– President Xi Jinping’s announcement Thursday that China will cut its military by 300,000 troops was couched in the language of peace. Yet analysts say that it was intended as a move to modernize and strengthen, not diminish, the country’s armed forces. Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at Australian National University, said …
Instead of engineering cells to work as tiny individuals, researchers are working on a new class of cellular machines that “talk” to each other – and behave in more sophisticated ways. Put simply, synthetic biology is going multicellular. “Initially, there was more emphasis on engineering individual cells and real progress was made,” says Ron Weiss …
8K ultra-high definition (UHD) resolution television unit shipments have yet to begin commercial volume roll out, shipments will steadily increase over the next five years reaching nearly 1 million units by 2019, according to a new report from IHS. 8K UHD TVs offer a resolution of 7680 x 4320 pixels and are forecast to reach …
Of Japan’s 43 operable reactors, only seven are likely to be turned on in the next few years, down from 14 reactors the Reuters news agency predicted would return to operation in an analysis last year. The survey also found that nine reactors are unlikely to ever restart, while the fate of the remaining 26 …
Researchers are studying the unique swimming techniques of a simply designed yet highly maneuverable jellyfish-like creature in order to inspire designs for underwater vehicles of the future. Dubbed Nanomia bijuga, it’s a member of the siphonophores, a group of gelatinous planktonic creatures that are related to jellyfish, anemones and coral. Similar to coral, the two-inch …
Arx Pax is moving beyond hoverboards to take its magnetic technology off the Earth entirely. The company announced a partnership deal to bring its magnetic field manipulation technology to NASA, with two specific purposes in mind (and many more to come): first, to retrieve small satellites, and second, to create microgravity environments here on Earth. …
It’s already possible to use tiny granules of glass in a powder bed with conventional 3-D printing techniques like jetting and sintering, but the products turn out opaque. Now researchers at MIT have demonstrated the first-ever machine that can print molten glass through a nozzle and make transparent glass objects layer by layer according to …
MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) announced a new $25 million research center funded by Toyota to further the development of autonomous vehicle technologies, with the goal of reducing traffic casualties and potentially even developing a vehicle incapable of getting into an accident. Announced at a press conference in California, the Toyota-CSAIL Joint …
Researchers have developed a method for printing optical holographic lenses that could greatly simplify their fabrication. Because the method can be performed quickly and easily, it could potentially be used by astronauts to print lenses while in space for holographic lens telescopes. While current holographic lens fabrication methods are often expensive, time-consuming, and labor-intensive, the …
Oshkosh Defense was awarded a $6.7 billion contract, Aug. 25, for production of the joint light tactical vehicle, or JLTV. Col. John Cavedo, the former JLTV program manager, said the average unit procurement cost will be below the original $399,000 acquisition report, when all the kits are included, in base year 2012 dollars. The average …
The potential for improved human intelligence is enormous. Cognitive ability is influenced by thousands of genetic loci, each of small effect. If all were simultaneously improved, it would be possible to achieve, very roughly, about 100 standard deviations of improvement, corresponding to an IQ of over 1,000. We can’t imagine what capabilities this level of …