High-capacity film-type Lithium-ion battery with silicon anode triple capacity to 900 Wh/L

Sekisui Chemical has developed a high-capacity film-type lithium-ion battery with a silicon anode using a coating process that has simultaneously tripled the battery capacity (900Wh/L) compared to other Sekisui Chemical products; increased its safety (as shown by nail penetration tests or crush tests); and sped up production by ten times In the future Sekisui Chemical …

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George Church has new 43 million dollar startup Editas Medicine to commercialize precise CRISPR/Cas gene therapy

Harvard geneticist George Church, who cofounded Editas, says the CRISPR/CAS gene therapy technology’s ability to change single base pairs enables fundamentally new ways of thinking about gene therapy. Many inherited diseases, including cystic fibrosis and sickle-cell anemia, are caused by single base pair changes to the DNA sequence of genes; the precise CRISPR/Cas technology could …

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Will China build hundreds of new coal plants and then shut them off ? Wishful thinking versus what will happen as China is sitting on 15 trillion tons of coal resources

The recent Bloomberg New Energy Finance report had the hopeful title “The Future of China’s Power Sector: From Centralized and Coal-Powered to Distributed and Renewable?” According to Bloomberg, 343-450 Gigawatts of new coal generation will be built in China over the next fifteen years, more than the total capacity of the entire current US coal …

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Ultra-thin insulation coating makes superconducting wires more efficient and ten times thinner

Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Life Science Technologies and Chiba University have developed a high-temperature superconducting wire with an ultra-thin polyimide coating only 4μm thick, more than 10 times thinner than the conventional insulation used for high-temperature superconducting wires. By drastically reducing the ratio of insulation to conductor in the wire, the research overcomes …

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Lowering the genetic expression of mTOR gene extends lifespan of mice by 20%

By lowering the expression of a single gene, researchers at the National Institutes of Health have extended the average lifespan of a group of mice by about 20 percent — the equivalent of raising the average human lifespan by 16 years, from 79 to 95. The research team targeted a gene called mTOR, which is …

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Startup Crossbar emerges from stealth with RRam memristor memory that could beat HP to Market but will be fighting Samsung stacked Flash

Stealth startup Crossbar’s RRAM technology will deliver 20x faster write performance; 20x lower power consumption and 10x the endurance at half the die size, compared to today’s best-in-class NAND Flash memory. Since it is CMOS-compatible, it can be easily integrated into existing fabs and processes without any special equipment or materials. RRAM, ReRAM all refer …

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Northrop Grumman Completes Lunar Lander Study for Golden Spike

Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) has completed a feasibility study for a new commercial lunar lander for the Golden Spike Company (GSC). The study confirmed the viability of lander concepts for Golden Spike’s human lunar expedition architecture and conceived a novel new, low-mass ascent stage concept dubbed “Pumpkin.” About Golden Spike The Golden Spike Company (GSC) …

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Harvard Business Review looks at Spacex for Cost Innovation Lessons

Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk, entered the space industry several years ago. He faced a problem about where to innovate, given the restrictions and mandatory performance criteria for space travel. Musk quickly zeroed in on the one area ripe for innovation: cost reduction. He gathered a team with a wide cross-section of expertise and put them …

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Google Fiber in Kansas, Olathe, Austin and Provo will cover area with population of 1.7 million

Google Fiber will be covering 8 areas in Kansas and Missouri, Olathe, Austin Texas, and Provo Utah. These cities and areas have a total population of 1.7 million people. Verizon provides Fiber to the home (FIOS) service to 5.6 million and has possible FIOS network availability to 17.8 million homes. Google paid just $1 to …

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Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco finds that Chinese GDP numbers match independent US, EU and Japan Trade Data

A new report by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco finds that Chinese GDP numbers do tend to reflect data provided by more independent sources—namely the exports and imports of China’s trading partners, which are immune from any Beijing manipulation. The Fed study first studied trade with China and its biggest trading partners: the …

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Carnival of Nuclear Energy 149

The Carnival of Nuclear Energy 149 is up at the ANS Nuclear Cafe The ANS Nuclear Cafe has an update and perspective on Small Modular Reactor Development The US Department of Energy (DOE) has a $452 million program to share development and licensing costs for selected small modular reactor (SMR) designs. The DOE’s goal is …

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