Wired – By 2017, HP hopes to build a computer chip that includes 256 microprocessors tied together with beams of light. Codenamed Corona, this laser-powered contraption would handle ten trillion floating points operations a second. In other words, if you put just five of them together, you’d approach the speed of today’s supercomputers. The chip’s …
Apple ended the last quarter of 2011 with a net income of $13.1 billion. Apple now has a valuation of about $490 billion. The company sold 37 million iPhones in the period ended Dec. 31, with customers snapping up the new 4S model that went on sale in October. Seeking Alpha – analysts expect the …
The goal of the DARPA High-Assurance Cyber Military Systems (HACMS) program is to create technology for the construction of high-assurance cyber-physical systems, where high assurance is defined to mean functionally correct and satisfying appropriate safety and security properties. Achieving this goal requires a fundamentally different approach from what the software community has taken to date. …
The World Nuclear Association increased its world nuclear 2030 growth forecast by 2 per cent from its 2009 report. Today’s generating capacity of 364 gigawatts could rise to as much as 790 gigawatts over the next two decades, and high uranium prices are encouraging exploration and production of the raw material for nuclear fuel. A …
A light trajectory is shown against the distribution of the εσ values. The light ray enters the device, completes a loop, bounces off the mirror twice and leaves the cloak with its original direction restored (A). Panel (B) gives a closer view of the vicinity of the inner branch of the cloak. Objects placed within …
Navy Shipboard Lasers for Surface, Air, and Missile Defense: Background and Issues for Congress (53 pages) Department of Defense (DOD) development work on high-energy military lasers, which has been underway for decades, has reached the point where lasers capable of countering certain surface and air targets at ranges of about a mile could be made …
Packers Plus Energy Services Inc. is releasing a new technology capable of fracturing 60 stages downhole while only pumping 15 treatments at surface. This new system, called QuickFRAC®, is the first of its kind in the industry. The QuickFRAC® system is a set of tools capable of simultaneously stimulating multiple stages with a single fracture …
Nature – A long shadow over Fukushima The long-term response to Fukushima will have to be pragmatic. The Japanese authorities may have to rewrite the rule-book, as they have begun to do in allowing doses of 250 mSv for radiation workers. After an accident, it may be appropriate to set exposure limits for members of the …
New Scientist – Singapore, a tiny island country whose population would have no place to go in the event of a wide-scale evacuation, is giving buried nuclear reactors a closer look. The thinking is that you could bury a small reactor in a shallow layer of bedrock, perhaps 30-50 meters underground. Then, if things at …
Northwestern University – By creating pores in the walls of the stem cell nuclei and slipped in segments of DNA and gene-regulating proteins called transcription factors that are associated with the neurons -researchers were able to turn human embryonic stem cells into neurons. Researchers transplanted the neurons they had engineered into slices of mouse brain, …
USA Today and others are reporting of a lawsuit against Taco Bell for the meat in their Tacos. The suit claims that the taco meat at Taco Bell is only 36% beef, which is less than the USDA minimum of 40% for taco meat filling. The suit seeks to have Taco Bell either rename their …