Adaptive A.I. Inc. (a2i2) of Playa del Rey, CA plans to announced Monday, Jan 12, 2009 the “world’s first commercial AGI (artificial general intelligence) system” — a virtual IVR (interactive voice response) call center operator that can hold “smart, productive conversations,” CEO Peter Voss, a computer scientist and entrepreneur, told KurzweilAI.net in an exclusive interview. …
Hyperion Power Generation (HPG) plans to build hot-tub-size reactors that can generate 25 megawatts of electricity, or enough juice to power 20,000 homes. HPG’s uranium hydride reactor has been covered extensively on this site. The United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission had indicated in a December, 2008 memo that the NRC does not plan to authorize …
New Scientist has a 3 page online review of CO2 capture from the air technology. Capturing CO2 gas is not difficult. In fact, in the near future we are likely to be extracting quantities of the stuff from the flue gases of power plants and factories, and stashing it deep underground. In 2005 a special …
Here is a picture of the 128 qubit silicon chips on a wafer. The quantum computer chips are shown in a stage before they have metal applied because at a later stage they look more like a mirror. So this is a more visually interesting point. The main point is that 128 qubit quantum computer …
China has officially broken ground on six domestically engineered CPR-1000 pressurized water reactors, generating around 1080 MWe each. The total investment in Yangjiang’s six reactors is to be 69.5 billion reminbi ($10.1 billion), giving a construction cost of 10,700 reminbi per MWe ($1565 per KWe), according to Zhang Guobao, head of the National Energy Bureau. …
Eric Drexler, the visionary of molecular nanotechnology and mechanosynthesis, has started a new blog Metamodern: The Trajectory of Technology. Metamodern isn’t intended to be “a blog about nanotechnology”; its scope includes broader issues involving technologies with world-changing potential. For example, looking well downstream in technology development, I will sketch the requirements for large-scale systems able …
Joe Bonometti, gave a Google Tech talk on liquid fluoride thorium reactors. 11MB of powerpoint slides “ Besides the low amount of waste and almost complete burning of all Uranium and Plutonium, another big advantage of liquid fluoride reactors is fast and safe shutoff and restart capability. This fast stop and restart allows for load …
Dramatic enhancement in energy harvesting for a narrow range of dimensions in piezoelectric nanostructures around the critical size of 20-23 nanometer thick beams. Lead zirconate titanate (PZT) material employed in the form of cantilever beams, our results indicate that the total harvested power peak value can increase by 100% around 21 nm beam thickness (under …
More effective radiation protection will be very useful for space exploration and for reducing radiation deaths in the event of nuclear bombs or nuclear accidents. Radiation protection that is vastly improved could increase the widespread beneficial uses of nuclear power and nuclear technology for space, energy and transportation. There are six categories of radiation protection/technology …
Lorentz actuated propulsion would require no propellant. However, recent experiments simulating orbit conditions resulted in explosions. The team tested the ability of various objects to hold a charge in a vacuum while being bombarded with plasma, as would be the case in orbit. To generate the charge on the test object, they attached it to …
Simple artificial cell created from scratch A team of Penn State researchers has developed a simple artificial cell with which to investigate the organization and function of two of the most basic cell components: the cell membrane and the cytoplasm–the gelatinous fluid that surrounds the structures in living cells. The work could lead to the …