Ramez Naam, author of The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet, recently explained that lithium-ion batteries have a fifteen year history of exponential price reduction. Between 1991 and 2005, the capacity that could be bought with $100 went up by a factor of 11. The trend continues through to the present …
The Chinese government will ease its one-child family size restrictions and abolish re-education through labor camps, significantly curtailing two policies that for decades have defined the state’s power to control citizens’ lives. The changes were announced in a party decision that also laid out broad and potentially far-reaching proposals to restructure the economy by encouraging …
China will spend $275 billion over the next five years improving air quality—roughly the same as the GDP of Hong Kong, and twice the size of the annual defence budget [40% of the defence budget over the same five years]. China is also spending to clean up water pollution. China plans to invest 2.3 trillion …
Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk said he’s optimistic that the company can produce a $35,000 car with a 200-mile range in a few years. “I feel pretty good about it,” he said. It will take “a huge amount of work,” he said. “But no miracles are required.” Tesla is building a nationwide network of supercharging …
Up to $22.83M in funds to be allocated for the Battelle, NxStage and Aethlon collaboration to develop an advanced portable medical device for DARPA—and ultimately civilian—use. The device will clean blood similar to how dialysis works but instead will prevent Sepsis. DARPA created the Dialysis-Like Therapeutics (DLT) program to develop a portable device that creates …
Carnegie Endowment has a 400+ page analysis of what the economic-military situation will be in 2030 between China, Japan and the US. Japan has crappy 0.6-0.8% annual GDP growth in all scenarios with the possibility that it could be worse. A China with 6-8% GDP growth through 2030 is dealing from strength in the scenarios. …
The head of French nuclear group Areva, a major supplier to Japan, said today six reactors would reopen in the country before the end of the year and that most of the country’s nuclear plants would eventually be put back on line. “We think that there could be a half dozen reactors that will restart …
Opposed-piston engines can be much more efficient than todays gas and diesel engines. With two pistons per cylinder, working in opposite reciprocating action, these engines do not need cylinder heads which are a major contributor to heat losses in conventional engines. Ports in the cylinder walls replace the complex poppet valves and friction-creating valve trains …
Most people are familiar with the concept of RADAR. Radio frequency (RF) waves travel through the atmosphere, reflect off of a target, and return to the RADAR system to be processed. The amount of time it takes to return correlates to the object’s distance. In recent decades, this technology has been revolutionized by electronically scanned …
Science – RNA-Guided Human Genome Engineering via Cas9 Bacteria and archaea have evolved adaptive immune defenses termed clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated (Cas) systems that use short RNA to direct degradation of foreign nucleic acids. Here, we engineer the type II bacterial CRISPR system to function with custom guide RNA (gRNA) in human …
Here is interview with Aubrey de Grey. Aubrey is the main driver behind SENS. They hope to make public soon a revolutionary advance to insert a gene [derived from bacteria] in our patients and prevent them from dying from cardiovascular disease – the No. 1 cause of death today. This would be a successful development …