In 2006, Amazon unveiled the Elastic compute cloud, which allowed individual users to rent large numbers of CPUs from Amazon’s server farms. Since then Amazon has repeatedly slashed the cost of the CPUs. For organizations requiring supercomputing levels of power, a company called Cycle computing is able to gather tens of thousands of CPUs from …
Boulder Ionics’ ionic-liquid-based electrolytes enable a new generation of energy storage devices with superior performance, improved safety and lower costs. The company’s novel high-throughput synthesis process produces electrochemical-grade materials in minutes rather than days. This dramatic reduction in processing time enables a very low capital cost for the production equipment, minimizes labor costs, and improves …
The Carnival of Space 249 is up at Riding with Robots Examiner – Is Newt Gingrich’s Moon Colony Idea Dead? Not Yet Despite the derision the moon colony idea received in some quarters, Gingrich’s vision did have resonance. Writing in Bloomberg, for example, Jeffrey Goldberg uttered the plea, “Let Space Shuttle Demise Awaken Gingrich Dream,” …
The Carnival of Space 248 is up at Dear Astronomer. Centauri Dreams looks at the ‘Advent of the Belters,’ relating the news from Planetary Resources to older dreams of mining the asteroids. Nextbigfuture – Blue Origin is a secretive private spaceflight firm, which was established in 2000 by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, is developing systems …
1. Centauri Dreams offers the first of a 3-part post on Proxima Centauri, the nearest known star. Are we likely to find planets there? Proxima Centauri (shown by the arrow) in relation to Centauri A and B. The latter appear as a single bright object at upper left. Credit: European Southern Observatory. 2. Simostronomy – …
Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers found that 54,000 dams not currently used to generate power have the capacity to generate more than 12 gigawatts, enough to power more than 4 million homes. The 100 dams with the highest energy potential could generate 8 gigawatts of power. The top 10 power-generating dams are along the Ohio, …
Eurekalert – Through a combination of atomic-scale materials design and ultrafast measurements, researchers at the University of Illinois have revealed new insights about how heat flows across an interface between two materials. Improved control of heat exchange is a key element to enhancing the performance of current technologies such as integrated circuits and combustion engines …
1. Daily Telegraph – Injections of antibodies could prevent the build up of fat in the arteries which cause narrowings and break off leading to heart attacks, experts said. Lack of exercise, poor diet, smoking and drinking too much alcohol are the main causes of heart disease but it is also known that there are …
1. The United Arab Emirates is expected to place orders for four more nuclear power plants next year beside the four units currently being built by a Korean consortium, Knowledge Economy Minister Hong Suk-woo said. There is already a site large enough for four units next to the plants under construction, according to a ministry …
Science Daily – A group of Italian and Swedish researchers appears to have solved the problem of radio congestion by cleverly twisting radio waves into the shape of fusilli pasta, allowing a potentially infinite number of channels to be broadcast and received. To demonstrate this, the researchers transmitted two twisted radio waves, in the 2.4 …
Theory of High-TC Superconductivity: Accurate Predictions of TC The superconducting transition temperatures of high-TC compounds based on copper, iron, ruthenium and certain organic molecules are discovered to be dependent on bond lengths, ionic valences, and Coulomb coupling between electronic bands in adjacent, spatially separated layers.1 Optimal transition temperature, denoted as TC0, is given by the …