North Dakota June 2008 daily production is now over 166,000 barrels of oil per day which is 10,000 barrels per day more than in May 2008 North Dakota is hitting transportation issues getting the oil out of the state. However, oil can still be moved out it just costs more to do it. North Dakota’s …
An excellent idea featured at Melanie Swan’s blog: there are 1,000 trillion bacteria that are part of each human (10x the number of human cells) could be an ideal augmentation substrate. There are at least three ways for achieving human-electronic interfaces; physical implants, wearables and a third as yet unconsidered possibility, exploiting the human bacterial …
Professor Peter Weyand, Southern Methodist University (Texas), known for his expertise in terrestrial locomotion and human and animal performance says that humans would soon have the ability to modify and greatly enhance muscle fibre strength. This would enable speeds of 45 miles per hour and 5 seconds times for 100 meters. The fast four-legged runners …
Researchers have now discovered a method that produces the bucky ball configuration of carbon with nearly 100% conversion efficiency from precursor materials. Getting high efficiencies means that you don’t have to sift through the reaction product and separate what you wanted—not a small challenge when you’re sorting billions of particles with nanometer dimensions. The relatively …
Justin Rattner, CTO of Intel, agrees with Ray Kurzweil that the Singularity (the time when computer intelligence exceeds human intelligence) is near. Rattner thinks the Singularity will happen before 2050. In the bottom of this article, there is a large update on the Carnegie Mellon University/Intel work on claytronics. Justin and his colleagues then showed …
Existing Nuclear power can be uprated. Over 2008-10 EdF (France) plans to uprate five of its 900 MWe reactors by 3% [135Mwe, 1.1TWh/yr]. Then in 2007 EdF announced that the twenty 1300 MWe reactors would be uprated some 7% from 2015 [1820MWe], within existing licence limits, and adding about 15 TWh/yr to output. Spain has …
Technology Review discusses the work of Gerald Pao, a postdoctoral researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, to perform a detailed genetic analysis of the axolotl salamander’s DNA and the precise molecular processes of successful regeneration. Pao and his collaborators won one billion bases’ worth of free sequencing from Roche Applied Science, based in …
Japan considering Using gene engineered seaweed to get million of tons of Uranium The Mitsubishi Research Institute (MRI) has recently recommended Japan mass-culture seaweed to collect natural resources such as bio-ethanol and uranium. In the “Apollo and Poseidon Initiative 2025,” MRI suggests that Japan cultures gulfweed, which can grow more than 2 metres high a …
This a follow up to prior article about re-inventing civil defense using simple and affordable defenses for residential buildings, such as better nails (hurriquake nails which you can buy from amazon.com.) This is not a plan to make buildings nuclear blast proof, but a lot more blast resistant. A direct hit would be too tough …
More effective radiation protection will be very useful for space exploration and for reducing radiation deaths in the event of nuclear bombs or nuclear accidents. Radiation protection that is vastly improved could increase the widespread beneficial uses of nuclear power and nuclear technology for space, energy and transportation. There are six categories of radiation protection/technology …
By producing “6-D” images, an MIT professor and colleagues are creating unusually realistic pictures that not only have a full three-dimensional appearance, but also respond to their environment, producing natural shadows and highlights depending on the direction and intensity of the illumination around them. The process can also be used to create images that change …