US daily crude oil production over 8.5 million barrels per day and is within about 5% of the mid-1980s peak

US daily crude oil production over 8.5 million barrels per day and natural gas liquids nears 3 million barrels per day. US crude oil production is within about 5% of the mid-1980s peak. There was a high crude oil peak in the 1970s. The United States is on track in late 2015 to have crude …

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Alternative to Keystone pipeline clears Canadian Federal Review panel with a lot of conditions

A federal review panel says the proposed $7.9-bilion Northern Gateway pipeline project should go ahead if more than 200 conditions are met. A National Energy Board review panel released its report into the proposed project Thursday afternoon, after months of public hearings. The 429-page report included some 209 conditions that Calgary-based Enbridge must meet in …

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Jury is in. Microsoft had vision. Just massive incompetence.

In mid-2000 (Just after Ballmer took over as CEO), Microsoft held a daylong series of sessions during which the company announced what it called the .NET strategy. To regain its place within the vanguard of personal computing, Ballmer’s Microsoft promised to deliver an interconnected set of Web services that could serve up relevant information to …

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Artificial muscle created which can lift 80 times its weight

A research team from the National University of Singapore’s (NUS) Faculty of Engineering has created efficient artificial, or “robotic” muscles, which could carry a weight 80 times its own and able to extend to five times its original length when carrying the load – a first in robotics. The team’s invention will pave the way …

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NSA taps all phonecall metadata, emails, chat, video chat, IM and basically all electronic activity

1. The Guardian newspaper published a classified court document from April that authorized the government to seize all of Verizon’s phone records on a daily basis—an estimated 3 billion phone calls a day. The government didn’t eavesdrop on anyone (under this court order, at least), but it received all outgoing and incoming numbers for every …

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Stanford researchers use a million cores from IBM Sequoia supercomputer for supersonic jet engine simulation

Researchers at the Center for Turbulence Research set a new record in supercomputing, harnessing a million computing cores to model supersonic jet noise. Work was performed on the newly installed Sequoia IBM Bluegene/Q system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories. Stanford Engineering’s Center for Turbulence Research (CTR) has set a new record in computational science by …

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Carnival of Nuclear Energy 139

The Carnival of Nuclear Energy 139 is up at Yes Vermont Yankee James Conca’s article at Forbes: Like We’ve Been Saying, Radiation is Not a Big Deal. Conca describes the very recent United Nations (UNSCEAR) report on radiation risk, which paid special attention to the consequences of Fukushima. Here’s a quote from the Conca article: …

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State-of-the-Art Electron Beams From Table-Top Accelerators

The rapidly evolving technology of laser plasma accelerators (LPAs) – called “table-top accelerators” because their length can be measured in centimeters instead of kilometers – promises a new breed of machines, far less expensive and with far less impact on the land and the environment than today’s conventional accelerators. Future LPAs offer not only compact …

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Medvedev Expresses concern about Chinese migrants to Siberia

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday issued a veiled warning about China’s rising influence in Russia’s resource-rich Far East, saying it was essential to defend the area against “excessive expansion by bordering states”. Speaking days after Russia’s first deputy defense minister said two new nuclear submarines would be sent to the Pacific Fleet, Medvedev also …

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Wearable Biomonitors for superior sports training and medicine

Technology Review – David Icke, CEO of MC10, wants you to feel like an Olympian. The company wants to provide users with sophisticated knowledge to fuel individual fitness and improve health, all through wearable electronics. The biggest opportunity offered by wearable electronics, he claims, is to unlock the mysteries of human biology so that we …

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Google Nexus 7 tablet

Computerworld – the expected price of the Google Nexus 7 tablet is $199, Google could be spending $130 to $210 for materials and manufacturing costs for each device, according to a preliminary estimate from IHS iSuppli. Google may announce the Nexus 7 at the start of its Google I/O conference tomorrow. In general, a tablet’s …

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