The Wall Street journal summarizes the yearend country economic data * The International Monetary Fund, in its latest World Economic Outlook from October, forecast Japan’s annual economic output for 2009, in U.S. dollars at market exchange rates, at $5.049 trillion. * The IMF had an outdated estimate for China of $4.758 trillion. But China’s National …
University of Toronto researchers, Shana Kelley and Ted Sargent, have made a cancer diagnostic breakthrough. Kelley said a five-year time frame would be a “conservative estimate” to get the device on the market. U of T researchers have used nanomaterials to develop an inexpensive microchip sensitive enough to quickly determine the type and severity of …
The Economist magazine has a special feature on how mobile money could benefit the lives of the world’s poor as much as mobile phones already have. Mobile phones have become tools of economic empowerment for the world’s poorest people. These phones compensate for inadequate infrastructure, such as bad roads and slow postal services, allowing information …
MIT Professor Missy Cummings and the MIT Research in the Humans and Automation Lab have successfully demonstrated how an iPhone could be used to control an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, or UAV. Currently soldier carry suitcase-sized controllers. The US military now has 7,000 unmanned aircraft and at least 10,000 ground vehicles. (Part of an 18 page …
IMEC, Europe’s leading independent nanoelectronics research institute, reports a method to integrate high-speed CMOS electronics and nanophotonic circuitry based on plasmonic effects. Metal-based nanophotonics (plasmonics) can squeeze light into nanoscale structures that are much smaller than conventional optic components. Plasmonic technology, today still in an experimental stage, has the potential to be used in future …
Open ended modular robotic learning system are being developed in the UK. Evolutionary Modular Neural Nets uses their animat robots as a test bed. Basically it is way to develop some flexibility and learning in a small but manageable neural net when you are unable to evolve a larger neural net to handle all of …
There is a new $1 iPhone application called CubeCheater which helps you solve the classic Rubik’s Cube puzzle toy using a mix of sophisticated algorithms and simple image-recognition technology. You take six pictures of your mixed up Rubik’s Cube using the iPhone’s camera — one photo per side. If you have an iPod Touch, you …
The Hyperion Power Generation uranium hydride reactor will weigh fifteen to 20 tons, depending on whether you’re measuring just the reactor itself or the cask—the container that we ship it in—as well. It was specifically designed to fit on the back of a flatbed truck because most of our customers are not going to have …