and the European Union on a Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). More than a blessing for insomniacs, CETA is a prototype for bigger things to come, especially the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) now under negotiation between the EU and the United …
The Trillion Sensor Summit had more than 50 presenters from around the globe shared their thinking with more than 200 executives. “This could be the biggest business in the history of electronics,” Bryzek told the crowd, citing estimates from Cisco Systems and GE of a $15 trillion IoT (Internet of Things) market by 2020. Industry …