Cargill will have a kite sail on a 30,000 ton cargo ship

Cargill has signed an agreement with SkySails GmbH and Co. KG (SkySails) to use wind power technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the shipping industry. SkySails, based in Hamburg, has developed innovative, patented technology that uses a kite which flies ahead of the vessel and generates enough propulsion to reduce consumption of bunker fuel …

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Anthony Atala printed a functioning kidney on stage at the TED conference

Anthony Atala, printed a biocompatible model of a human kidney on stage at the 2011 TED conference Thursday, in a technique that could someday be used to create new organs from a patient’s own tissue rather than relying on donated organs. Atala explained the process whereby scanners build a 3-D image of the kidney, then …

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Opinion, Prediction and Speculation on Egypt

Before this site reviewed various analysis on Egypt from Israeli security and from the Foreign Policy Journal I had said the odds were 2:1 that Mubarak would hold power. The 1/3 odds are not that he would be overthrown by Islamic/Iranian/popular dissent forces. I think the 1/3 is there is some kind of military coup …

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Public version of Israeli security analysis of the Egypt situation

As with Iran in ’79, Islamists could hijack pro-democracy movements; ex-IDF research chief: “We’re on thick ice, but even that melts eventually.” While no analysts here predict any immediate ramifications for Israel’s national security, some said mass protest movements that begin as pro-democracy uprisings could easily be hijacked by Islamists. Advice we have heard from …

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Flexblue underwater power plants

France’s DCNS is proposing small offshore nuclear power plants called Flexblue. Akin to the submarines that DCNS has been making for the French navy for 40 years, Flexblue is a cylindrical unit 100 metres in length and 12 to 15 metres in diameter. Inside would be a small nuclear power reactor and well as steam …

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Sander Olson Interviews Charlie Kemp about the future of Healthcare robotics

Here is the Charlie Kemp interview by Sander Olson. Sander Olson has provided dozens of first hand interviews to Nextbigfuture. Sander is an online journalist who has been working parttime with Nextbigfuture. Dr. Kemp is a Professor at the biomedical engineering department at Georgia Tech and Emory University. His lab is focused on developing robots …

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IBM Watson Jeopardy AI matches will air February 14-16, 2011

Jeopardy! will take two of its most popular former contestants — Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter to compete against Watson, a computer program developed by IBM’s artificial intelligence team. UPDATE: Ray Kurzweil, Stephen Wolfram and others discuss the importance and the context of what Watson on Jeopardy means for AI and society 0. The Atlantic …

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My God its three times more full of stars

Astronomers have used powerful instruments on the Keck Observatory in Hawaii to detect the faint signature of red dwarfs in eight massive, relatively nearby galaxies called elliptical galaxies, which are located between about 50 million and 300 million light years away. They discovered that the red dwarfs, which are only between 10 and 20 percent …

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United States Strategies for the Korean Peninsula

The Brookings Institute had an opinion piece which suggested cutting deals to get China’s support in curbing North Korea. *The only real hope of getting North Korea to relinquish its nuclear weapons is to apply such significant economic pressure that the regime is forced to make a choice between economic collapse and the verifiable dismantling …

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Brazil Libra Field could have 15 billion barrels of oil and Enhanced oil recovery for the North Sea

Brazil said the government’s Libra field may hold “gigantic” reserves of as much as 15 billion barrels, almost twice initial estimates, which would make it the biggest discovery in the Americas in more than three decades. A deposit of 15 billion barrels would be almost twice the size of state-controlled Petroleo Brasileiro SA’s nearby Tupi …

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NIA’s ITP Confirms: Resveratrol Does Not Extend Lifespan; Limited Benefit to Rapamycin

SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) reserachers reviewed the results of the serendipitous late-life lifespan study of rapamycin (sirolimus/Rapamune®), an inhibitor of the mammalian Target of Rapamycin (mTOR) pathway, through the NIA’s Interventions Testing Program (ITP), “a multi-institutional study investigating treatments with the potential to extend lifespan and delay disease and dysfunction in mice.” This …

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