The DOE funded 25 projects as part of the Next Generation Photovoltaic Devices & Processes program to make solar power cost competitive with coal and nuclear power by 2015. Here are several of the funded projects: Rochester Institute of Technology (Rochester, NY) project will develop PV cells for solar concentrator applications using high efficiency nanostructures. …
Skilled workforce shortages are common across industries. (Nursing etc…)Besides spinning up new training and increasing recruitment the issue can also be addressed with increased automation, design and process improvement to reduce staffing requirements. The issue of staffing the nuclear industry is a known issue and is often cited as a reason that the nuclear industry …
Other Quantum computer progress discussed at SC07 The quest to build fully functioning quantum hardware is active on many fronts. Atomic physicists have seen for some years that the quantum states of a single atom held at rest in a trap, manipulated by laser pulses, functions as a highly coherent quantum information carrier. The ability …
Nanowerk covers the Dwave systems demo of a 28 qubit quantum computer system. “Advancing the machine to 28 qubits in such a short space of time lends credibility to our claim of having a scaleable architecture,” stated Herb Martin, D-Wave’s CEO. “Our product roadmap takes us to 512 qubits in the second quarter of 2008 …
First introduced at SC06 as the Exotic Technologies Initiative, the Disruptive Technologies activity will return to SC07. Each year, DT will serve as a forum for examining those technologies that may significantly reshape the world of HPC in the next five to fifteen years, but which are not common in today’s systems. A disruptive technology …
Fortune magazine has a feature on the progress of Shell to get oil from shale. Hat tip to futurepundit. Shell declines to get too specific about how much oil it thinks it can pump at peak production levels, but one DOE study contends that the region can sustain two million barrels a day by 2020 …
FPGA processing accelerators have been developed. Warp processing” gives a computer chip the ability to improve its performance over time. Here’s how Warp processing works: When a program first runs on a microprocessor chip (such as a Pentium), the chip monitors the program to detect its most frequently-executed parts. The microprocessor then automatically tries to …
University of Manchester researchers have transformed fat tissue stem cells into nerve cells — and now plan to develop an artificial nerve that will bring damaged limbs and organs back to life. Dr Paul Kingham and his team at the UK Centre for Tissue Regeneration (UKCTR) isolated the stem cells from the fat tissue of …
Here is a survey on status of the work around the world on Thorium nuclear fission reactors and molten salt reactors. Molten Salt reactors may be safer than current reactors and could close the nuclear fuel cycle and some designs can eliminate the longest lived nuclear waste. Molten Salt reactors potentially eliminate the need for …
Suggestions on how to optimize performance on an IQ test Let the “experts” argue about whether you can boost IQ or not, in any absolute sense. If you slept well, exercised, then sat up straight and breathed deeply as you took the test, don’t you think you would score a few points higher on an …
A protein in our cells called ‘Bub 1’ is essential for normal cell division to take place; if the gene that generates Bub 1 is ‘switched off’ then the cells are unable to divide successfully. Now that scientists understand the precise role of Bub 1 in normal cell division, as well as what goes wrong …