Planetary Resources is a leader in developing asteroid mining. More than 1,500 are as easy to reach as the Moon and are in similar orbits as Earth. Asteroids are filled with precious resources, everything from water to platinum. An Orbital Antares rocket carrying a Cygnus cargo logistics spacecraft destined for the International Space Station (ISS) …
Zhang Yue is worth an estimated 1.1 billion yuan ($180 million) and has grandiose aspirations, the biggest of them to build an 838 metre tall tower he calls “Sky City” by the year’s end. It is designed to be 10 metres higher than the current title-holder, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai — which took five …
Venture Capitalist Steve Jurvetson (Draper Fisher Jurvetson is an investor in Dwave Systems) describes the speedup for Dwave Systems’ Adiabatic Quantum computers. At 2000 to 4000 qubits, Dwave Systems adiabatic quantum computer should become faster than classical computers for discrete optimization problems. Dwave should reach that level of qubits by about 2015. Steve Jurvetson Describes …
North County Times – 35 companies and researchers spoke at last week’s stem cell conference in La Jolla. Nearly all of them shared the goal of using stem cells and the body’s own regenerative ability to treat diseases and injuries. But their approaches to regenerative medicine vary greatly. Many are tackling diseases such as diabetes, …
1. The EIA has Texas crude oil production (including natural gas liquids) at 57 million barrels for June 2012. This is 1.9 million barrels per day Texas is at the highest production in 22 years. 2. Iraq oil exports averaged 2.565 million barrels per day in August. Iraq oil production currently averaged around 3.2 million …
A commercial van slammed into a truck Monday in northwest China, killing nine people and bringing the overall death toll to 56 in three big accidents on the country’s notoriously dangerous roads over the past two days. On Sunday, 36 people were burned to death when a double-decker bus rammed into a tanker loaded with …
NanoCrystalline Cellulose (NCC) is the primary structural building block of trees and other plants, and can be economically extracted from the wood fibres of Canada’s vast forests – an abundant and renewable resource. This high-value nanomaterial will be used to manufacture a wide range of uniquely enhanced products. It will enable development of new products, …
The Blue Brain Project (BBP) and the Human Brain Project (HBP) are unique projects that overlap in some clear ways. This is not to say that the HBP will be a mere extension of the BBP but rather that the proposed HBP will be a large-scale project offering a solid opportunity to coordinate the work …
Fightaging – There was recent progress towards placing drug producing microfactories in the body. These are programmable, artificial bacteria-like entities that can be set up to manufacture specific drug compounds in response to their local environment, or to signals from outside the body such as light or ingested chemicals Nanoletters – The development of responsive …
Focus Taiwan – Foxconn Technology Group, the main manufacturer for Apple Inc., is determined to grasp opportunities in the China market by setting up a one-stop business service for customers. Foxconn, also known as Hon Hai Group in Taiwan, broke ground Thursday on its China headquarters in Shanghai, as part of the group’s bid to …
Spider silk has some interesting properties: it’s very strong, very stretchy, only 4 microns thick (human hair is about 60 microns) and, according to some speculation, could be a good conductor of heat. But nobody had actually tested spider silk for its thermal conductivity. Wang and his research team found was that spider silks – …