A biofuel announcement and updating my energy forecast and recommended energy policy. General Motors announced a partnership with Coskata of Warrenville, IL, a new company that claims it can make ethanol from wood chips, grass, and trash–including old tires–for a dollar a gallon. Coskata is completing a pilot-scale ethanol production facility and will announce locations …
The New Scientist reports onboron nanotubes that will have many superior properties over carbon nanotubes According to Xiaobao Yang, Yi Ding and Jun Ni from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, the best configuration for boron is to take the unstable hexagon lattice and add an extra atom to the centre of some of the hexagons …
Carnival of space 35 is up in two sections I contributed my article on new low earth orbit solar power plans Hobbyspace covers the latest New Space news Space4commerce talks about resources in space Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog …
Christopher Thomas is Intel’s deputy general manager for China and is based in Beijing and has written an article for Forbes that describe China’s efforts and plans to develop innovation and inventions locally. The Chinese government’s goals are sweeping: to develop, influence or downright own the core intellectual property of the next generation of technologies …
The Fuji Molten salt reactor is a japanese design that can run on thorium or a mix of thorium and Uranium or Plutonium. The project plan is to take 8 or 9 years to develop a miniFuji reactor and 12-15 years to develop a Fuji reactor. The R & D is mostly related to the …
Pulse detonation engines (PDE) can achieve a maximum of 50% efficiency verus 30% for conventional jet engines Pratt & Whitney and General Electric now have active PDE research programs in an attempt to commercialize the designs with high pulse rates of 50-100 times per second to allow for less vibration. Some of the top scientists …
The new book from CRC Press features a chapter written by Zyvex founder Jim Von Ehr: “Zyvex Corporation: Providing Nanotechnology Solutions today.” The chapter discusses Zyvex’s Instruments and Materials product lines, our partners, processes, and corporate focus. It also contains a section on Zyvex’s vision for atomically precise manufacturing and the 2001 NIST-ATP grant for …
Intel researchers layered the compound semiconductors, called indium gallium arsenide and indium aluminum arsenide. When these materials are stacked, their electronic properties interact to form quantum wells–places where charged particles such as electrons can be confined–that act as transistors, says Michael Mayberry, director of components research and vice president of Intel’s technology and manufacturing group. …
Carnival of space 31 is up at outofthecradle.net My contribution is my article on combining the newly announced nuclear “battery” with Vasimr plasma propulsion engine technology. there is discussion about the Chinese space program which currently has a probe orbiting the moon There is discussion about the economic develop of the moon Out of the …
Google is funding renewable energy cheaper than coal Google.org is working with two companies that have promising scalable energy technologies: eSolar Inc., a Pasadena, CA-based company specializing in solar thermal power which replaces the fuel in a traditional power plant with heat produced from solar energy. eSolar’s technology has great potential to produce utility-scale power …
The currency gained 0.14 percent to 7.3867 against the dollar as of 12:54 p.m. in Shanghai, from yesterday’s close of 7.3969, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System. The yuan rose 0.1 percent to 10.9836 per euro. Forwards contracts in the currency show traders are more bullish about yuan gains over the next 12 …