A new computer simulation has revealed a self-healing behavior in a common ceramic that may lead to development of radiation-resistant materials for nuclear power plants and waste storage. The materials could make nuclear plants that need less maintenance and which last longer which improves the economics of power generation. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s …
I am presenting disruption events for humans and also for biospheres and planets and correlating them with historical frequency and scale. There has been previous work on categorizing and classifying extinction events. There is Bostroms paper and there is also the work by Jamais Cascio and Michael Anissimov on classification and identifying risks (presented below). …
One day soon a biosensing nanodevice developed by Arizona State University researcher Wayne Frasch may eliminate long lines at airport security checkpoints and revolutionize health screenings for diseases like anthrax, cancer and antibiotic resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) Frasch works with the enzyme F1-adenosine triphosphatase, better known as F1- ATPase. This enzyme, only 10 to 12 …
Carnival of Space week 45 is up at missyfrye.net Centauri Dreams talks about replication machines and space colonization Centauri Dreams was examining the issue based on another article at George Dvorsky’s sentient developments on seven ways to control the galaxy with self replicating probes. I recently took a look at these visions and came up …
Michael Anissimov has another article related to the defence of transhumanism from misguided attacks. Transhumanism (sometimes symbolized by >H or H+), a term often used as a synonym for “human enhancement”, is an international intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of new sciences and technologies to enhance human mental and physical abilities and aptitudes, …
There is the possibility that single molecular nanomagnets or nanoparticle nanomagnets could be used to create powerful quantum computers. If quantum tunneling could be controlled in nanomagnets then they could create quantum computer gates or devices. The current work identifies that quantum tunneling can be turned on and off in nanomagnets. According to quantum mechanics, …
McKinsey Global has an energy productivity plan (36 pages) An additional $170 billion per year invested in energy efficiency can provide 17% average internal rate of return and cut projected energy demand growth by half by 2020. We could use existing technologies to pay for themselves. It would provide up to half of the global …
A prism of engineered material — metamaterial comprised of an arrangement of nano-coils of precious metals such as gold or silver — embedded in a solid glass-like material. The prism structure has a negative refractive index, which makes it truly transparent to light, allowing it to pass freely through with no reflection. This site was …
During the fourth quarter of 2007, Marathon Oil completed the acquisition of more than 70,000 net leaseholdacres in the Bakken Shale play in North Dakota. The acreage brings Marathon’s total Bakken Shale leasehold to more than 320,000 net acres. Marathon currently has six rigs running in its Bakken program and ended 2007 with a net …
New materials are making the new generation of skyscrapers safer. The problem for the World Trade Center was that regular steel: Above 750 F, steel starts to lose its structural integrity, and at 1100 F, steel loses 50 percent of its strength. A new formula infuses steel with nanoscale copper particles, this formula could maintain …
The chinese currency advanced twice as fast as in 2006 as policy makers sought to curb inflation and cut a record trade surplus that has strained ties with the U.S. and Europe. `The government will choose to use appreciation of the yuan to solve the inflation problem,’ said Shen Minggao, Citigroup’s Beijing-based economist. `The appreciation …