Despite its imperfections, the interest yield curve in China has been useful in signaling acceleration and slowdowns in economic growth over the past decade. China’s yield curve is signaling a coming slowdown for China’s economy that could be exacerbated by China’s high level of leverage. Barrons has an article by CME Group’s Erik Norland that …
The Carnival of Space 524 is up at Urban Astronomer. Universe Today – Mars Express Captures Mars’ Moving Bow Shock For many decades, astronomers have been aware that bow shocks form upstream of a planet, where interaction between solar wind and the planet causes energetic particles to slow down and gradually be diverted. Where the …
It was estimated that in 1998, LaserDisc players were in approximately 2% of U.S. households (roughly two million). By comparison, in 1999, players were in 10% of Japanese households and a total of 3.6 million LaserDisc players were sold there. A total of 16.8 million LaserDisc players were sold worldwide, of which 9.5 million were …
Neither HTC nor Facebook/Oculus has released sales figures for their respective VR (Virtual Reality) headsets. Analyst estimates are less than 500,000 units apiece. This means that Facebook paid $3 billion for Oculus and has made less than $500 million in VR sales. Sony did put out some sales figures for its Playstation VR headset in …
Nature Physics – Efficient generation of energetic ions in multi-ion plasmas by radio-frequency heating Researchers describe a new technique for the efficient generation of high-energy ions with electromagnetic ion cyclotron waves in multi-ion plasmas. The discussed ‘three-ion’ scenarios are especially suited for strong wave absorption by a very low number of resonant ions. To observe …
National magnet lab reached a record of 41.4 teslas at 1:10 p.m. on Aug. 21 with a resistive magnet. It was the culmination of two and a half intense years of design and development. In so doing, the lab reclaimed the record for the world’s strongest resistive magnet, which it had held for 19 years …
An international research team led by scientists at The University of Texas at Dallas and Hanyang University in South Korea has developed high-tech yarns that generate electricity when they are stretched or twisted. Researchers describe “twistron” yarns and their possible applications, such as harvesting energy from the motion of ocean waves or from temperature fluctuations. …
For the last two decades, researchers started comparing the health of diabetics on metformin to those taking other diabetes drugs. Metformin-takers tended to be healthier in all sorts of ways. They lived longer and had fewer cardiovascular events, and in at least some studies they were less likely to suffer from dementia and Alzheimer’s. Most …
In May, the LPP Fusion research team’s ongoing effort to clean off the oxides from the electrodes of our FF-1 experimental fusion device has made progress, but is not completed yet. they have succeeded in doubling the temperature of the microwave-heated plasma that does the cleaning. They also have convincing evidence that the oxides are …
Researchers report on D-D fusion neutron emission in a plasma device with an energy input of only 0.1 Joules, within a range where fusion events have been considered very improbable. The results presented here are the consequence of scaling rules we have derived, thus being the key point to assure the same energy density plasma in …
An animated data-driven documentary about war and peace, The Fallen of World War II looks at the human cost of the second World War and sizes up the numbers to other wars in history, including trends in recent conflicts. The Soviet Union lost (8.7 million official Soviet statistic but some estimate 14 million soldiers) to …