The robots heading to Units One and Two were driving into the reactor to shovel earth and bulldoze walls, as well as carrying out more complex tasks such as sampling the atmosphere, detecting radiation and recovering debris for analysis. Some can even climb walls. They were designed after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster by GIE Intra, …
LA Times – A call for protests in Saudi Arabia that had been talked about for weeks drew only a handful of people Friday, allowing the kingdom to keep at bay for now the waves of political unrest that have battered the Middle East and North Africa. In the end, the “day of rage,” organized …
Arxiv – Quantum control of proximal spins using nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging MIT Technology Review – Mike Grinolds et al at Harvard University have cracked the problem of increasing qubits using MRI (magnetic resonance imaging, previously stuck at about 7 qubits). They have shrunk the business end of a magnetic resonance machine to the size …
The IEA oil market report from Feb 10, 2011 World oil supply rose 0.5 mb/d in January, to 88.5 mb/d, on higher OPEC crude and NGL output. Non‐OPEC supply was unchanged from December at 53 mb/d, as outages continued to constrain production. 2010 estimates remain at 52.8 mb/d, while the 2011 outlook is nudged up …
It is possible to build your own Watson Jr. question-answering system, something less fancy, less sophisticated, scaled-down for personal use or business workgroup usage As with any Do-It-Yourself (DIY) project, I am not responsible if you are not happy with your Watson Jr. I am basing the approach on what I read from publicly available …
Arxiv – Metamaterial-Enhanced Coupling between Magnetic Dipoles for Efficient Wireless Power Transfer (23 pages) Non-radiative coupling between conductive coils is a candidate mechanism for wireless energy transfer applications. In this paper, we propose a power relay system based on a near- field metamaterial superlens, and present a thorough theoretical analysis of this system. We use …
NY Times reports that the King of Jordan has dismissed his cabinet Changing cabinets is not new for King Abdullah. In his 12 years on the throne, he has done so eight times. But this was the first time that he had done so in reaction to public pressure, seeking to undermine a growing protest …
1. Kazakhstan’s annual uranium production has doubled since 2008, according to preliminary uranium production results released by national atomic company Kazatomprom. The 17,803 tU produced by Kazakhstan in 2010 was nearly 30% up on the 14,020 tU produced in 2009 and double the amount produced in 2008. In the field of uranium conversion, Kazatomprom notes …
University of Maryland researchers have made a breakthrough in the use of visible light for making tiny integrated circuits. Though their advance is probably at least a decade from commercial use, they say it could one day make it possible for companies like Intel to continue their decades long tread of making ever smaller, faster, …
Researchers at the University of Southampton develop a new graphene transistor with 1000 times higher on/off switching ratio. The new transistor achieves a record high-switching performance which will make our future electronic devices – such as PDAs and computers – even more functional and high-performance. In a paper to be published in Electronics Letters on …
There will be many important clinical trials of stem cells in 2011. They will test therapies to treat paralysis and blindness could reveal the therapeutic potential of human embryonic stem cells Human embryonic stem cells (HESCs) are unique in their ability to form all 200 tissues of the human body. In principle, cells derived from …