China’s High-Speed Rail Diplomacy Hits Full Speed with 20 countries in deep talks about high speed rail with China involvement

China’s high-speed railroad network surpassed 10,000 kilometers in length, not even counting the track still being built, Li Keqiang has continued his efforts to seek overseas projects. The latest progress came during Li’s three-day visit to Britain in mid-June. The two countries released a statement stating that they “agree to promote substantive cooperation on rail, …

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The World Is Not Running Out of Resources

Matt Ridley gives fives reasons the world is not running out of resources 1. More Productive Land Economists point out that we keep improving the productivity of each acre of land by applying fertilizer, mechanization, pesticides and irrigation. Further innovation is bound to shift the ceiling upward. Jesse Ausubel at Rockefeller University calculates that the …

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Justifying and discussing optimism and pessmism about China

As often arises whenever Nextbigfuture has an article about China, there are various points brought out: 1. Too many articles about China 2. Too much optimism about China’s prospects – some were too optimistic about Japan 3. The expectation that China will stumble badly or collapse I am perfectly willing to consider evidence or strong …

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Better Combustion through plasma could eventually improve the efficiency of jets, trains and cars

Mix together air, fuel, and heat and you get combustion, the chemical reaction that powers most engines in planes, trains and automobiles. And if you throw in some ionized gas (plasma), it turns out, you can sustain combustion even in conditions that would otherwise snuff out the reaction: at low air pressure, in high winds …

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Energy Information Administration estimates Bakken will produce over 1 million barrels per day next month

The latest monthly update of estimated crude oil production in the Bakken region of North Dakota and Montana shows total wellhead output topping 1 million barrels of oil per day (bbl/d) in December, 2013. The update appears in the most recent issue of the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Drilling Productivity Report (DPR). The Bakken region …

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Coal high in fluorine and iron pyrite makes hydroflouric acid to mess up bones and teeth of people in Guizhou, China

Some coal is high in fluorine and also has iron pyrite. The combination is deadly – when burned it make hydrofluoric acid. (H/T Chris Phoenix Excess fluorine consumption can often cause dental fluorinosis, a condition in which excess fluorine is deposited in the teeth, discoloring them. In more severe cases, fluorine deposition in the bones …

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Electrowinning process could lower the cost of Titanium by up to 60 percent

A Case Western Reserve University proposal for a low-cost, energy-efficient method to extract the strategic metal titanium from ore has been selected by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy for contract negotiations. This one-year project will be funded by ARPA-E at about $675K through the program on Modern Electro/Thermo-chemical Advances in Light-metal …

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SENS research progress to a replacement thymus to boost aging immune systems and to curing macular degeneration

SENS, Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, is research focused on repairing the seven known damages that are associated with aging. They have published their 2013 research report (26 pages). SENS Research Foundation is funding with the goal of applying it to a primary problem of aging: the decline of the immune system . Only a …

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New metal-organic framework four times better at extracting uranium from seawater

The most advanced system today for extracting uranium from seawater employs plastic fibers with uranium-binding chemical groups grafted onto their surface. Now, researchers led by Wenbin Lin, a professor of chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, have designed a metal-organic framework (MOF) to collect common uranium-containing ions dissolved in seawater. In …

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Grid power backup via Solar power and flywheels at affordable prices

1000 to 3000 watts of solar power that operate stand alone as well as on the grid can be used to provide power during a power outage and provide lower electrical costs at other times. 200 watt standalone solar is $400 or less. 400 watts is $700 or less. 2200 watts can be had for …

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First self-propelled micromotors and microrockets that use the surrounding natural environment as a source of fuel

A team at the University of California, San Diego, has developed two types of self-propelled vehicles — microrockets made of zinc and micromotors made of aluminum. They use fuel from the surrounding environment. An advance in micromotor technology akin to the invention of cars that fuel themselves from the pavement or air, rather than gasoline …

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