North Dakota Bakken oil production jumped over 10% in October to 35 million barrels in the month which is up from 31.6 million in September. This puts its just short of previous production peaks in 2015. Rystad Energy’s comprehensive well data for the United States shows that domestic oil production could pass 9.9 million barrels …
The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook (WEO) forecasts global growth at 3.2 percent in 2016 and 3.5 percent in 2017, a downward revision of 0.2 percent and 0.1 percent, respectively, compared with the January 2016 Update. “Lower growth means less room for error,” said Maurice Obstfeld, IMF Economic Counsellor and Director of Research. “Persistent slow …
On 23 September, at the Shenzhen International Biotech Leaders Summit in China, BGI revealed that it would start selling the pigs as pets. The animals weigh about 15 kilograms when mature, or about the same as a medium-sized dog. The institute quoted a price tag of 10,000 yuan (US$1,600) for the micropigs, but that was …
The Air Force expects to certify SpaceX no later than June to compete for space launches, under an updated agreement that streamlines the certification process Once certified, SpaceX, with its Falcon 9 launch vehicle, can compete for national security space launches against United Launch Alliance, the Boeing-Lockheed Martin team that currently has a monopoly on …
2015 Congressional Research report – Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress The Navy’s proposed FY2016 budget requests funding for the procurement of nine new battle force ships (i.e., ships that count against the Navy’s goal for achieving and maintaining a fleet of 306 ships). The nine ships include two Virginia-class …
A 30-kilowatt fiber laser weapon system from Lockheed Martin successfully disabled a vehicle engine from a distance of more than one mile. In the test — said to represent the highest power ever documented by a laser weapon of its type — the beam from the Advanced Test High Energy Asset, or ATHENA, quickly burned …
The French space agency, CNES, on Dec. 11 said it is partnering with Google on the Google X Project Loon to deploy more than 100,000 balloons in the stratosphere to provide high-speed Internet to regions without it. CNES has maintained an active balloon launch program for studies of upper-atmospheric air currents, the chemical composition of …
Nextbigfuture described a future where China helps build out the infrastructure that the rest of the developing world needs over the next few decades. The shortfall of infrastructure is lowering the potential GDP growth by 2-3% in many countries. An extra 2% GDP growth globally would accelerate the arrival of a world with a quadrillion …
The International Monetary Fund reports that in 2014, China, not the United States, has the world’s largest economy. The official point of China passing the US is in October. By the end of 2014, China will make up 16.48% of the world’s purchasing-power adjusted GDP (or $17.632 trillion), and the US will make up just …
[Ludwig Maximilians University] Russia, Canada and China are projected to gain farmland this century as the world warms up due to climate change, even as global crop-growing capacity may decline, a German study showed. Climate change could add 5.6 million square kilometers (2.2 million square miles) of land for crops in the 2071-2100 period compared …
A flexible display incorporating graphene in its pixels’ electronics has been successfully demonstrated by the Cambridge Graphene Centre and Plastic Logic, the first time graphene has been used in a transistor-based flexible device. Graphene is a two-dimensional material made up of sheets of carbon atoms. It is among the strongest, most lightweight and flexible materials …