Reprap’s goal is to make 3D prototypers with low fabrication costs widely available. The summary from Wikipedia: Currently, low-end commercial 3D prototypers cost about US$15K [uPrint Personal 3D Printer] and in 2009 US$5K or less and you still need to buy materials and solidifiers, which cost a further $1.5K. Prototypes made by these low-end commercial …
Computer simulations show that the breaking strength of neutron star crust is about 10 billion times more than for terrestrial engineering materials such as metal-alloys where the strength is measured in fractions of a GPa. The largest contributor to this tremendous difference is of course the enormous pressure and thus density of the crust. The …
Formed sometime between January and September 2008, this fresh crater has dredged up barely buried water ice and splashed it onto the Martian surface. The HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter recorded this colour close-up image on 1 November 2008. The scene is about 30 metres across. (Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona) Mars has a …
China’s industrial-production growth slowed in the first two months of the year as exports slid at a record pace. Output rose 3.8 percent in January and February from a year earlier, slowing from a 5.7 percent increase in December, the statistics bureau said today. New lending quadrupled in February to 1.07 trillion yuan from a …
University of Missouri scientist and his team have identified the location of the genetic material responsible for a molecular compound that is vital to curing the Muscular dystrophy (MD). The new advance will improve gene therapy strategies and they have turned muscle in mice with muscular dystrophy into regular muscle again. Even if there is …
1. Improvements in Life Cycle Energy Efficiency and Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Corn-Ethanol from researchers at the University of Nebraska Ethanol-to-petroleum output/input ratios ranged from 10:1 to 13:1 but could be increased to 19:1 if farmers adopted high-yield progressive crop and soil management practices. An advanced closed-loop biorefinery with anaerobic digestion reduced GHG emissions by …
Textron solid state lasers Aviation Week reports on the status of military solid state lasers. Hellad [High Energy Liquid Laser Area Defense System] program small [size of a large refrigerator and about 1650 pounds] 150KW lasers are working to ground tests in 2011 and will include a demonstration of the system’s ability to shoot down …
A new-found aspect to superconductivity, called the “paramagnetic intrinsic Meissner effect,” is that a strong magnetic field could be used to raise temperatures at which materials become superconducting. A superconductor in a weak magnetic field expels the external magnetic field, but a superconductor in a strong magnetic field sometimes concentrates magnetic lines rather than loses …
From the Dwave presentation at SC08 (Supercomputer conference), they indicated that the current 128 qubit adiabatic quantum computer has sub-PC performance but they project by next year to reach that level with whatever number of qubits are operational then. Assuming the time scale is roughly correct between the 2008 and 2009 points then it will …
People have mostly been comparing the current crisis to the Japanese financial crisis and decade of economic stagnation. However there have been other foreign financial crisis that may be a closer parallel. All of the foreign financial crisis provide examples of what should be avoided. A series of direct support programs in Mexico to homeowners …
Emitted droplets from an electrified fuel injector split to become smaller and smaller. A small device (less than $200 to produce) placed just before the fuel injection for the engine, producing a strong electric field to reduce the fuel viscosity, resulting in much smaller fuel droplets in atomization. Because combustion starts at the droplet surface, …