An 81 page pdf report from the energy Information Adminstration analysing the current Waxman Energy/climate bill The EIA projected that to keep the costs of implementing the bill low for consumers — about $339 extra per household in 2030 according to their basic scenario — nuclear energy use would rise from 8 quadrillion BTUs a …
Jamais Cascio, Open the Future, claims that ending politics is a delusion and provides the following example. In the early days of the dot-com era, this attitude resulted in the absence of digital tech industry voices in Washington, DC, allowing the incumbent telecom and entertainment industries free rein to write laws and buy politicians without …
Status and Progress for the Pebble-Bed Advanced HighTemperature Reactor (AHTR) by Per Peterson Mar 2009 [53 page pdf] Overview of intermediate and long term nuclear energy options* Modular PB-AHTR design 900 MWth / 410 MWe Core power density 20 – 30 MW/m3 Core inlet/outlet temps 600°C/704°C Uses available ASME Section III Materials * Modular PB-AHTR …
Advanced swimsuits will be banned starting in 2010. However, they are being used this year to increase speeds by up to 3-6% Arena X-Glide, the polyurethane suit Germany’s Paul Biedermann wore Sunday when he cut his time of a month ago by a startling 6 1/2 seconds and broke Ian Thorpe’s 7-year-old world record in …
IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2009) in Kobe, Japan, is presenting many interesting robots. [H/T Sander Olson] A rapid pole climbing robot from the University of Pennsylvania. Robot-Assisted Rapid Prototyping for Ice Structures Video of ice sculpting robot at this link McGill University researchers are currently developing experimental robotic systems for building …
Sentience driving software can control a car or trucks acceleration and braking and enable 5-24% fuel savings and could be installed in vehicles starting in 2012. It is also a transition path to completely robotic driving. For about $30 to install ion each car or truck the system would save an average of 14% of …
An overhead view (bottom) shows cylindrical block-coploymer structures, consisting of a central polymer (blue) linked to a surrounding polymer (red). An atomic-force microscope image (center), shows the densely packed cylinders, dark in the center, with the varying height of the surface beneath them visible as alternating lighter and darker stripes. The side view diagram (top) …
4mm square of new carbon nanotube adhesive holds up a bottle of coke. Image: Science/AAAS Liming Dai, a professor of materials engineering at the University of Dayton, and Zhong Wang, director of the Center for Nanostructure Characterization at Georgia Tech have developed an adhesive made of carbon nanotubes whose structure closely mimics that of gecko …
Single Crystal Superconductor – clear scientific study of new Iron SuperconductorResearch groups have created versions of a class of widely studied superconducting compounds that are each one continuous crystal, rather than composed of many crystalline grains. These single-crystal materials are important achievements because they display better properties than polycrystalline types and are easier to study. …
Wehner, Oliker, and Shalf estimate that a general-purpose exaflop machine using today’s technology would cost $1 billion to build and 200 megawatts to power—enough for a small city. By comparison, they estimate, a specialized exaflop machine would cost just $75 million and consume just 4 MW. Berkeley Labs and Tensilica are working together on a …
Wehner, Oliker, and Shalf estimate that a general-purpose exaflop machine using today’s technology would cost $1 billion to build and 200 megawatts to power—enough for a small city. By comparison, they estimate, a specialized exaflop machine would cost just $75 million and consume just 4 MW. Berkeley Labs and Tensilica are working together on a …