A 70-pound “cheetah” robot designed by MIT researchers may soon outpace its animal counterparts in running efficiency: In treadmill tests, the researchers have found that the robot — about the size and weight of an actual cheetah — wastes very little energy as it trots continuously for up to an hour and a half at …
Colin Bruce is a physicist and science writer living in Oxford. He is an expert in mathematical paradoxes and a lover of mysteries. He has written books like the Einstein Paradox And Other Science Mysteries Solved By Sherlock Holmes. He has a 30 page proposal for Guided Impact Fusion ABSTRACT There is a cheap, practicable …
MIT researchers have produced a new kind of photovoltaic cell based on sheets of flexible graphene coated with a layer of nanowires. The approach could lead to low-cost, transparent and flexible solar cells that could be deployed on windows, roofs or other surfaces. Illustration shows the layered structure of the new device, starting with a …
Orbitec has flown a radical new engine technology that promises to cut the size, weight and therefore the cost of putting a rocket – and payload – into space. Regular rocket engines get incredibly hot, reaching temperatures upwards of 3,000C (5,400F) or more, hot enough to melt the metal chamber in which the rocket fuel …
1. Commercial operation of the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Project has been delayed to January, 2013 It is India’s first 1,000MW first unit. 2. Russia has told India that Kudankulam nuclear power plants 3 and 4 would cost “double”, after New Delhi decided that the next two reactors would come under the new civil nuclear liability …
Beijing’s leadership say they want to boost imports and speed the integration of rural migrants into cities as ways to boost domestic consumption, according to reports in China’s state-owned news agency, Xinhua. China needed to show “more courage to reform,” the statement said. The conference was chaired by the incoming premier, Li Keqiang, and focused …
Slashgear – SamMobile reports that their sources have said a new device known internally as “Project J” will be announced in April of next year, and they say it’s the Galaxy S IV, which is currently rumored to come with a 5-inch 1080p display, and quad-core processor, a couple gigabytes of RAM, and a 13MP …
Wired – The 3-D printing industry is on track to be a $3.1 billion business by 2016 and the innovations on display this week show its foundation is growing — both in revenue and in physical print size. The big news out of Euromold is really big — a 3-D printer so large that it …
China has failed to build a reliable, high-performance jet engine to end its dependence on Russian and Western makers for equipping its military and commercial aircraft. Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC), the country’s dominant military and commercial aviation contractor, is hopeful the government will back a multi-billion dollar plan to build a high-performance engine. …
Arxiv (24 pages, researchers from France, Japan and the UK)- Memristors are continuously tunable resistors that emulate synapses. Conceptualized in the 1970s, they traditionally operate by voltage-induced displacements of matter, but the mechanism remains controversial. Purely electronic memristors have recently emerged based on well-established physical phenomena with albeit modest resistance changes. Here we demonstrate that …
Texas field production of crude oil is at 1.834 million barrels of oil per day in May, 2012. Texas production is at oil production levels last seen in 1991. There is a difference in how the EIA is calculating Texas field production versus the Texas railway commission tracking of crude oil production. The Texas railway …