Superconducting 50 Tesla magnet revolution for future accelerators

Fermilab Today – The Department of Energy recently presented an Early Career Research Award to Fermilab scientist Tengming Shen, a 2010 Peoples Fellow working to spur the next magnet revolution. DOE awarded Shen $500,000 per year for five years for his research into engineering high-field superconducting materials for advanced accelerator technology. If his team succeeds, …

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Artificial trachea built from scratch

The artificial trachea after two days of cell growth, and just before being implanted into the patient. Credit: Harvard Bioscience Surgeons in Sweden have successfully transplanted a fully synthetic, tissue-engineered organ—a trachea—into a man with late-stage tracheal cancer. The synthetic trachea was created entirely in the lab, using a scaffold built out of a porous …

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New “nanobead” approach could revolutionize sensor technology

Researchers at Oregon State University have found a way to use magnetic “nanobeads” to help detect chemical and biological agents, with possible applications in everything from bioterrorism to medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring or even water and food safety. When fully developed as a hand-held, portable sensor, like something you might see in a science fiction …

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Status of Reverse Engineering the Brain

Ad Support : Nano Technology   Netbook    Technology News    Computer Software In 2009, tge Biomedical Computation Review looked at the status of work towards reverse engineering brain. (8 page pdf) Computer simulations of the brain already allow experiments impossible to carry out with animals. “As good as modern neuroscience is—and it has been brilliant over the last …

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Status of Protein Structure Prediction and an Overview of Whole Proteome Analysis

Ad Support : Nano Technology   Netbook    Technology News    Computer Software CASP, which stands for Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction, is a community-wide, worldwide experiment for protein structure prediction taking place every two years since 1994. The status of the protein structure field from 2008 is as follows: Based on well- established measures, there …

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Hydropower Dam Turbine Upgrades Increase Generation by 7 to 24%

Hydropower Upgrades to Yield Added Generation at Average Costs Less Than 4 cents per kWh – Without New Dams U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today announced up to $30.6 million in Recovery Act funding for the selection of seven hydropower projects that modernize hydropower infrastructure by increasing efficiency and reducing environmental impacts at existing facilities. …

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Unconventional Natural Gas Reserves

The Potential Gas Committee, a group of academics and industry specialists supported by the Colorado School of Mines, reports the largest increase in natural-gas reserves in its 44-year history. Estimated reserves rose to 2,074 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in 2008 from 1,532 Tcf in its 2006 report. UPDATE: Robert Rapier made a calculation that if …

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Phil Bowermaster on Transhuman/Futurist Political Discussion

Phil Bowermaster who blogs at the Speculist has a good comment at Michael Anissimov’s Accelerating Future. The article is in response some posts from John Hughes and Mike Treder. John Hughes Peter Thiel, the 99% funder of SIAI, is a raving right-wing anarcho-capitalist, who supports Republicans for public office and sits on the Hoover institution …

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Moores Law Some See the End, Others See Ways Forward

Eli Harari, the chief executive of SanDisk, indicates that the two dimensional size reduction of flash components is likely to end within 5 years and then they will stack layers for higher three dimensional densities. Once the industry goes from its current 64-billion-bit flash chip to a 256-billion-bit chip (that’s 32 gigabytes), it will hit …

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LIFT cancer clinical trials

Human trials starting for Zheng Cui’s LIFT ‘cancer cure’ H/T to Alfin For the upcoming study, the researchers are currently recruiting 500 local potential donors who are 50 years old or younger and in good health to have their blood tested. Of those, 100 volunteers with high cancer-killing activity will be asked to donate white …

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Star Trek is capitalistic not fascist

Michael Anissimov at Accelerating Future has an article where he promotes the World Transhumanist Association discussion topic: Is Star Trek a Fascist Society? I have seen the 726 episodes across 6 TV series and 10 (and soon 11) movies and many of the books, two Vegas rides, etc… Their continuing mission (not always successful) is …

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