Nassim Taleb popularized the theory and wrote “the Black Swan”. He has written about the limits of Statistics and in particular limits in the Fourth Quadrant. Applying his advice to avoid optimization, love redundancy applied to Lifeboat Foundation class threats or beneficial high impact technologies. Do not try to optimize only one technology project – …
1. Alan Boyle at msnbc reports that the IEC fusion project is still in limbo awaiting a review of their results and for word on follow up funding. [EMC2 Fusion] is waiting for guidance from a peer-review panel and his funders on whether to proceed to the second phase. “We’ve been pretty busy, but it’s …
CTO of Dwave Systems has mentioned in comments on his site. They will also be showing entanglement related results. We’re tracking fairly well to our earlier projections in most aspects of the project. Our first cut at a 128 qubit processor (Rainier) is going to glass within the next 2 weeks. I’m going to be …
4mm square of new carbon nanotube adhesive holds up a bottle of coke. Image: Science/AAAS Liming Dai, a professor of materials engineering at the University of Dayton, and Zhong Wang, director of the Center for Nanostructure Characterization at Georgia Tech have developed an adhesive made of carbon nanotubes whose structure closely mimics that of gecko …
1. Two independent teams have shown that it is possible to produce stable suspensions of single-layer graphene from graphite crystals using chemical techniques. 2. A numerical model of a cell from the electric eel shows that artificial cells can be built to have higher power output densities and greater energy conversion efficiencies than natural cells, …
North Dakota June 2008 daily production is now over 166,000 barrels of oil per day which is 10,000 barrels per day more than in May 2008 North Dakota is hitting transportation issues getting the oil out of the state. However, oil can still be moved out it just costs more to do it. North Dakota’s …
Biotime the company that will have use of the unlimited disease free stem cell blood supply patent has had a stock price increase of over 100% since the blood supply news. Biotime is now worth over 41 million dollars BioTime is at $1.75 as of Aug 29, 2008 10AM PST. Michael West, BioTime’s CEO, said …
Wehner, Oliker, and Shalf estimate that a general-purpose exaflop machine using today’s technology would cost $1 billion to build and 200 megawatts to power—enough for a small city. By comparison, they estimate, a specialized exaflop machine would cost just $75 million and consume just 4 MW. Berkeley Labs and Tensilica are working together on a …
Wehner, Oliker, and Shalf estimate that a general-purpose exaflop machine using today’s technology would cost $1 billion to build and 200 megawatts to power—enough for a small city. By comparison, they estimate, a specialized exaflop machine would cost just $75 million and consume just 4 MW. Berkeley Labs and Tensilica are working together on a …
Assessment of Undiscovered Oil Resources in the Devonian-Mississippian Bakken Formation, Williston Basin Province, Montana and North Dakota, 2008 Click on the pictures for larger view. Using a geology-based assessment methodology, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated mean undiscovered volumes of 3.65 billion barrels of oil, 1.85 trillion cubic feet of associated/dissolved natural gas, and 148 million …
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 …