There is an iPhone application which assists a person at card counting while playing blackjack in a casino. Using devices to assist in playing in a casino is illegal. It operates in several modes, including a “stealth mode” where the screen is blanked, and can be operated by touching different zones on the screen. It …
Morgan Solar has the Light-Guide Solar Optic (LSO), a thin optical structure made of acrylic and/or glass that internally concentrates sunlight. They are targeting less than $1 per watt by 2011 and close to 30 percent efficiency at costs competitive with thin film. So two to three times cheaper and 50% more efficient that most …
Discovery Channel: Future Weapons. Force Multiplier especially with the frag-12 mini-grenades and high explosive. Accurate out to 175 meters. 120 grenade rounds per minute with 9 foot blast radius. The gist of the story is that the AA-12s have so little recoil that it makes the perfect gun for small robots. AA12 shotgun robots at …
The sawtooth ridges formed by cutting and heating a sapphire crystal serves to guide the self-assembly of nanoscale elements into an ordered pattern over arbitrarily large surfaces. Researchers say the new, easy-to-implement technique may transform the data storage industry. The density achievable with the technology we’ve developed could potentially enable the contents of 250 DVDs …
The Aim High program to make factory mass produced Liquid fluoride thorium reactors to replace coal power worldwide. Dr. Robert Hargraves wrote this up. Kirk Sorensen and Charles Barton over at Thoriumenergy and the many others at the Energy from Thorium forum have helped collect and refine information and plans. FURTHER READING Aim High website …
From the New Scientsit, it would be possible to perform annual tests and give existing drugs to whoever tests positive, the drugs can reduce transmission rates to 1 in 1000. A program of HIV elimination would cost several billion per year more than current treatment but would start costing less in about 2030. Better and …
The largest container ships can hold about 11,000-15000 shipping containers. The ships weigh 170,000 tons. Each container can hold a maximum of 14 tons. The space shuttle could take less than two full containers into space. The Super-Orion nuclear external pulse propulsion rocket had an 8 million ton size and could have taken 3 million …
Contour Crafting, cement-jet printing of buildings, has been studied for use on the moon. Contour Crafting is the only layered fabrication technology which is suitable for large scale fabrication. CC is also capable of using a variety of materials with large aggregates and additives such as reinforcement fibre. Due to its speed and its ability …
New psychological research suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person. Podcasted lectures offer students the chance to replay difficult parts of a lecture and therefore take better notes, says Dani McKinney, a psychologist at the State University of New York …
A 16 page Strategy for Nuclear Energy Research and Development has been put together by Idaho National Labs and the Electric Power Research Institute. Six goals are defined to achieve this vision:1) Maintain today’s nuclear fleet of light water reactors2) Significantly expand the fleet with advanced light water reactors3) Develop non-electric applications for high-temperature reactors4) …
Josh Hall has an interesting part 3 for his Singularity series of articles. Here he talks about the ballparking the number of researchers, developers and resources who are doing the work to advance computer hardware and Moore’s law at 300,000 people and some tens of billions of dollars. The proportion of scientists and engineers in …