NBC News – The IPad Mini has an Apple A5 chip, FaceTime HD front-facing camera, a 5MP iSight camera on back, LTE cellular wireless, faster 802.11 A/B/G/N Wi-Fi and of course a Lightning connector. It’s got 10 hours of battery life, just like fourth-gen iPad. The iPad Mini will start shipping Nov. 2 (for the …
People’s Daily – The average life expectancy for the Chinese will reach 75.8 years by 2015, one year longer than the 2010 level, according to a health care development plan issued on Friday. The plan also calls for increasing the number of beds in non-public medical institutions to an amount equal to 20 percent of …
National Geographic has an article by Ian Johnson on China’s high speed rail. Ian Johnson is a Beijing-based writer who won a Pulitzer Prize. Riding from Beijing to Shanghai, the experience seems as good as any I’d had in Europe, and possibly even better, given the greater distances. Yes, the finish and the details look …
DARPA merges structural engineering principles with new fabrication technologies to demonstrate microstructural control of materials at the micron level. Exquisite buildings like the Eiffel Tower were made possible because of advances in structural engineering design methods. Truss structures, like the Eiffel Tower, are highly efficient; they can carry the same loads as solid structures, but …
Eurekalert – Living a healthy lifestyle into old age can add five years to women’s lives and six years to men’s, finds a study from Sweden published on bmj.com today. The authors say this is the first study that directly provides information about differences in longevity according to several modifiable factors. It is well known …
Supernova Condensate has the Carnival of Space 262 If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks 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 …
Felix Baumgartner landed safely near Roswell, NM following a test jump from (preliminary) 96,640 feet / 29.455 meters, after 3 minutes and 48 seconds of freefall leading up to a 10 minute and 36 second decent. It’s an incredible achievement considering this is the fastest and highest jump for Felix so far. Felix Baumgartner plans …
The design of a nature-inspired material that can make energy-storing hydrogen gas has gone holistic. Usually, tweaking the design of this particular catalyst — a work in progress for cheaper, better fuel cells — results in either faster or more energy efficient production but not both. Now, researchers have found a condition that creates hydrogen …
The Military Infectious Disease Research Program reports that more warfighters are hospitalized each year for infectious diseases than are wounded in combat. DARPA is developing a rapid and adaptable platform to treat military-relevant disease may reduce this logistical burden and increase operational readiness. In Vivo Nanoplatforms for Therapeutics (IVN:Tx) seeks revolutionary treatment methods to get …
Arxiv – Controlled-NOT gate operating with single photons (10 pages) Technology Review – Cambridge physicists have built a quantum logic gate that combines a quantum dot that fires photons with a photonic circuit that processes them. The initial proposal for scalable optical quantum computing required single photon sources, linear optical elements such as beamsplitters and …
Northrop Grumman Corporation has test fired the first product in its next-generation FIRESTRIKE™ family of high-energy, solid-state lasers that meet goals for size and weight reduction and ruggedization for operational applications. The tests, conducted in the company’s Redondo Beach laboratory, demonstrated that the laser could burn through the skin and critical components of a target …