Ninety percent of children and adults with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) who had relapsed multiple times or failed to respond to standard therapies went into remission after receiving an investigational personalized cellular therapy, CTL019, developed at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Twenty-seven of the 30 patients in the studies achieved …
Mach’s Principle and the Propulsion Problem James Woodward explains several general relativity papers to explain how Mach effect could be used for propulsion for Stargates. How one views the propulsion problem depends on how ambitious one is. The least ambitious version deals with the problem that serious deep space travel is all but made impossible …
James Wertz of Microcosm presented at the Future In-Space Operations (FISO) Working Group on Reinventing Space–Why Aren’t We There? The focus of the FISO talk is on the high costs of the US space program but the problems identified are the same reasons that the US defense programs are so expensive. The F35 program could …
Japan’s utilities have applied to restart 20 reactors, and last month the Nuclear Regulation Authority approved a restart of two units at Kyushu Electric’s Sendai plant in southwestern Japan, expected to be scheduled for early 2015. Thermal coal imports hit a record of 111.52 million tonnes after rising 5 percent from the previous year. Oil …
European Union (EU)’s Human Brain Project provided a 32 page report on their progress toward an artificial brain by 2023. The 10-year-long $1 billion euro (US$1.3 billion) Human Brain Project aims to simulate the entire human brain on supercomputers first, then build a special hardware emulator that will reproduce its functions so accurately that diseases …
The New York Times had a recent article about reducing carbon by curbing population. It is projected that the world is expected to add about 1.3 billion people in Africa by 2050 and 700 million in Asia from the 2014 level of 7.3 billion. [250 million more in latin america and 80 million in North …
Milchberg and his lab report using an “air waveguide” to enhance light signals collected from distant sources. These air waveguides could have many applications, including long-range laser communications, detecting pollution in the atmosphere, making high-resolution topographic maps and laser weapons. Because light loses intensity with distance, the range over which such tasks can be done …
The Carnival of Nuclear Energy 218 is up at Yes Vermont Yankee NEI Nuclear Notes – Higher and Higher: EEI Uncovers The Cost of Electricity in Germany Ever since Germany decided to phase out nuclear energy in the wake of Fukushima, local activists have been touting the results of the shift, known in German as …
1. Forbes – Are EPA’s Carbon Rules Really About Nuclear? Although it’s been difficult for the President to advocate for nuclear power within his own party, President Obama’s promise of a world with fewer nuclear weapons but more nuclear energy is finally getting a push with EPA’s new carbon rules. 2. NewsOK – There is …
China has a bunch of different pressure water nuclear reactors under development and breeder reactors and a pebble bed reactor and molten salt reactors. In December 2012, first concrete was poured for the HTR-PM demonstration power plant, a 200 MW commercial demonstration plant based on the HTR-10. The small HTR-PM units with pebble bed fuel …
The Carnival of Space 348 is up at Aartscope Meridiani Journal – The sea of Enceladus: Cassini confirms underground ocean on Saturn’s geyser moon Researchers have discovered a deep saltwater ocean on one of the many small moons that orbit Saturn, leading scientists to conclude it is the most likely place in the solar system …