A study on the ethics of human enhancement has been completed. Entitled “Ethics of Human Enhancement: 25 Questions & Answers,” the 50-page report serves as a convenient and accessible starting point for both public and classroom discussions, such as in bioethics seminars. The 50 page pdf is here and is available for free download. Some …
Wired reports that Tom Baker [the fourth of 11 actors who have played Dr. Who] stars in Doctor Who: Hornet’s Nest, a five-part adventure series for BBC audio dramas. The first episode (”The Stuff of Nightmares”) will be released Thursday in the United Kingdom, with subsequent episodes arriving Oct. 8 (”The Dead Shoes”) and Nov. …
Africa Has Had About 6% Annual GDP Growth and 3% per Capita GDP Growth Since 2001 In 2009, the economic crisis has hurt growth but much of Africa is heading back to 4-5% growth in 2010 and probably back to 6% growth in 2011 onwards. Economic Growth Has Had a Positive Impact on Poverty Reduction …
Jeff Welser Interview Here is the Jeff Welser interview by Sander Olson. Dr. Welser is the Director of the Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI). The NRI was established in 2004 in order to develop post-silicon CMOS computing technologies, which will be needed by 2020 if not earlier. The NRI is hoping that a post-CMOS technology will …
The wealthy and affluent are 2.5 times more engaged than the poor in offline politics and over 4 times more engaged than the poor in online politics. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. …
ACS Nano reports that a step toward high throughput continuous nanoimprinting has been made. Nanoimprinting could eventually achieve 2 nanometer features. Currently this higher volume method is at about 50-300 nanometer features. The research team has performed some 50 nm large area nanoimprinting but this roll to roll process (higher speed) is at 300 nanometer …
A research team engineered surface-modified nanodiamond particles that successfully and efficiently delivered DNA into mammalian cells. The delivery efficiency was 70 times greater than that of a conventional standard for gene delivery. The new hybrid material could impact many facets of nanomedicine. The title of the ACS Nano paper is “Polymer-Functionalized Nanodiamond Platforms as Vehicles …
Tom Sanders, Vice President/President Elect American Nuclear Society, is promoting “Global Energy Needs: Defining a Role for a “Right Sized Reactor” [32 page pdf] There is some conflicting information in the 32 page presentation and a Sandia press release. The presentation (May, 2009) talks about a variety of reactor technologies include light water, gas cooled, …
Idaho National Laboratory has a portable tunnel detector. This could be used to help detect tunnels under the border between the United States and Mexico and for detection of tunnels around Israel. Here are some highlights. * INL engineers have built a lightweight, portable device capable of detecting tunnels or weapons caches through 75 feet …
Cumbrian Sky has the 118th Carnival of Space. This site contributed the article about the Russian Space Agency and NASA trying to get larger budgets with talks about Mars Missions. The reality seems likely to be no budget increases and more use of companies like Spacex. Weird Warp looks at nuclear fusion and the variety …
EE Times published predictions from Texas Instruments on developments from now to 2020 in computer processors. The predictions are by Alan Gatherer. He is the CTO for the High Performance Multicore Processors group at TI and is responsible for all strategic development of TI’s digital baseband modems for 3G wireless infrastructure 2012: Network-on-Chip (NoC) arrives. …