1. Forbes – Plutonium Propels Spacecraft To A Close Encounter With Pluto Having the same namesake as the planet it helped to explore, the radionuclide plutonium-238 powered NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft to Pluto on Tuesday, visiting the last planet in our Solar System proper. Pu-238 will now take the spacecraft out into the Kuiper Belt …
Population decline in Japan is so serious that parts of the country may be ghost towns in less than 20 years. More than 8 million homes are already empty, and that number may reach 21.5 million by 2033, or about one-third of the nation’s housing stock, Nomura Research Institute forecasts. Wooden houses account for more …
Researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) of A*STAR have developed a drug-delivering hydrogel to treat chronic diseases such as hepatitis C, a liver disease that kills around 500,000 people worldwide every year. “The new gel from IBN prevents premature drug release in the body. This allows for long-term drug delivery and reduces …
For the estimated half a million people in the US living with Parkinson’s disease, simple day-to-day activities can prove a challenge. But a new study claims exercise can improve balance, mobility and overall quality of life for individuals with the condition. In patients with less severe Parkinson’s, exercise may even reduce the risk of falls. …
Global wealth distribution has been in the news. The Oxfam report is based on the credit suisse wealth report which is based upon the James Davies, Rodrigo Lluberas , and Anthony F. Shorrocks global wealth distribution analysis. The bottom 10% have a collective negative $1.05 trillion net worth (-0.4% of $263 trillion). Each of the …
Nextbigfuture will be changing its discussion system and UI tonight. Hopefully this will done with minimal disruption. A new logo will also be implemented in a few days. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News …
The Wall Street Journal talked about how Russia’s Debt and Currency Markets Could Spiral into Crisis in October. This was before Opec decided to keep oil production and drove down the price of oil. Some now speculate that oil prices could drop to $30 to $40 per barrel before later stabilizing around $70 per barrel. …
Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. Chairman Murray Edwards said crude oil may sink as low as $30 a barrel before rebounding to stabilize at $70 to $75 a barrel, the Financial Post reported. Oil has dropped 38 percent this year and, in theory, production can continue to flow until prices fall below the day-to-day costs at …
When Santa Barbara startup FindTheBest was sued by a patent troll called Lumen View last year, it vowed to fight back rather than pay up the $50,000 licensing fee Lumen was asking for. Company CEO Kevin O’Connor made it personal, pledging $1 million of his own money to fight the legal battle. Once FindTheBest pursued …
General Fusion, working on magnetized target nuclear fusion, won gold in DigiBC’s NextBC high-tech showcase. General Fusion will build a ~3-metre diameter spherical tank filled with liquid metal (lead-lithium mixture). The liquid is spun to open up a vertical cylindrical cavity in the centre of the sphere (vortex). This vortex flow is established and maintained …
NExtbigfuture is at the Foresight Nanotechnology Integration conference this weekend. Here is the link to the schedule. The Integration Conference brought together over 20 speakers to present their research and vision within the realm of groundbreaking atomic- and molecular-scale science and engineering with application across a wide range of advanced technologies, including materials, electronics, energy …