I exchanged email with Hyperion Power Generation (the maker of the new power generator. They indicate that the Sante Fe reporter made a mistake. The output is about 25-17 MW ELECTRIC [This statement was also consistent with the patent which talked about tens of MW in electricity. They also said that the containment vessel will …
Carnival of space 31 is up at outofthecradle.net My contribution is my article on combining the newly announced nuclear “battery” with Vasimr plasma propulsion engine technology. there is discussion about the Chinese space program which currently has a probe orbiting the moon There is discussion about the economic develop of the moon Out of the …
The currency gained 0.14 percent to 7.3867 against the dollar as of 12:54 p.m. in Shanghai, from yesterday’s close of 7.3969, according to the China Foreign Exchange Trade System. The yuan rose 0.1 percent to 10.9836 per euro. Forwards contracts in the currency show traders are more bullish about yuan gains over the next 12 …
India’s president talking about an energy independence plan. Currently, power generation capacity in India stands at 130,000 MW, but this is forecasted to increase to 400,000 MW by 2030. To achieve this massive boost in output, a range of different technologies will be required including large scale solar farms, wind farms, nuclear power plants, solid …
Fortune magazine has a feature on the progress of Shell to get oil from shale. Hat tip to futurepundit. Shell declines to get too specific about how much oil it thinks it can pump at peak production levels, but one DOE study contends that the region can sustain two million barrels a day by 2020 …
Submarines could be made less visible to sonar using metamaterials There are still many challenges to overcome including the variability of the surrounding water and enabling lack of sonar reflection from more than one direction (ie another submarine at the same depth unable to detect but one above or below could) Brian WangBrian Wang is …
Check out the well written Carnival of Space #25 at sortingoutscience.net My contribution was preview coverage of the space elevator games The interim report on space based solar power is out and sortingoutscience lists many links to sites that are talking about it.I had made several contributions at the space based solar power website. The …
Here is a survey on status of the work around the world on Thorium nuclear fission reactors and molten salt reactors. Molten Salt reactors may be safer than current reactors and could close the nuclear fuel cycle and some designs can eliminate the longest lived nuclear waste. Molten Salt reactors potentially eliminate the need for …
A Stanford team have developed a potentially pathbreaking blood test that, according to preliminary studies, is able to identify patients with Alzheimer’s disease – an ailment that has been notoriously difficult to diagnose. Another group has determined that the prevention of pyro-glutamate A” aggregation is an important mechanism and therapeutic target for treating Alzheimers’. Brian …
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency awarded Lockheed Martin a $4.9-million, 18-month program to use brain-inspired technologies to develop a system that will speed an image analyst’s job by 100 times. Called Object Recognition via Brain-Inspired Technology (ORBIT), the system will use electro-optical (EO), light detection and ranging (LIDAR), …
Suggestions on how to optimize performance on an IQ test Let the “experts” argue about whether you can boost IQ or not, in any absolute sense. If you slept well, exercised, then sat up straight and breathed deeply as you took the test, don’t you think you would score a few points higher on an …