1. Music of the Spheres has Europa Visitor FlyingSinger brushes up his space navigation skills and prepares for his April IYA podcast with a flight from Europa to Callisto, simulated in Orbiter. 2. On February 16 we celebrated Galileo’s 445th birthday: “Yet It Moves” from A Babe in the Universe. During this International Year of …
There is an iPhone application which assists a person at card counting while playing blackjack in a casino. Using devices to assist in playing in a casino is illegal. It operates in several modes, including a “stealth mode” where the screen is blanked, and can be operated by touching different zones on the screen. It …
New psychological research suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person. Podcasted lectures offer students the chance to replay difficult parts of a lecture and therefore take better notes, says Dani McKinney, a psychologist at the State University of New York …
A 16 page Strategy for Nuclear Energy Research and Development has been put together by Idaho National Labs and the Electric Power Research Institute. Six goals are defined to achieve this vision:1) Maintain today’s nuclear fleet of light water reactors2) Significantly expand the fleet with advanced light water reactors3) Develop non-electric applications for high-temperature reactors4) …
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 …
This is a review of the status of fusion tokomaks for steady state continuous operation and suitability as a consistent neutron source for the proposed fusion-fission hybrid nuclear waste to nuclear fuel transmutation system From the 2008 overview of Fusion research by R. Stambaugh of General Atomics: The Fusion Development Facility Mission (FDF): Develop Fusion’s …
A Biodesign Institute research team is working on applying the same principles used to remove contaminants from the environment, on the human body, in an effort to reverse the effects of aging. This work is the Lysosens project. Their collaboration addresses age-related problems, such as heart disease, macular degeneration, and Alzheimer’s disease, by understanding the …
Ultra-high-speed wireless connectivity – capable of transferring 15 gigabits of data per second over short distances – has taken a significant step toward reality. A recent decision by an international standards group could help bring this technology to market soon. Multi-gigabit technology could also help enable “viral communications.” Viral communications scenarios envision a future of …
The Navy is ordering another copy of WB 7 (Wiffle Ball Version 7 Unit) from EMC2 for modification and testing. This is the Bussard Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion Device. H/T to Schwinn who commented on the last article indicating that the WB7 tests had positive results. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and …
Pure Silicon has introduced the worlds first 2.5″ 1 Terabyte solid state drive at 2009 CES (consumer Electronics Show). The drive is higher density than magnetic hard drives of that size. The 1TB Nitro SSD is the most compact SSD per gigabyte: 15.40GB per cubic centimeter in a 2.5-inch form-factor — at least three times …
The UK Guardian reports on Novacem, a company that is making cement from magnesium silicates that absorbs more CO2 as it hardens. Normally cement adds a net 0.4 tons of CO2 per ton of cement, but this new cement would remove 0.6 tons of CO2 from the air. This is competitive with the claims of …