The Defense Science Board will examine how the Defense Department could benefit from scientific breakthroughs in the field of synthetic biology. John Young, the under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, wants DSB members to “survey” developments in biotechnology and “attempt to project transition paths from research into current and future defense applications,” …
Just days after the announcement of the first sustained petaflop supercomputer (based on the Linpack computer standard, Japan has had a petaflop computer but not using the Linpack standard) Los Alamos researchers used PetaVision software on the Roadrunner supercomputer to model more than a billion visual neurons surpassing the scale of 1 quadrillion computations a …
The state (North Dakota’s) Industrial Commission reports that North Dakota oil wells pumped an average of 150,578 barrels a day in April. The previous high of 147,774 barrels a day was set in August 1984. North Dakota reported 5700 more barrels of oil per day in March, 2008 March production was 143738 bopd versus February …
There is superconducting in super hard boron doped diamond up to 45K according to a computational model. T A Study calculates that boron-doped diamond (BC5) should be superconducting on up to temperatures of 45 K, which, if borne out in experiments, would make this class of material with the highest with the highest transition temperature …
Rapid manufacturing was used to make important components of a concept car. The Sintesi is a sports car with four doors and four seats, developed by a highly innovative approach: it does not consider the car as a shape that covers the mechanicals, but one that gives a shape to the mechanicals around the passengers, …
Carnival of Space 58 is up at UniverseToday This site contributed an article on the top ten near term developments for vastly increased capabilities in space Centauri Dreams talks about a light tower for propelling solar sails Bad Astronomy talks about a quantum mechanics test at the space station Colony Worlds indicates that future colonists …
1. Fuel depots. 2-17 times more stuff to the moon or other space missions. Lowering costs for GTO closer to LEO orbit costs Boeing Propellant fuel depot 2. Lunar concrete would reduce the amount of material needed to build things on the moon by ten times. A 50 meter telescope could be built from lunar …
Businessweek discusses Obama’s plan to increase the marginal tax rate back to the level under Bill Clinton and before the Bush tax cuts Of the 149 million households filing federal income taxes for 2006, some 3% reported income between $200,000 and $500,000; fewer than 1% claimed income above half a million dollars. The Bush administration …
Inflatable electric cars could have 2500 mile range using a single hot-swap XPack Multi-CoreTM Battery/Fuel Cell power plant. You would use the battery/fuel cell and then it would be changed out when you needed to “refuel/recharge”. It will take until at least 2010 for the cars to be fully certified and placed into high volume …
To make a 2.4-metre mirror like Hubble’s, Chen estimates the recipe would call for about 600 kilograms (1300 pounds) of Moon dust, 60 kg (130 pounds) of epoxy, 6 kg (13 pounds) of carbon nanotubes and less than a gram of aluminium. So bring 66kg of material to make something about ten times as heavy. …
[From a reader who is a close follower of Focus Fusion]Re: CMEF [Just reported funding of $600,000 part of $10 million], Eric [Founder and CEO of LPP] responded, “This is based on years-out-of-date info. The $600,000 never actually materialized, but LPP is again at the point where we think we will have money in hand …