Month: August 2014

DARPA aims to safely make engineered biological systems more robust and stable to enable new groundbreaking capabilities

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The development of increasingly sophisticated techniques and tools to sequence, synthesize and manipulate genetic material has led to the rapidly maturing discipline of synthetic biology. To date, work in synthetic biology has focused primarily on manipulating individual species of domesticated organisms to perform specific tasks, such as producing medicines or fuels. These species tend to …

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Supercavitation projectiles potentially have 200,000 less drag than a regular object in water

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Here is a summary of supercavitation an article from Caltech written in 2001. This relates to a recent report that chinese researchers have made progress overcoming a few of the problems for implementing supercativation. For ships traveling faster than 60 miles per hour, propeller-induced cavitation is unavoidable. Supercavitation offers a solution. In supercavitation, the small …

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Shanghai to San Francisco in 100 minutes by Chinese supersonic supercavitating submarine with molten salt nuclear reactors

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[South China Morning Post] China has moved a step closer to creating a supersonic submarine that could travel from Shanghai to San Francisco in less than two hours. Since drag is proportional to the density of the surrounding fluid, the drag on a super-cavitating projectile is dramatically reduced, allowing supercavitating projectiles to attain higher speeds …

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CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing corrects Duchenne muscular dystrophy in mice

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Researchers used a technique called CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing, which can precisely remove a mutation in DNA, allowing the body’s DNA repair mechanisms to replace it with a normal copy of the gene. The benefit of this over other gene therapy techniques is that it can permanently correct the “defect” in a gene rather than just …

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Optomec Receives Order from FAPS Institute to Enable Printing of ‘Artificial Muscles’

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Aerosol Jet Print Engine will be used to develop automated manufacturing of bio-electronic actuators for robotic and prosthesis applications Optomec, a leading provider of production grade additive manufacturing systems , today announced that the Factory Automation and Production Systems (FAPS) Institute at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) has purchased an Aerosol Jet Quad Print Engine. The versatile …

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Carnival of Nuclear Energy 223

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1. From ANS Nuclear Cafe – Unintended Anti-Nuclear Consequences Lurking in the EPA Clean Power Plan” by Remy Devoe A detailed analysis of the U.S. EPA Clean Power Plan indicates that 15 states are incentivized to shut down all their nuclear units and replace them with carbon-intensive natural gas. This would be a most detrimental …

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Moving to Canada will allow Burger King to pay 26.5% taxes instead of 35%

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Burger King (BKW) could lower its tax bill through a merger with Canadian coffee and doughnut chain Tim Hortons (THI) and moving its headquarters to Ontario, Canada. KPMG ranked Canada first among 10 countries for general tax competitiveness this year, saying tax costs in Canada are 46.4% lower than the U.S. The U.S. has federal …

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Proximal micromagnets increases the speed of quantum manipulation in silicon without adding measurable noise

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Researchers report the fabrication and operation of a qubit in a double-quantum dot in a silicon/silicon–germanium (Si/SiGe) heterostructure in which the qubit states are singlet and triplet states of two electrons. The significant advance over previous work is that a proximal micromagnet is used to create a large local magnetic field difference between the two …

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DARPA project to develop revolutionary miniaturization and assembly methods at scales a 100,000 times smaller than current state-of-the-art technology

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DARPA has created the Atoms to Product (A2P) program to help overcome the challenges of working at the nanoscale to 100 microns. The program seeks to develop enhanced technologies for assembling atomic-scale pieces. It also seeks to integrate these components into materials and systems from nanoscale up to product scale in ways that preserve and …

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Comically Obvious Scammers Reduce the False Positives in Identifying Super-Gullible Rubes

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Far-fetched tales of West African riches strike most as comical. Microsoft Research analysis suggests that is an advantage to the attacker, not a disadvantage. Since his attack has a low density of victims the Nigerian scammer has an over-riding need to reduce false positives. By sending an email that repels all but the most gullible …

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