The semiconductor industry has another thermal problem to sort out. As chip components shrink, the copper wiring that connects them must shrink, too. And as these wires get thinner, they heat up tremendously. A sandwich made of graphene on both sides of a sheet of copper improves the copper’s ability to dissipate heat by 25 …
Ramez Naam, author of The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet, recently explained that lithium-ion batteries have a fifteen year history of exponential price reduction. Between 1991 and 2005, the capacity that could be bought with $100 went up by a factor of 11. The trend continues through to the present …
The Chinese government will ease its one-child family size restrictions and abolish re-education through labor camps, significantly curtailing two policies that for decades have defined the state’s power to control citizens’ lives. The changes were announced in a party decision that also laid out broad and potentially far-reaching proposals to restructure the economy by encouraging …
In November 2011, BGI Research Institute launched the 3-Million Genomes Project, which is made up of the Million Plant and Animal Genomes Project; the Million Human Genomes Project; and the Million Microecosystem Genomes Project. In February 2013, BGI had already claimed to have sequenced 50,000 whole human genomes. With a U.S. nonprofit, Autism Speaks, BGI …
China will spend $275 billion over the next five years improving air quality—roughly the same as the GDP of Hong Kong, and twice the size of the annual defence budget [40% of the defence budget over the same five years]. China is also spending to clean up water pollution. China plans to invest 2.3 trillion …
Up to $22.83M in funds to be allocated for the Battelle, NxStage and Aethlon collaboration to develop an advanced portable medical device for DARPA—and ultimately civilian—use. The device will clean blood similar to how dialysis works but instead will prevent Sepsis. DARPA created the Dialysis-Like Therapeutics (DLT) program to develop a portable device that creates …
Death is not a fixed moment in time. Brain cells can take many hours to die. It is a misconception even among doctors that the body dies all at once. We are only a little dead when even an hour after the heart has stopped. Raising the dead may soon become medical reality. According to …
Carnegie Endowment has a 400+ page analysis of what the economic-military situation will be in 2030 between China, Japan and the US. Japan has crappy 0.6-0.8% annual GDP growth in all scenarios with the possibility that it could be worse. A China with 6-8% GDP growth through 2030 is dealing from strength in the scenarios. …
The head of French nuclear group Areva, a major supplier to Japan, said today six reactors would reopen in the country before the end of the year and that most of the country’s nuclear plants would eventually be put back on line. “We think that there could be a half dozen reactors that will restart …
Opposed-piston engines can be much more efficient than todays gas and diesel engines. With two pistons per cylinder, working in opposite reciprocating action, these engines do not need cylinder heads which are a major contributor to heat losses in conventional engines. Ports in the cylinder walls replace the complex poppet valves and friction-creating valve trains …
Most people are familiar with the concept of RADAR. Radio frequency (RF) waves travel through the atmosphere, reflect off of a target, and return to the RADAR system to be processed. The amount of time it takes to return correlates to the object’s distance. In recent decades, this technology has been revolutionized by electronically scanned …