Thailand has its 18th attempted or actual coups since 1932

The people of Thailand are all too familiar with coup d’etats. There have been at least 18 actual and attempted military takeovers since Thailand became a constitutional monarchy in 1932. The last one was in 2006 when the military sent tanks onto the streets before ousting then Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, the brother of Yingluck, …

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Time, Distance and Shielding and Radiation Protection Factors and Buildings like sunscreen SPF

Three basic concepts apply to all types of ionizing radiation radiation protection (time, distance and shielding). 150 meters of air halves ionizing radiation. So 1.5 kilometers of air is 1024 times less and 3 kilometers is 1 million times less and 4.5 kilomters is 1 billion times less Get down to a background exposure of …

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Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source Find New Form of Quantum Matter that is a 3D version of Graphene

The discovery of what is essentially a 3D version of graphene – the 2D sheets of carbon through which electrons race at many times the speed at which they move through silicon – promises exciting new things to come for the high-tech industry, including much faster transistors and far more compact hard drives. A collaboration …

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Breaking Good by breaking the diffraction limit resolution barrier and possibly enabling early cancer detection

Nature Scientific Reports has Breaking the diffraction-limited resolution barrier in fiber-optical two-photon fluorescence endoscopy by an azimuthally-polarized beam Although fiber-optical two-photon endoscopy has been recognized as a potential high-resolution diagnostic and therapeutic procedure in vivo, its resolution is limited by the optical diffraction nature to a few micrometers due to the low numerical aperture of …

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China will go to 4.8 billion tons of coal per year and will turn on the taps for artificial rain from skyscrapers to make air pollution tolerable

China is predicted to reach 4.8 billion metric tons per year by 2020, up from 3.65 billion tons in 2013. The prediction was made by China National Coal Association vice president Liang Jiakun. China uses about half of the world total in coal. Chinese coal production of 3.66 billion tonnes at the end of 2012 …

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World Bank delays new Purchasing Power Parity GDP statistics and international comparisons until March 4-7, 2014

The 2011 round of the International Comparison Program (ICP) results will include ICP 2011 benchmark PPPs (purchasing power parity) and related volume measures for 199 participating countries/economies. Given the complex nature of the ICP and the fact that it has become the largest worldwide statistical operation, the program decided that the December release will be …

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About 75% of the planets discovered the Kepler Space Telescope are mini-Neptunes

More than three-quarters of the planet candidates discovered by NASA’s Kepler spacecraft have sizes ranging from that of Earth to that of Neptune, which is nearly four times as big as Earth. Such planets dominate the galactic census but are not represented in our own solar system. Astronomers don’t know how they form or if …

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HP CEO and CTO talk about memristors, HP CTO confident of 100 Terabyte memristor drives by 2018

HP’s Discover event in Barcelona this week has focused heavily on its “new style of IT” mantra, which focuses on cloud computing, integrated data center offerings, and commercial PCs that try to bring the cool factor. But HP CEO Meg Whitman’s keynote Tuesday at the event offered a brief preview of where HP’s next “new …

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China’s lunar rover is expected to land December 14

Two years ago, in December 2011, China published a blueprint outlining its ambitions in outer space. The launch, on December 2nd, of Chang’e-3—a lunar mission named after a Moon goddess—shows that it remains on track. This will be China’s first attempt at a lunar landing. If it succeeds it will make the China National Space …

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Global Health 2035

The World Bank’s Global Health 2035 report sets out some bold ambitions for the next two decades, but they are achievable with the right investment. Global rates of infectious diseases and mortality from reproductive, maternal, newborn, and child health in low- or middle-income states are set to fall sharply. By 2035 they should rival the …

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IBM announces Watson Developers Cloud for a new era of cognitive Apps starting in 2014

IBM today announced that, for the first time, it will make its IBM Watson technology available as a development platform in the cloud, to enable a worldwide community of software application providers to build a new generation of apps infused with Watson’s cognitive computing intelligence. The move aims to spur innovation and fuel a new …

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