China high speed rail system on track to about 12,000 miles of network by 2015

China’s high-speed rail system has quickly grown to over 6,000 miles (9,700 km) in five years, and will expand to 19,000 kilometers (11,800 miles) by 2015. It is already transporting some 2 million passengers a day on trains that are rarely delayed, and which go nearly 200 miles an hour, twice as many passengers as …

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400 tons of mini carbon nanotube solar sails can be used to accelerate a 200 ton starship to 4.5% of lightspeed in 156 days

Adam Crowl and Crowlspace details “Sail-Beam” or “Macron Beam” propulsion of humans in spaceships to about 4.5% of lightspeed. Quarter-wave sails made of Carbon Nano-Tubes (CNTs) can achieve high speeds by slingshotting near the sun and then pushed by the solar energy of the Sun. Dropping to 0.019 AU, the final velocity is 5.6% of …

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Progress on superresolution cameras with 4 gigapixels and then 50 gigapixels and ultimately towards the physical limit of about 100 petapixels

The 1.5 gigapixel AWARE 10 camera, Triton, was completed in October 2013. A 4 gigapixel AWARE-10 is being completed and refined now. There is continuing research and work towards 10 gigapixel and 50 gigapixel cameras. Duke is working with DARPA on gigapixel cameras and eventually petapixel cameras. What is the fundamental limit of pixel count? …

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150 Megapixel CMOS image sensor

Gpixel Inc., a Changchun, China, startup founded in 2013, has designed and produced the world’s highest-resolution CMOS image sensor using the TS18IS manufacturing process technology at the foundry Tower Semiconductor Ltd. in Migdal Haemek, Israel. Gpixel’s 150-megapixel full-frame CMOS image sensor (GMAX3005) has a resolution of 30,000 pixels by 5,000 pixels and is intended for …

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China has mini-stimulus of about $300 billion which is about 3% of the $10 trillion economy

1. China outlined a package of measures including railway spending and tax relief to support the economy and create jobs after a slowdown endangered Premier Li Keqiang’s target of 7.5 percent growth this year. It’s a mini-stimulus package designed to stabilize growth,” said Xu Gao, chief economist with Everbright Securities Co. in Beijing. “As the …

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Stem cell paper had problems with a chart and a picture but Researchers claim the process of acid bath conversion of stem cells does work

A committee investigating problems in papers claiming a method to apply stress to create embryonic like cells has found the lead researcher guilty of scientific misconduct. Nextbigfuture covered the research back in October, 2013 There are problems with the paper but so far the researchers are firmly standing behind the validity of the work. They …

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Plasma Jet Magneto Inertial Fusion ARPA-E and Los Alamos National Lab Plans for 2027 relevant gain

PJMIF involves converging plasma jets that are launched from symmetrically distributed plasma rail-guns (or plasma guns), so as jets come in, they merge and form a plasma liner that compresses the plasmoid target (spheromak or FRC), which reaches fusion conditions at peak compression. There appears to be a sweet spot where the burning plasma density …

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Plasma Jet Driven Magneto-Inertial Fusion is an Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF)-Magnetic Confinement Fusion (MCF) hybrid approach

Human hopes of reaching stars other than the Sun are currently limited by the maturity of advanced propulsion technologies. One of the few candidate propulsion systems for providing interstellar flight capabilities is nuclear fusion. In the past many fusion propulsion concepts have been proposed and some of them even explored in high detail (Project Daedalus), …

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Carnival of Nuclear Energy 202

1. ANS Nuclear Cafe: What Did We Learn From Three Mile Island? Rod Adams on the 35th anniversary of the accident at Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station — lessons learned and lessons still being learned. 2. At Nuke Power Talk, Gail Marcus makes a case for public comment on reactor restarts in Japan. Even …

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Taiwan has hundreds of thousands protesting China trade pact

Hundreds of thousands of student-led protesters dressed in black gathered along Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office in a protest over President Ma Ying-jeou and the Cross-Strait Trade in Services Agreement. Student activist Lin Fei-fan claimed over 500,000 people attended the rally, while protesters outside of the Legislative Yuan claimed that they numbered …

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