Chris Phoenix asked in the comments – Why is China not making a small investment of about $10 million into Lawrenceville Plasma Physics (LPP) which has an interesting dense plasma focus nuclear fusion effort ? Several reasons. 1. China tends to acquire western energy technology and scales up production. They acquire almost every commercial nuclear …
Desalination plants being commissioned in 2013 alone can produce 6 million cubic meters a day — as much fresh water as 28 months of rain in London, the report said. That raises the total capacity of the world’s 17,277 commissioned desalination plants to 80.9 million cubic meters (21.4 billion gallons) per day. Saudi Arabia has …
China has indicated that to 1700 MWe European Pressurized Reactors (EPR) cost $7.5 billion (50 billion yuan). All of the heavy components have been installed on the chinese reactors and everything appears to be on schedule and budget for a late 2013 start for unit 1 and a 2014 start for unit 2. On 3 …
Understanding the compatibility between spider silk and conducting materials is essential to advance the use of spider silk in electronic applications. Spider silk is tough, but becomes soft when exposed to water. Here we report a strong affinity of amine-functionalised multi-walled carbon nanotubes for spider silk, with coating assisted by a water and mechanical shear …
Researchers at the Wyss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University has found a way to self-assemble complex structures out of gel “bricks” smaller than a grain of salt. The new method could help solve one of the major challenges in tissue engineering: creating injectable components that self-assemble into intricately structured, biocompatible scaffolds at …
Broad Group has a 15 page document that lays out the case for the SkyCity skyscraper This document describes why the 202 story Skycity is more practical than past skyscrapers and why it is economically different since it radically lower per square foot construction cost means it is good for multifunction usage and not just …
Samsung has begun mass producing a 128-gigabit (Gb), 3-bit multi-level-cell (MLC) NAND memory chip using 10 nanometer (nm)-class process technology this month. This chip will enable high-density memory solutions such as embedded NAND storage and solid state drives (SSDs). “By introducing next-generation memory storage products like the 128Gb NAND chip, Samsung is extremely well situated …
Lockheed’s new Perforene membranes, made of graphene (sheets of pure carbon only one atom thick), are 500 times thinner than filters currently on the market. This means less energy is required to push water through the membrane, making reverse osmosis more efficient. John Stetson, head engineer for the project, told Reuters that it would require …
Parabolicarc has some notes from the interview. Grasshopper – Spacex hope to demonstration high altitude supersonic liftoff and return — have stage take off, go supersonic and land with propulsion at landing site Grasshopper is a test bed for recovering Falcon 9 stages for reuse It consists of a Falcon 9 first stage and a …
Arxiv – Is a tabletop search for Planck scale signals feasible? (8 pages) Quantum gravity theory is untested experimentally. Could it be tested with tabletop experiments? While the common feeling is pessimistic, a detailed inquiry shows it possible to sidestep the onerous requirement of localization of a probe on Planck length scale. I suggest a …
TheVerge – Samsung officially released the Galaxy Note II. It is thinner and lighter than the first Note. The new Note device comes with a redesigned S Pen stylus, a bevy of new software features layered atop Android 4.1, and an enlarged 5.5-inch display. It has an 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos processor. The physical design and …