CDC COVID Forecast

This week’s national CDC COVID ensemble forecast is that the number of newly reported COVID-19 deaths will likely increase over the next 4 weeks. The CDC expects 2,000 to 5,300 new deaths likely reported in the week ending June 11, 2022. The national ensemble predicts that a total of 1,008,000 to 1,018,000 COVID-19 deaths will …

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Less Fuel for Mars to Supply High Earth Orbit

If large scale production is created on Mars, then it would be more efficient to supply high Earth orbit from Mars than from the surface of the Earth. It would take 60-70% of the fuel to send space based solar panels or satellites to GTO (geostationary transfer orbit). Here is a Nextbigfuture video describing how …

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Algorithm to Improve Reconstruction Exoplanet Images from Gravity Lensing

Going beyond physical limitations of telescopes, Stanford University astrophysicists have been working on a new conceptual imaging technique that would be 1,000 times more precise than the strongest imaging technology currently in use. By taking advantage of gravity’s warping effect on space-time, called lensing, scientists could potentially manipulate this phenomenon to create imaging far more …

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Why Tesla Can Produce 4+ Million Cars per Year in 2023

Farzad Mesbahi, who used to work at Tesla, has some rough calculations of how the supply chain and Shanghai shutdown constrained impacted Tesla. He roughly estimates that Tesla could have produced 340k cars in Q1 2022 from only Shanghai and Fremont if there were no supply chain constraints. This was an *exceptionally* difficult quarter due …

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DARPA projects aims for new magnetic gradiometers able to detect femtoTesla fields without shielding

By boosting the ability to detect superweak magnetic fields, a new DARPA program could open pathways to sensors with uses ranging from biological imaging to magnetically based navigation. Each beat of your heart or burst of brain activity relies on tiny electrophysiological currents that generate minuscule ripples in the surrounding magnetic field. These field variations …

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Second hardest transparent material developed from common industrial ceramic silicon nitride

Scientists have for the first time developed a transparent sample of a popular industrial ceramic that is the second hardest material after diamond and can withstand substantially higher temperatures. The super-hard window made of cubic silicon nitride can potentially be used under extreme conditions like in engines, researchers said. Scientists have synthesised the first transparent …

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Improved materials for interfacing neural tissue with electronic biomedical devices

Modern electronic biomedical devices are enabling a wide range of sophisticated health interventions, from seizure detection and Parkinson’s disease therapy to functional artificial limbs, cochlear implants and smart contact lenses. An effective direct interfacing material is essential to communication between these devices and neural tissue, which includes nerves and the brain. In recent years, a …

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Singapore spends three times less the USA on healthcare and gets better results

Singapores healthcare system has excellent health outcomes while spending, as of 2014, is just 5 percent of G.D.P. on health care. By comparison, a typical Western European country that year spent around 10 percent; the United States spent 17 percent. Singaporean vision is built around personal responsibility and private spending, but also a degree of …

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If both lower CO2 sensitivity and net positive up to 3 degrees of warming were correct then global warming is not net bad until 2080 to 2180

There is a lot of research that the world’s climate is less sensitive to CO2 than the main current models of climate change. Without any feedbacks, a doubling of CO2 (which amounts to a forcing of 3.7 W/m2) would result in 1 °C global warming, which is easy to calculate and is undisputed. The remaining …

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Japan, India and China still turning to more coal throughout the 2020s which means more CO2 and air pollution

Coal is undergoing a renaissance in emerging and developed countries in Asia, buoyed by technical breakthroughs and looming questions about squaring development with energy security. Japan, India and China will try to blunt the air pollution effects from the use of coal which cause millions of premature deaths in India and China and tens of …

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