Pike Research Forecasts Electric Bikes to Sell at 47 to 51 million units per year in 2018

Pike Research – With sales expected to reach over 30 million units in 2012, electric bicycles are the world’s best-selling electric vehicles. Rapidly accelerating urbanization, the increasing need for low-cost transportation in developing markets, and expanding opportunities for new market entrants are all helping to drive e-bicycle sales. The worldwide market for e-bicycles is projected …

Read more

Transformation thermodynamics: cloaking and concentrating heat flux

Optics Express – Transformation thermodynamics: cloaking and concentrating heat flux We adapt tools of transformation optics, governed by a (elliptic) wave equation, to thermodynamics, governed by the (parabolic) heat equation. We apply this new concept to an invibility cloak in order to thermally protect a region (a dead core) and to a concentrator to focus …

Read more

Carnival of Space 242

The Carnival of space 242 is up at DearAstronomer. Universe Today – Nearly ten years ago, astronomers were stunned to discover a star that had been apparently flung from its own system and travelling at over a million kilometers per hour. Over the years, a question was brought up: If stars can be ejected at …

Read more

French Exoskeleton Hercule for 2014

RB3d is an 11 person french company. They have battery-powered legs designed to help their human controllers lift up to 220 pounds, and will reportedly remain powered for 12.5 miles if the user walks at a normal place. The system looks very similar to the Lockheed Martin HULC exoskeleton. Hercule is focused on military, rescue, …

Read more

New York Times gets behind fixing Soot as a major climate change mitigation first step

NY Times gets behind a proposal to fix soot and methane as the faster way to address climate change while also improving public health. Science – Simultaneously Mitigating Near-Term Climate Change and Improving Human Health and Food Security Tropospheric ozone and black carbon (BC) contribute to both degraded air quality and global warming. We considered …

Read more

Food Security around the World

Food security is an increasingly critical global issue, affected by a complex and inter-related set of variables that influence the availability and access to food in each country. The political and economic stability of countries with a large proportion of the population living on less than US$1-a-day are particularly affected by food price inflation and …

Read more

Kazakhstan and Russian Uranium Plans and Kudankulam delayed by protests

1. Asia Times online has a lengthy feature on Rosatom’s (AtomRedMetZoloto) Uranium Holding Co, or ARMZ, plans to dominate worldwide uranium production. Rosatom is the Russian uranium company. Russia treats its nuclear industry as a national resource, and it is aware that the uranium cupboard – at least as it pertains to HEU (highly enriched …

Read more

Cells’ electrical properties manipulated to grow eye in gut a major step towards regeneration of complex organs and limbs

For the first time, scientists have altered natural bioelectrical communication among cells to directly specify the type of new organ to be created at a particular location within a vertebrate organism. Using genetic manipulation of membrane voltage in Xenopus (frog) embryos, biologists at Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences were able to cause tadpoles …

Read more

Aviation Week lists potential technologies in Imagining the Future

Aviation Weeks lists 16 technologies in an Imagining the Future special. Orbitec is working on vortex and electric propulsion, heating vortex plasmas with microwaves [and] using water vapor as propellant. They are working on rocket engines whose thrust chambers are made entirely of electromagnetism, whose nozzles are magnetic lines of force and whose exhaust is …

Read more