neuromorphic

Will China build hundreds of new coal plants and then shut them off ? Wishful thinking versus what will happen as China is sitting on 15 trillion tons of coal resources

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The recent Bloomberg New Energy Finance report had the hopeful title “The Future of China’s Power Sector: From Centralized and Coal-Powered to Distributed and Renewable?” According to Bloomberg, 343-450 Gigawatts of new coal generation will be built in China over the next fifteen years, more than the total capacity of the entire current US coal …

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Northrop Grumman Completes Lunar Lander Study for Golden Spike

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Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) has completed a feasibility study for a new commercial lunar lander for the Golden Spike Company (GSC). The study confirmed the viability of lander concepts for Golden Spike’s human lunar expedition architecture and conceived a novel new, low-mass ascent stage concept dubbed “Pumpkin.” About Golden Spike The Golden Spike Company (GSC) …

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Laser in CMOS for datacenter interconnects and long-haul systems at data rates of 100-Gbits per second

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Skorpios Technologies, Inc., an innovator in silicon photonic technology, announced a demonstration of a full C-band tunable CMOS photonic laser manufactured in a commercial foundry utilizing its proprietary STAB process. The application of this wafer scale integration process results in a photonic CMOS Integrated Circuit (IC) that is planar and hermetically encapsulated. Additionally, the Skorpios …

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Fujifilm has printable, bendable thin film thermoelectric that can power devices using body heat

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Fujifilm Corp developed a thermoelectric conversion material using an organic polymer material. The selling point of the thermoelectric converter module is that it can be manufactured by using an organic material and printing technologies. The company expects that the module will be attached to a human body to be used as a power supply for …

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New Nanotube fibers have unmatched combination of strength, conductivity, flexibility

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Rice University’s latest nanotechnology breakthrough was more than 10 years in the making, but it still came with a shock. Scientists from Rice, the Dutch firm Teijin Aramid, the U.S. Air Force and Israel’s Technion Institute this week unveiled a new carbon nanotube (CNT) fiber that looks and acts like textile thread and conducts electricity …

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Future US oil production estimates

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There is an early release of the 2013 EIA Annual Energy Outlook overview. There have been some websites making a big deal that it forecasts a crude oil peak in 2019 of 7.54 million bpd. US crude oil production is already at 6.82 million barrels per day and has been pretty steadily increasing for the …

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Water likely on any airless asteroid, moon or planet with oxygen on its surface

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Hydrogen ions in the solar wind likely combine with oxygen on any asteroid or moon on or near the surface to make water. Nature Geoscience – Direct measurement of hydroxyl in the lunar regolith and the origin of lunar surface water Remote sensing discoveries of hydroxyl and water on the lunar surface have reshaped our …

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IBM Watson 2.0 for your smartphone and tablet for mobile assistance and analystics

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Business Week – International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) researchers spent four years developing Watson, the computer smart enough to beat the champions of the quiz show “Jeopardy!” Now they’re trying to figure out how to get those capabilities into the phone in your pocket. Finding additional uses for Watson is part of IBM’s plan to …

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Heartland Robotics Changes name to Rethink Robotics and will be unveiled in Weeks

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Rethink Robotics is developing a new generation of robots to improve productivity in manufacturing environments. They will be easy to use, adapt to their environment, autonomously sense and will be flexible and versatile. They will be easy to buy, train and deploy and will be much less expensive than traditional industrial robots. NY Times – …

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Neil Armstrong – first man to walk on the moon – has died at 82

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Rand Simberg has an excellent obituary. Several years ago, at one of his rare public appearances, when he accepted an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Southern California (he had gotten his Masters degree in engineering there decades before while living in Southern California) and gave a commencement address. Note that he …

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Graphene control cutting using an atomic force microscope based nanorobot

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Scientia Sinica Physica – Graphene control cutting using an atomic force microscope based nanorobot The electrical properties of graphene strongly rely on its size,geometry and edge structure.Therefore,the ability of fabricating graphene into desired configuration is one of the enabled techniques to manufacture graphene-based nanodevices and push it into practical applications.However,there is no effective way to …

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