PDF paper that describes Robert Bussards electrodynamic confinement fusion system. Bussards fusion work was previously mentioned on this site in November, but without the actual link to this paper. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science …
I have made some contributions to the public blog for the EPSRC Ideas Factory “Software Control of Matter”, directed by Richard Jones. My ideas on trying to creatively create new breakthroughs in capability Looking at gatling gun architectures and breaking up a working surface like ice cubes from an ice cube tray. This is and …
Christian Joachim, has lead a research team that has made a molecular rack-and-pinion device for which an STM tip drives a single pinion molecule at low temperature. The pinion is a 1.8-nm-diameter molecule functioning as a six-toothed wheel interlocked at the edge of a self-assembled molecular island acting as a rack. They monitor the rotation …
MIT Technology review discusses nanotechnology developments in 2006 Nanotech is enabling several new kinds of flat panel displays. Carbon nanotube displays are coming out of the lab. MIT spinoff QD Vision, of Watertown, MA, is developing ultrathin and potentially flexible displays based on nanoscale semiconductor crystals called quantum dots. These would require much less energy …
A pdf by Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg that surveys the state of cognitive enhancement in 2006 Nick Bostrom’s website The paper reviews ways to train ourselves to be more intelligent/expert, drugs for enhancement /nootropic drugs, genetic modification, enhancing devices like computers, and brain /computer interfaces. I think collaboration and collective productivity as in corporations …
three Stanford researchers proposed that a new state, called the quantum spin Hall effect, could be realized without applying an external magnetic field. Since quantum wells in mercury telluride/cadmium telluride sheets can be readily fabricated, it is possible to experimentally test the theoretical predictions of Zhang, Bernevig and Hughes. A research group at the University …
Researchers at Samsung, one of the leading producers of flash-memory chips, recently announced a new chip that can hold twice as much data as before, and without an increase in its footprint on a circuit board. They were able to double the data capacity by building chips with multiple layers of silicon, creating 3-D structures. …
In Physical Review Letters, Oxford student Avinash Kolli and his coauthors suggest a new way to create entanglement, by identifying two different stable states of a quantum dot (call them ‘A’ and ‘B’) and then targeting two such dots simultaneously with a laser. A lot of work still needs to be done to flesh out …
In the latest Fortune magazine, Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electic said to his R&D labs: “I went and said Molecular medicine- we’re going to own it. Nanotechnology-we’re going to own it This was in response to the question: You’ve invested hundreds of millions in the R&D labs at GE, but there’s more to it …
The yeast strain they made can tolerate ethanol concentrations as high as 18 percent–almost double the concentration that regular yeast can handle without quickly dying. In addition, the new strain makes about 20 percent more ethanol by processing more of the glucose, and it speeds up fermentation by 70 percent. So far the researchers have …
Coal is projected to increase 50% in the AEO2007 reference case, particularly for electricity generation. Coal consumption is projected to increase from 22.9 quadrillion Btu (1,128 million short tons) in 2005 to more than 34 quadrillion Btu (1,772 million short tons) in 2030, with significant additions of new coal-fired generation capacity over the last decade …