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 …
Viruses can be now detected in fluids and their detection is of major importance in medical diagnostics. However, despite these recent advances, current assays are time consuming and labour intensive. Professor Hegner’s research shows a more efficient and practical system in detecting the viruses by using micro-sized cantilevers to directly detect viruses binding to membrane …
A team led by Prof. Yosi Shacham-Diamand, vice-dean of Tel Aviv University’s Faculty of Engineering, has developed a nano-sized laboratory, complete with a microscopic workbench, to measure water quality in real time. Their “lab on a chip” is a breakthrough in the effort to keep water safe from pollution and bioterrorist threats, pairing biology with …
The therapy aims to stop HIV re-producing A one-time gene therapy that puts an anti- HIV RNA weapon into blood cells is safe and, in higher doses and stronger form, could make the body resist the AIDS virus, a clinical trial suggests. This “major advance in the field” is the largest clinical trial ever to …
Carnival of Space week 90 is up at 21st Century Waves This site contributed the article on the computing power of a full fledge Kardashev III galactic civilization Centauri Dreams looks at protecting a space ship traveling at 20-30% of lightspeed from dust. For a starship moving at 0.3 c, a typical grain of carbonaceous …
Chemists at New York University and China’s Nanjing University have developed a two-armed nanorobotic device that can manipulate molecules within a device built from DNA. The device is described in the latest issue of the journal Nature Nanotechnology. [via Nanowerk.com] Nadrian Seeman, co-author: “This is a programmable unit that allows researchers to capture and maneuver …
A Goldman Sachs study on “The Expanding Middle: The Exploding Middle Class and Falling Global Inequality” While America laments the loss of its middle class as there is divergence between a mass affluent and wealthy class and those at middle class, there is the rise of the global middle class. The global middle class is …