Emerging cognitive neuroscience and related technologies written by the National Research Council. Chapter 5: Potential intelligence and military applications Paraphrasing from the executive summary: This area of neuroscience and cognitive enhancement is advancing too quickly for this group to fully track and anticipate disruptive leaps in capability. Chapter 3: Emerging areas of neuroscience and neurotechnology …
Rodney Brooks, co-founder and CTO of iRobot, is leaving his iRobot post to found his own robotics company, Heartland Robotics. Heartland Robotics, based in Cambridge, Mass., will focus on the manufacture of industrial worker robots. “I want to effect a powerful evolution in the world’s labor markets, and my current focus is to develop low-cost …
Excellent analysis of the possible restart of Bellefont nuclear reactors by Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat . A quick back-of-the-envelope estimate suggests that the cost to complete the two units could be $3.6 billion at a minimum. This could save 2 billion versus the construction of new reactors. If there is carbon taxes or costs …
Scientists from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands harnessed energy from the wind by flying a 10-sq metre kite tethered to a generator, producing 10 kilowatts of power. An Italian company, Kitegen, has come up with a theoretical design for a system that could generate a gigawatt, as much power as a standard coal-fired …
NXP Launches The World’s Fastest Cellular Modem, the PNX6910, which is capable of achieving data transfer rates of 150 Mbits downlink and 50 Mbits uplink, and supports multi-mode LTE/HSPA/UMTS/EDGE/GPRS/GSM capability. The world’s fastest cellular modem from NXP – Nexperia Cellular System Solution PNX6910 will be available to early access customers in the second quarter of …
Engineers at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have whipped up, for the first time, permanent nanoscale bubbles—bubbles that endure for more than a year—from batches of foam made from a mixture of glucose syrup, sucrose stearate, and water. Future applications of these microbubbles could significantly extend the lifetimes of common gas-liquid products …
Scientists from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Brewer Science, Inc. have used carbon nanotubes as the basis for a high-speed (312 megahertz) thin-film transistors printed onto sheets of flexible plastic. Their method may allow large-area electronic circuits to be printed onto almost any flexible substrate at low cost and in mass quantities. (Most Intel …
The McKinsey plan (107 page report) for lowering climate change gases in the United States1. Energy efficiency in buildings and appliances (710-870 megatons of carbon)2. More fuel efficient vehicles (340-660 megatons of carbon)3. Industrial efficiency (620-770 megatons)4. Bigger carbon sinks (like more forest) (440-580 megatons)5. Less carbon intensive power generation (800-1570 megatons)This last one is …
A 12 page pdf on what tissue engineering experts feel is needed to achieve broad clinical success for tissue engineering by 2021. A worldwide body of 24 leaders in tissue engineering was queried systematically to determine the best paths toward that goal. Using a modified Hoshin process, we identified 14 critical activity categories and then …
Her conclusion? Every day spent burning coal for power translates into damaged lungs and ecosystem destruction. The only realistic — and safe — alternative is nuclear. I agree. Solar, geothermal and wind will help but currently nuclear fission is the best solution for high volume clean power. A family in four in France, where they …
Using light instead of wires to send information between the computer cores of a computer chip can be 100 times faster and use 10 times less power than wires. The new IBM technology aims to enable a power-efficient method to connect hundreds or thousands of cores together on a tiny chip by eliminating the wires …