In tests last September, an independent researcher found that for some types of problems the Dwave quantum computer was 3,600 times faster than a traditional intel quadcore workstation (2.4 Ghz quadcore chips with 16 GB of memory and about 420 GFlops). According to a D-Wave official, the machine performed even better in Google’s tests, which …
Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) has completed a feasibility study for a new commercial lunar lander for the Golden Spike Company (GSC). The study confirmed the viability of lander concepts for Golden Spike’s human lunar expedition architecture and conceived a novel new, low-mass ascent stage concept dubbed “Pumpkin.” About Golden Spike The Golden Spike Company (GSC) …
As machines take on more jobs, many find themselves out of work or with raises indefinitely postponed. Is this the end of growth? No, says Erik Brynjolfsson — it’s simply the growing pains of a radically reorganized economy. A riveting case for why big innovations are ahead of us … if we think of computers …
US daily crude oil production was over 7.2 million bpd based on the latest weekly estimates. North Dakota had a new oil production record of 779,032 barrels per day in February 2013. If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought …
The Carnival of Nuclear Energy 149 is up at the ANS Nuclear Cafe The ANS Nuclear Cafe has an update and perspective on Small Modular Reactor Development The US Department of Energy (DOE) has a $452 million program to share development and licensing costs for selected small modular reactor (SMR) designs. The DOE’s goal is …
The second international Global Future 2045 congress will take place on 15-16 June 2013 at the Lincoln Center in New York, and will be focused on discussion of a new evolutionary strategy for humanity aimed at overcoming the 21st century’s civilization challenges. The first GF2045 congress took place in Moscow in February 2012. Its main …
In November, GE announced it would invest $1.5 billion in efforts to fine-tune its machines’ performance and capture big efficiency gains by connecting them to its enterprise software and to the wider Internet. GE thinks that cheaper computing power and sensors are now poised to usher in a new era of big data for industry. …
Russia will launch a robotic lunar station in 2015, Federal Space Agency Roscosmos chief Vladimir Popovkin said on Tuesday. Luna-Glob will lift off from the Vostochny space port in Russia’s Far East after several test launches, he said. Luna-Glob is the first of four missions planned before the creation of a fully robotic lunar base …
Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University have created more than 100 three-dimensional (3D) nanostructures using DNA building blocks that function like Lego® bricks — a major advance from the two-dimensional (2D) structures the same team built a few months ago. In effect, the advance means researchers just went from …
A team of researchers from Taiwan and the University of California, Berkeley, has harnessed nanodots to create a new electronic memory technology that can write and erase data 10-100 times faster than today’s mainstream charge-storage memory products. The new system uses a layer of non-conducting material embedded with discrete (non-overlapping) silicon nanodots, each approximately 3 …
A new atlas and catalog of the entire infrared sky with more than a half-billion stars, galaxies and other objects captured by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission was unveiled by NASA The individual WISE exposures have been combined into an atlas of more than 18,000 images and a catalog listing the infrared properties …