Researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have engineered a potentially game-changing solar cell that cheaply and efficiently converts atmospheric carbon dioxide directly into usable hydrocarbon fuel, using only sunlight for energy. The finding is reported in the July 29 issue of Science and was funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. …
Leidos, a national security, health, and infrastructure solutions company, announced today that on June 22, it completed initial performance trials of the technology demonstration vessel it is developing for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)’s Anti-Submarine Warfare Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV) program. The at-sea tests took place off the coast of San Diego, …
German defense company Rheinmetall has a prototype of a 130mm smoothbore gun for a future main battle tank (MBT). According to the company, the increase of 8 percent in caliber results in 50 percent more kinetic energy over the 120mm gun from Rheinmetall. The 130mm gun, which was financed entirely by the German company, weighs …
China is making preparations to make its BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) available to global users, according to a white paper released by the Chinese government on Thursday, June 16, the Xinhua News Agency reported. The State Council Information Office discussed the country’s action plan and a three-step strategy to develop the BDS with the …
Starry Station is a new internet provider who can use a two-foot-high rooftop unit able to serve between 600 and 900 customers within a roughly one-kilometer range with 300 Mbps to 1 Gbps internet. The cost per customer to setup is $25 instead of $2500 for other providers. This will solve the cost of providing …
DARPA has awarded Phase 1 contracts for its Gremlins drone swarm program, which seeks to develop innovative technologies and systems enabling aircraft to launch volleys of low-cost, reusable unmanned air systems (UASs) and safely and reliably retrieve them in mid-air. Such systems, or “gremlins,” would be deployed with a mixture of mission payloads capable of …
For many Indian farmers, finding sources of water underground is becoming exceedingly difficult. They’ve been drilling wells deep beneath the tilled soil into the volcanic rock – 700 feet, 800 feet, even 900 feet down. The few who strike water usually plant sugarcane, a thirsty crop that fetches fixed prices subsidized by the government. Lately, …
New findings from NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars. Using an imaging spectrometer on MRO, researchers detected signatures of hydrated minerals on slopes where mysterious streaks are seen on the Red Planet. These darkish streaks appear to ebb and flow over time. They …
Experiments with conducting atomic force microscopy provide a clear demonstration of long-range charge transport in G-quadruplex DNA molecules, and allow a hopping transport model to be developed that could also be applied to other conductive polymers. Nature Nanotechnology – Long-range charge transport in single G-quadruplex DNA molecules DNA and DNA-based polymers are of interest in …
Here is a wikipedia list of the provinces and states with the biggest GDP. Zhejiang, Henan and Hebei are provinces in China with $460-607 billion in GDP in 2013. China’s faster growth should move them past Switzerland in about 2016 to 2022. Here is the 2013 list of nominal GDP for countries according to the …
Elon Musk, CEO and CTO (Chief Technical Offocer) of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, interviewed on 60 Minutes. The video covers Elon Musk’s biography from childhood to today. The Elon Musk TED Talk from 2013 If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks Brian WangBrian Wang is a …