Big Hero 6 Inflatable Robot and Google Solve For X Inflatable Robots in fiction and reality

The Number one box office movie this weekend was Big Hero 6 which stars an animated inflatable robot. Google Solve For X had a proposal for inflatable robots Problem: Actuators in robots are heavy and clunky and limit mobility, dexterity and speed. Solution: Create materials and actuators that are soft – that act more like …

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India aspires to be a Superpower but must overcome incompetence, bureaucracy and corruption

Der Spiegel – Poverty is still rampant in India and chaos remains a defining characteristic. But the country is also a global leader in high tech, has become the world’s leading weapons importer and is planning a mission to Mars. On the way to superpower status, India must first overcome deep-seated corruption and internal division. …

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Uranium from coal flyash waste

A company Wildhorse is going to study extracting Uranium from coal flyash. From the 50 million tons/year of flyash that is generated in Europe, there is 100 to 300 ppm uranium. This would be 5,000 to 15000 tons of Uranium that could be recovered. The US generates over 100 million tons of flyash each year …

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Mass produceable Organic Nanotubes

From Nanowerjs, researchers at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) in Japan have newly designed and synthesized amphiphilic molecules, and have developed a technique for the synthesis of various organic nanotubes of 40-200 nm in inner diameter, 70-500 nm in outer diameter, and several to hundreds µm in length by self-assembling …

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