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 …
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 …
China’s population estimate 1.33 billion in 2007 (0.6% increase) Add in Hong Kong and Macau 8 million. Total population in 2008 1.35 billion. This analysis was related to a question from Tom Craver, what would China’s GDP look like if you split it into two countries ? The overall GDP was 3.3 trillion (2007) and …
Titanium could become a lot cheaper and more commonly used. A non-melt consolidation process being developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and industry partners could reduce the amount of energy required and the cost to make titanium parts from powders by up to 50 percent, making it feasible to use titanium alloys for brake rotors, …
Carnival of Space week 66 is up at a Mars Odyssey This site contributed The article on radiation and nuclear bomb defenses Radiation defense is important for space because there is a lot of radiation in space and a lot of uses for nuclear power. A Babe in the universe talks about Mars water and …
From the EEtimes, MIT researchers have solved issues with scanning beam interference lithography and have tested at 25 nanometers and believe they can get to 12 nanometers at least. This is a big deal because it will ensure that Moore’s law to continue to improve computers for another 15 years or more. Current lithography is …
A special purpose supercomputer, Anton, is being made to accelerate the modelling of protein folding and provide a thousandfold increase in performance for complex molecular simulations. The effort is being led by David E. Shaw, a billionaire computer scientist. In the 1990s, Mr. Shaw was one of the most successful of an elite group of …
World Oil production figures from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) International Petroleum monthly for February 2008 reached a new high of 85.921 million barrels of oil per day. 36.881 million barrels of oil per day from OPEC in February. 74.657 million barrels of oil per day world oil production including lease condensate which is up …
Ma Ying-jeou will be elected president of Taiwan on March 22, 2008 Tensions will then ease further. Look for 2011-2012 (start of talks) or 2013-2016 (second term possible completion): talks on peace treaties and unification between Taiwan and China. Those who are Still predicting war between the US and China over Taiwan are behind the …
Researchers at MIT and Texas Instruments (TI) (NYSE: TXN) today unveiled a new chip design for portable electronics that can be up to ten times more energy-efficient than present technology. The design could lead to cell phones, implantable medical devices and sensors that last far longer when running from a battery in about five years …
Another potentially more efficient way to convert heat into electricity, from x-NASA super soaker inventor. Here’s how it works: One MEA stack is coupled to a high- temperature heat source (such as solar heat concentrated by mirrors), and the other to a low-temperature heat sink (ambient air). The low-temperature stack acts as the compressor stage …