1. There are 22 cities with a population over 10 million people today, according to the United Nations. By 2040 there should be 31 more cities with over 10 million people based on current projections. They will predominantly in China with nine and India with eight. The numbers also show that the world is becoming …
Rosenergoatom engineers brought to criticality Beloyarsk 4 – a 789 MWe fast-neutron reactor of the BN-800 design – while its parent Rosatom honoured the operators who commissioned the 5 MWe Obinsk reactor on the same day in 1954. Beloyarsk 4 is fuelled by a mix of uranium and plutonium oxides arranged to produce new fuel …
Ramez Naam makes the point that futurists need to follow what real human nature is and the economics of technology. Ramez provides useful perspective in the video below. * prosaic current actions for improvement are ignored and underestimated (exercise, learning a new skill are choices that can be made that improve more than any drug …
India’s GDP growth is expected to rebound with improved prospects for reforms, real gross domestic product (GDP) growth should increase from 4.7% in 2013-14 to around 6% in 2014-15 and 7% in 2015-16. China is GDP Growth is expected to fall to around 7.3% this year and 7% next year. While a housing crunch could …
Google developers got a preview of Google’s most ambitious Android release yet. With more than 5,000 new APIs (for non-techies, that stands for application programming interfaces) and a new, consistent design approach called material design, we’re continuing to evolve the Android platform so developers can bring to life even more beautiful, engaging mobile experiences. Google …
Nature Communications – High-strength carbon nanotube fibre-like ribbon with high ductility and high electrical conductivity Macroscopic fibres made up of carbon nanotubes exhibit properties far below theoretical predictions and even much lower than those for conventional carbon fibres. Here we report improvements of mechanical and electrical properties by more than one order of magnitude by …
Researchers from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering describe how they have overcome a major issue in carbon nanotube technology by developing a flexible, energy-efficient hybrid circuit combining carbon nanotube thin film transistors with other thin film transistors. This hybrid could take the place of silicon as the traditional transistor material used in electronic chips, …
The US Census released in 2013 population projections to 2060. According to the projections, the population age 65 and older is expected to more than double between 2012 and 2060, from 43.1 million to 92.0 million. The older population would represent just over one in five U.S. residents by the end of the period, up …
A Department of Defense report to Congress looks at Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2014. It is 96 pages and looks at China’s military capability and what if China decided to retake the island of Taiwan by force? A chinese invasion of Taiwan is unlikely at the moment. The election …
A Technology Review article laments that there is a slump in nuclear constuction “worldwide” and that this will mean climate targets will not be met. What really is meant * Japan turned off their 50 nuclear reactors and have not turned them back on and have scaled back their nuclear plans and are mostly using …
SolarCity installs 25% of the residential solar panels in the United States. SolarCity said it was in talks to build a giant solar-panel factory near Buffalo, New York “At a targeted capacity greater than 1 Gigawatt within the next two years, it will be one of the single largest solar panel production plants in the …