Carnival of Space 134 is up at Cambrian Sky This site supplied an article about maxing out the VASIMR plasma rocket with nuclear fission or nuclear fusion reactors Note: nuclear fusion can have a superior option with the Bussard QED propulsion system (direct heating of electrons). Centauri Dreams looked at A ‘Super-Earth’ with an Atmosphere …
— Duke University engineers have created a new generation of lens that could greatly improve the capabilities of telecommunications or radar systems to provide a wide field of view and greater detail. The prototype lens, which measures four inches by five inches and less than an inch high, is made up of more than 1,000 …
Epigenetics research takes aim at cancer, Alzheimer’s, autism, other illnesses. Two mice. One weighs 20 grams and has brown fur. The other is a hefty 60 grams with yellow fur and is prone to diabetes and cancer. They’re identical twins, with identical DNA. Their varying traits are controlled by a mediator between nature and nurture …
Invetech, an innovator in new product development and custom automation for the biomedical, industrial and consumer markets, Dec 1, 2009 announced that it has delivered the world`s first production model 3D bio-printer to Organovo, developers of the proprietary NovoGen bioprinting technology. Organovo will supply the units to research institutions investigating human tissue repair and organ …
Multistage horizontal drilling is opening previously ignored section of the Cardium Pembina oil reserve Pembina, with an estimated 7.8 billion barrels of original oil in place, is Canada’s largest conventional onshore oilfield. Despite extensive secondary recovery through waterfloods, less than 1.4 billion barrels has been produced. The scale of the remaining prize continues to draw …
Construction of the 50-km Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, expected to be the world’s longest sea bridge, kicked off in Zhuhai of Guangdong province yesterday It is expected to be completed by 2016. * The Y-shaped bridge is being built at a cost of more than 72 billion yuan ($10.54 billion). * it would take about half …
In 2008, we covered the rarefaction reduced recoil tank gun There is 36 page report on new computer models of a 105-mm Rarefaction Wave Gun Currently, large-caliber guns require a heavy mount to absorb the recoil. However, the emphasis in the U.S. Army is now on lightweight and deployable vehicles. The Rarefaction wAVE guN (RAVEN) …
Small wonder. The first macroscopic, commercially usable BNNTs, spun into a 3-centimeter-long, 1-milimeter-diameter piece of yarn. Credit: Michael Smith Researchers have long been able to make nanotubes out of carbon, but they have struggled to craft them from boron nitride. The two have about the same strength, but boron nitride nanotubes (BNNTs) can survive temperatures …
Amazon on Monday began offering its Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) customers the chance to bid on unused computing capacity Businesses can now bid for computing capacity during times of low demand to save money. EC2 continues to offer two other pricing methods: On-Demand Instances, which are charged at a published rate, and Reserved Instances, …
The Roadmap for Organic and Printed Electronics (78 pages, register for free download) Organic Solar for the start of grid impact will not be reasonable ready until 2016 at the earliest Displays (Small Displays) Electrophoretic price label display, segmented, driver electronics printed on backplane (2013) Color e-reader, A4, 10 frames/sec, flex for robustness – Quad …
University of Toronto quantum optics researchers Sajeev John and Xun Ma have discovered new behaviours of light within photonic crystals that could lead to faster optical information processing and compact computers that don’t overheat. “We discovered that by sculpting a unique artificial vacuum inside a photonic crystal, we can completely control the electronic state of …