Iran said it launched its first domestically produced satellite, an event likely to prompt new Western concerns about its development of technology with possible military applications. Sputnick was launched October 4, 1957 by the Soviet Union. The surprise launch of Sputnik 2, coupled with the spectacular failure of the United States’ first two Project Vanguard …
Drexler is discussing stages of increasing control over self assembly. This will set up a later post where he will discuss strong control over self assembly. He will show a quantitative measure which will rank the selection of suitability of material for strongly controlled self assembly. The general ranking of suitability of material for strongly …
Singularity University (SU) (www.singularityu.org) will open its doors in June 2009 on the NASA Research Park campus with a nine-week graduate level interdisciplinary curriculum designed to facilitate understanding, collaboration, and innovation across a broad range of carefully chosen scientific and technological disciplines. The curriculum will be broken out into 10 tracks as follows: * future …
IBM has promised the DOE National Nuclear Security Administration a 20 petaflop supercomputer that is scheduled for delivery in 2011. The supercomputer will be called Sequoia. The computer should be ten times more energy efficient per calculation than current supercomputers. Can’t Afford IBM Supercomputers Consider DIY SupercomputersCan’t afford IBM Supercomputers ? Consider following the example …
“The problem of birth defects is related to environmental pollution, especially in eight main coal zones,” said An Huanxiao, the director of Shanxi provincial family planning agency. The comments came as the Chinese government announced that it has launched a screening programme in the eight worst affected areas of the country to establish the extent …
1. Improvements in Life Cycle Energy Efficiency and Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Corn-Ethanol from researchers at the University of Nebraska Ethanol-to-petroleum output/input ratios ranged from 10:1 to 13:1 but could be increased to 19:1 if farmers adopted high-yield progressive crop and soil management practices. An advanced closed-loop biorefinery with anaerobic digestion reduced GHG emissions by …
A new urine test that is about 80-92% accurate could allow for early detection of coronary artery disease. Coronary artery disease (CAD) is responsible for most of the 1.5 million heart attacks that occur in the United States each year. A cheap and simple test for biomarkers would allow for early detection and monitoring of …
Frontiers of Propulsion Science is the first-ever compilation of emerging science relevant to such notions as space drives, warp drives, gravity control, and faster-than-light travel – the kind of breakthroughs that would revolutionize spaceflight and enable human voyages to other star systems. Although these concepts might sound like science fiction, they are appearing in growing …
Global wind energy capacity grew by 28.8% last year, even higher than the average over the past decade, to reach total global installations of more than 120.8 GW [260 TWh/year] at the end of 2008, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. More than 27 GW of new wind power generation capacity came online in …
The Talk Polywell has been analyzing the latest Navy project for the Inertial Electrostatic (Bussard/IEC) fusion effort. * The contractor will modify/upgrade the existing wiffleball #7 (WB-7) device by installing compact, high temperature coil joints to investigate the electron parallel heat loss. This modified device shall hereafter be identified as Wiffleball #7.1 (WB-7.1). * The …
Recent astronomy news. There are 3 trillion stars in the Milky Way. The Milky way is about 8 times bigger than was thought. We still have a shaky understanding of our own galaxy as refined measurements of star speed in the arms indicates that the volume is about 8 times more than was previously believed. …