Carnival of Space 135 -Proposed Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) mission details

Carnival of Space 135 is up at Steve’s Astrocorner This site provided articles on the possible discovery of dark matter particles and an overview of electron cyclotron resonance thrusters Planetaria covers the proposed Titan Mare Explorer (TiME) mission. It has an estimated launch in January 2015 and landing in June 2022. The lander would float …

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Carbon nanotubes Costs, Strength and Building things

When people think about building things with carbon nanotubes or with carbon nanotube enhanced materials they need to know that there is not much production of carbon nanotubes. There is less than 1000 tons/year of carbon nanotubes being produced and most of that is in a form that is like an unsorted powder. The material …

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Stem Cells in Contact Lens Curing Corneal Disease Blindness

University of New South Wales (UNSW) medical researchers have used stem cells cultured on a simple contact lens to restore sight to sufferers of blinding corneal disease. Sight was significantly improved within weeks of the procedure, which is simple, inexpensive and requires a minimal hospital stay. The research team from UNSW’s School of Medical Sciences …

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DARPA Seeks to Use the Force, the Casimir Force

Casimir force is the result of virtual particles and could be related to inertia and gravity. DARPA is soliciting innovative research proposals in the area of Casimir Effect Enhancement (CEE). The goal of this program is to develop new methods to control and manipulate attractive and repulsive forces at surfaces based on engineering of the …

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Largest Semantic Map of English Language and AI decipher complex multigene relationships

Artificial intelligence is helping to accelerate and deepen our understanding of genetics and getting better at understanding our language. Cognition Technologies, a next-generation Semantic Natural Language Processing (NLP) company, has announced the release of the largest commercially available Semantic Map of the English language. The scope of Cognition’s Semantic Map is more than double the …

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Carnegie Endowment makes conservative prediction of China overtaking the US Economy in 2035

Here is 16 page briefing from the Carnegie Endowment by Albert Kiedel on the economic rise of China UPDATE: The British Telegraph has an interesting series of articles on life in China now The very conservative projection described in the table above already underestimates China’s economy. It has China at $4 trillion on an exchange …

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Scale, cost and impact of a public transportation overhaul

Many environmentalists love to point to public transportation as the blessed technology and policy which would reduce oil consumption and dependence. I agree that increasing public transportation can be helpful, but how helpful and how long would it take to have what level of impact ? In the big energy picture, the USA uses 40% …

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Sousveillance DIY : witness cameras and the future of surveillance

Inverse surveillance is a subset of sousveillance with a particular emphasis on “watchful vigilance from underneath”. The idea is that citizens should be working together to watch society and government to prevent abuse of power and to help detect and defend against terrorists and others who would act against society. An interesting new development is …

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80% efficient solar power from nanoantennas

From nanowerk, a new approach for solar power, which garnered two 2007 Nano50 awards, uses a special manufacturing process to stamp tiny square spirals of conducting metal onto a sheet of plastic. Each interlocking spiral “nanoantenna” is as wide as 1/25 the diameter of a human hair. Update: Al fin has an excellent article that …

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