China Wind, Hydropower and Nuclear Power New, Now and til 2020 and Japan Nuclear Power

(H/T David Walters at DailyKos for some of the pointers to links 1. Organizers of the 3rd China (Shanghai) International Wind Energy Exhibition and Symposium 2009 forecast installed capacity in China’s wind power sector will grow 64 percent this year to 20 million kilowatts (20 Gigawatts). It appears that China is well on track to …

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China Can Add Stimulus as Needed

China’s industrial-production growth slowed in the first two months of the year as exports slid at a record pace. Output rose 3.8 percent in January and February from a year earlier, slowing from a 5.7 percent increase in December, the statistics bureau said today. New lending quadrupled in February to 1.07 trillion yuan from a …

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Small and Expensive Versus Big and Possibly Infrequent Space Launch

Hobby space and and Transterrestrial (Rand Simberg) are indicating that A. because the current market for space payloads is small then no big dumb rockets should be built. B. Some commenters say we can just leverage in space resources (ISRU – in space resource utilization) and make do with small payloads. C. Another commenter said, …

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MIT Mini Helicon Plasma Space Propulsion

Mini-Helicon plasma thrusters are the first three parts of a Vasimr plasma propulsion unit. The Mini-Helicon is the first rocket to run on nitrogen, the most abundant gas in our atmosphere. Nitrogen is cheaper than Xenon and other gases used in other electric propulsion. The new system, called the Mini-Helicon Plasma Thruster, is much smaller …

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Saskatchewan and North Dakota Oil

As of mid-October, 2008, Saskatchewan had 1,050 wells capable of producing in the Bakken. Of these, the vast majority (979) have been drilled since October 2004. Over the first eight months of 2008, the Bakken accounted for about 8.6 million bbls (an average of 35,250 bbls a day) of Saskatchewan’s oil production of 105.7 million …

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Micro-Fusion For Space Propulsion and Weapons with Gigavolt Super Marx Generator, Proton Beams or Argon Ion Lasers

Micro-fusion work of Friedwardt Winterberg from the 1950’s-1970s was recently declassified. Winterberg had several ideas for using micro-fusion without fission bomb triggers to generate nuclear energy or power spacecraft. Winterberg was proposing pure deuterium micro-explosions. H/T Crowlspace and J Friedlander. Wikipedia entry for Friedwardt Winterberg. Friedwardt Winterberg (born June 12, 1929) is a German-American theoretical …

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Reviewing Technologies, Developments and Projects to Watch for 2008

On Christmas eve 2007, this site published 10 technologies and projects to watch and one added development. Here is a review of those items:1. Dwave systems’ adiabatic quantum computers (AQC) will come up short of the projected 512 to 1000 qubits and likely end the year at 128 qubits. 128 qubits is still the most …

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Holographic Precise Mass Control of Nanoscale Particles (50 nanometers to 3 microns) with Re-arrangement in Seconds

Researchers at Purdue University have developed a technique that uses a laser and holograms to precisely position numerous tiny particles within seconds, representing a potential new tool to analyze biological samples or create devices using nanoassembly. The technique, called rapid electrokinetic patterning, is a potential alternative to existing technologies because the patterns can be more …

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Multi-part self assembling stomach robot and nanotubes for better neural implants

By using magnetic links between capsules, researchers hope to build a snake-like robot that can self-assemble inside a patient’s stomach.Credit: ETH Zurich There were two advances that accelerate the integration of humans with electronic and robotic devices: 1. Modules that self-assemble inside the stomach could perform more-sophisticated diagnosis and treatment. A collaboration of researchers from …

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Feeding algae carbon dioxide and organic material could boost the oil yield 40 times

Most previous and current research on algae biofuel, she said, has used the algae in a manner similar to its natural state — essentially letting it grow in water with just the naturally occurring inputs of atmospheric carbon dioxide and sunlight. This approach results in a rather low yield of oil — about 1 percent …

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195K superconductor at dry ice temperatures

The formula for the 195K superconductor is (Sn1.0Pb0.5In0.5)Ba4Tm6Cu8O22+. Its 1256/1212 structure is shown. A new method of production was developed. This new method of synthesis, layers of 12x(x+1) and 1212 precursors are alternated in a “layer cake” arrangement before sintering. Each layer was initially pressed at 200 psi. Then, once all the layers were set, …

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