McKinsey Global has an energy productivity plan (36 pages) An additional $170 billion per year invested in energy efficiency can provide 17% average internal rate of return and cut projected energy demand growth by half by 2020. We could use existing technologies to pay for themselves. It would provide up to half of the global …
Nanochip will use an array of MEMS probes (similar to the IBM millipede project) to stores 100 gigabytes (GB) of memory on one chip. The latest flash memory chips have 64 gigabits or 8 gigabytes of storage in the lab. Samsung expects production of 64-Gb flash devices to begin in 2009. Samsung aims to have …
AFS Trinity has what it calls Extreme Hybrid (XH) technology which employs a proprietary dual energy storage system that combines Lithium-Ion batteries and ultra capacitors with control electronics. They showed their 150 mpg hybrid at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit. 150 mpg plug in hybrid SUV from AFS …
UK chemists have used cuttlefish bones to template the growth of new superconductors that have almost 100 times higher current density. The weight of 1 cm**3 of superconducting cuttlebone replica is 0.06 g, compared to 6.38 g in the case of an equivalent sized monolith of pure Y123. With an overall decrease in mass of …
From the synthetic biology FAQ: Current synthesis costs are about $1 per base pair. Current synthesis times for a 1,500 bp gene are of order 4 weeks. We need a ~3-fold reduction in cost ($0.33 for 3 base pairs) and a ~10-fold reduction in turn-around time (3 days), from where we are today for commercial …
The Economist has a lengthy article that suggests that more money and effort should be sent to verify the safety of nanoparticles. America already spends the most on EHS (environmental health and safety) research into nanotechnology. Depending on who does the counting, it ranges from $11m to $60m. Safety legislation cannot be expected to work …
About 4,000 children were afflicted with cancer after Chernobyl. Less well-known, however, is the fact that only nine of those 4,000 died — thyroid cancers are often easy to operate on. Officially 47 people — members of the emergency rescue crews — died in Chernobyl from exposure to lethal doses of radiation. This is serious …
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has led a shift in political science toward quantitative models. Analyses of his model of political decision-making show that it has a 90 percent accuracy rate. Like a 0.1 version of the fictional character Hari Seldon of the Asimov Foundation series. The elements of the model are players standing in for …
Diabetes seems to have been cured in one person using pig cell transplant Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging …
Ultrafast pulses of terahertz radiation has been used to change a manganite crystal from an electrical insulator into a conductor This work is using terahertz radiation to change the properties of a solid crystal material by 100,000 times at super high speeds. It is better and more useful than ancient dreams of alchemy. The ability …
Craig Venter indicates his support of the goal of cognitive enhancement, a core transhumanist objective, while discussing the movie Blade Runner Blade Runner was a landmark film that was prescient in anticipating globalization, genetic engineering, and biometric security. It also had influence in architecture and in movies and anime. It presented a plausible future environment. …