A new research paper evaluates material extraction costs and supply constraints for 23 promising semiconducting materials that could be used to afford ably scale solar power to terawatt levels. Iron pyrite, copper sulphide and copper oxide were at the top of the list of potential silicon and thin film replacements, with iron pyrite – more …
Magnetic resonance force microscopy (MRFM) is an imaging technique that acquires magnetic resonance images (MRI) at nanometer scales, and possibly at atomic scales in the future. IBM and Stanford combined ultrasensitive magnetic resonance force microscopy (MRFM) with 3D image reconstruction to achieve magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with resolution
Electomagnetic Pulse Devices to disable unshielded electronics have been shrunk to hand grenade size. Below there is also the wireless taser. If you need to stop a robot or human, then the right weapon is available. “EMP grenade technology is out there, but I’ve never had my hands on one,” said Col. Laurie Buckhout, chief …
Brown University researchers have modified iRobots Packbot to recognise such standard hand/arm signals as “follow,” “halt,” “wait” and – of course – “door breach”. iRobots Warrior X700 Robot 40mm Grenade Launcher with ammo stored in barrel storage for rapid (all at once) firing. A 4 barrel version mounted on the iRobot Warrior X700 tracked “droid” …
Hartmut Neven of Google is mapping important machine learning problems to D-Wave’s flavor of Adiabatic Quantum Computer. Binary Classification is described at wikipedia Binary classification is the task of classifying the members of a given set of objects into two groups on the basis of whether they have some property or not. Some typical binary …
New Scientist reports : Scans of the part of the brain responsible for memory have for the first time been used to detect a person’s location in a virtual environment. Using functional MRI (fMRI), researchers decoded the approximate location of several people as they navigated through virtual rooms. The work is continuing to use scans …
Seeking Alpha analyses China trade and inflation numbers. According to an article in Tuesday’s Financial Times: China will reduce export taxes to zero and give more financial support to exporters as it tries to increase its share of global trade in the current crisis, the country’s commerce minister announced on Monday. China would “use all …
From New Scientist: Intelligence is strongly genetic, that doesn’t mean it cannot be improved. “It’s just the opposite,” says Richard Haier, of the University of California, Irvine, who works with Thompson. “If it’s genetic, it’s biochemical, and we have all kinds of ways of influencing biochemistry.” Myelin integrity is an especially promising target for manipulation, …
Here is a 12 page pdf with supplemental information to the research paper on “Lesion Mapping of Cognitive Abilities Linked to Intelligence”. They identified the parts of the brain that are used for verbal comprehension, perceptual organization, working memory and processing speed. The Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) assesses a wide range of cognitive abilities …
CRNano Increased Technical Content With Chris PhoenixChris Phoenix describes robotic control of molecular manufacturing without computation. In high-volume molecular manufacturing, computers can’t be used to control robots handling individual molecules, because computation requires too much power. However, computer-like control can be achieved without the use of computers, which means that robots can still be used …
China ended 2008 with a GDP of 30.1 trillion yuan, which is $4.4 trillion at current exchange rates 6.84 to 1 USD. Japan’s GDP for 2008 was 510.2 trillion yen [@98 yen to 1 USD this is $5.2 trillion.] Japan’s GDP dropped at an annual pace of 12.7 percent in the October-December, 2008 period. Japan …