Carbon Nanostructure Stronger than Diamond By Strength to Density

Researchers have architecturally designed plate-nanolattices – nanometer-sized carbon structures – that are stronger than diamonds as a ratio of strength to density. The team’s design has been shown to improve on the average performance of cylindrical beam-based architectures by up to 639 percent in strength and 522 percent in rigidity. They designed and fabricating the …

Read more

Comparing Research budgets of 1970s Bell Labs to DARPA and Google Today

In 1974, AT and T’s US $26 billion in revenues—the equivalent of $82 billion today—represents 1.4 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. The next-largest enterprise, sprawling General Motors Corp., is a third its size, dwarfed by AT and T’s $75 billion in assets, more than 100 million customers, and nearly a million employees. Bell …

Read more

Spacex raises $1 billion from Google and Fidelity

Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) has raised a billion dollars in a financing round with two new investors, Google and Fidelity. They join existing investors Founders Fund, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Valor Equity Partners and Capricorn. Google and Fidelity will collectively own just under 10% of the company. SpaceX designs, manufactures, and launches the world’s most advanced …

Read more

Carnival of Nuclear Energy 233

1. Atomic Insights – Neural network analysis “unequivocally” reveals threshold dose response in atomic bomb victims Radiation doses below about 100 – 200 mSv suppress cancer. That bold, conventional wisdom-challenging statement is supported by an incredibly important paper titled Cancer risk at low doses of ionizing radiation: artificial neural networks inference from atomic bomb survivors …

Read more

Life created with two synthetic bases for 6 DNA letters with Original Four G, T, C, A and now X and Y and this expands amino acids from 20 to 172

From the moment life gained a foothold on Earth the diversity of organisms has been written in a DNA code of four letters. The latest study moves life beyond G, T, C and A – the molecules or bases that pair up in the DNA helix – and introduces two new letters of life: X …

Read more

Cyborg roaches could be used to map collapsed buildings

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed software that allows them to map unknown environments – such as collapsed buildings – based on the movement of a swarm of insect cyborgs, or “biobots.” “We focused on how to map areas where you have little or no precise information on where each biobot is, such …

Read more

Icarus Interstellar Fusion and Beamed Propulsion Starship Studies and Eight other Projects

Project Icarus President Richard Obousy gave an overview of the projects and work of the Icarus interstellar starship studies to the Centuari Dreams website. Project Icarus is an engineering challenge and designer capability exercise to design an unmanned fusion based, interstellar starship capable of exploring a star system within 15 light-years. The total mission duration …

Read more

Hyper fuel efficient 150 Person electric aircraft doable without superconductors and just todays technology

ESAero,studied hybrid propulsion systems, became convinced that conventional, non-superconducting electrical systems could be made to work in a large aircraft. It was funded by NASA Ames to take the ECO-150 concept and rework it around ambient-temperature generator and motor technology available to meet NASA’s 2020-25 timeframe N+2 goals (40% less fuel used, lower emissions and …

Read more

Google Maps Owns the World

GE just announced a partnership with Google to license Google maps for use in its geographic information system (GIS) dubbed Smallworld. Smallworld is a set of software tools used by engineers to help design and manage things like electric grids, pipelines, telecom networks and other large, critical systems of stuff that guys in trucks tend …

Read more

Trapping sunlight with microbeads for thinner and cheaper solar cells

In five to seven years, solar cells will have become much cheaper and only one-twentieth as thick as current solar cells. The trick is to deceive the sunlight with microbeads. Nanoscientists are currently developing the next generation of solar cells, which will be twenty times thinner than current solar cells. Over 90 per cent of …

Read more

DNA Hydrogel – Organic metamaterial flows like a liquid, remembers its shape

A new material created by Cornell researchers is so soft that it can flow like a liquid and then, strangely, return to its original shape. Rather than liquid metal, it is a hydrogel, a mesh of organic molecules with many small empty spaces that can absorb water like a sponge. It qualifies as a “metamaterial” …

Read more