Astroblogger has the Carnival of Space week 83 This site contributed its article on laser ignited hybrid fusion/fission power. Colony Worlds reviews five key pieces of solar system real estate and how one power/country could dominate the solar system by controlling them. 1. the moon, for lunar oxygen2. Ceres asteroid, control metal rich region of …
1. Large Enhancements in the Thermoelectric Power Factor of Bulk PbTe at High Temperature by Synergistic Nanostructuring Power was increased by 71% and the figure of merit increased to 1.5 Northwestern University researchers (along with colleagues from University of Michigan and the Jet Propulsion Lab) discovered that adding two metals, antimony and lead, to the …
September 25th, China successfully launched Shenzhou 7 for their first space walk and the first module of a space station. The Shenzhou 7 spacecraft blasted off atop a Long March 2F rocket shortly after 9pm (2300 AEST) under clear night skies in northwestern China. The spacewalk by one of the astronauts is expected to take …
Cytos Biotechnology has a product CYT003-QbG10 with the potential to treat many different allergies because it does not give people tiny doses of the specific substance that they are allergic. Instead, it works by distracting the overactive immune system, which is thought to be the cause of most allergic reactions. Current allergy shot treatments require …
Yuan Kou at Peking University in Beijing, China, and his team have come up with a lignin breakdown reaction that more reliably produces the alkanes and alcohols needed for biofuels. The yield is twice as high as previous work. Under ideal conditions, it is theoretically possible to produce monomers and dimers in yields of 44 …
Amory Lovins wrote the nuclear illusion which looks at the data from 2000 forward or 1990 forward but he claims a decades long (plural so at least two decades and Lovins has been claiming nuclear collapse since the 1970s) collapse of nuclear energy. Since 1980, nuclear power TWH has increased by over 400%. So Amory …
The 59th carnival of space is up at Green Gabbro on the Science blogs Centauri Dreams talks about the improved technology for the burst of new exoplanet discoveries. Nasa is blogging about the GLAST (Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope) mission. 25 reasons to go the moon are discussed Check out the Carnival for much more. …
The source of this post is this 10 page IEEE paper, Launch to Space With an Electromagnetic Railgun byIan R. McNab, Senior Member, IEEE The cost of electricity for a launch will be negligible, as shown below. Barrel life is central to the successful economics for this system. A system might cost $1.3 billion and …
Tom Craver posits in a comment that the current financial troubles of the United States are from spending too much money on the military and for War in Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror and not because of the subprime mortgage situation. The USA is overspending on the wrong kinds of defense and buying …
California Broadband Task Force (commissioned by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in Nov 2006) has published an 84 page plan on how it wants to make the broadband communication available in California competitive with world leaders like Japan (average advertised download speed of 95Mbps). The Task Force recommended that the state issue “broadband bonds,” found an “Advanced …
People suffering with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) may find that combining two currently available medications halves their risk of death within two years as well and improves their overall health status and quality of life. The conclusion is drawn from the first human trial to compare treatment of COPD with a combination of salmeterol …