Superconducting Magnets For Space Application Nuclear Power and Propulsion Systems (2005, 31 pages) By passing very-hot ionized combustion gas through a strong magnetic field a magneto hydrodynamic (MHD) generator can convert heat to electric power, without any rotating or moving parts. This makes it possible to reduce mechanical losses and operate at elevated temperatures using …
Cancer spotters A new diagnostic technique can spot tumor-like masses as small as 5 millimeters in the liver. Gold nanoparticles with a polyelectrolyte coating can make smaller tumors more visible through X-ray scatter imaging, enabling earlier diagnosis. Credit: Rose-Petruck Lab/Brown University A research team led by Brown University has devised a new technique to spot …
The Carnival of Nuclear Energy 53 is up at Cool Hand Nuke Deregulate the Atom looks at the Friday May 13 Blue Ribbon Commission hearing on Nuclear Waste A recurring theme for the six hour marathon meeting was that technical issues are processed far too slowly by the NRC. The NRC has been delaying their …
Economist Arvind Subramanian who has calculated that China passed the USA in PPP in 2010, expects that by 2030 the Chinese economy to be twice as large as that of the US (in purchasing power parity dollars). China’s lead will not be confined to gross domestic product. China is already the world’s largest exporter of …
The latest General Atomics video of the navy railgun project shows off a streamlined projectile with a sabot. Blitzer will provide transformational, leap-ahead air defense capability against a number of threats for both naval and land-based applications. With a muzzle velocity of more than twice that of conventional systems, Blitzer provides significant increases in standoff …
Tabula Spacetime device reconfigures on the fly at multi-GHz rates, executing each portion of a design in an automatically defined sequence of steps. Although manufactured using a standard CMOS process, Spacetime uses this ultra-rapid reconfiguration to make Time a third dimension, resulting in a 3D device with multiple layers or folds in which computation and …
Navy Shipboard Lasers for Surface, Air, and Missile Defense: Background and Issues for Congress (53 pages) Department of Defense (DOD) development work on high-energy military lasers, which has been underway for decades, has reached the point where lasers capable of countering certain surface and air targets at ranges of about a mile could be made …
Nanoletters – Chip-Scale Nanofabrication of Single Spins and Spin Arrays in Diamond Scientists have developed a new way to manipulate atoms inside diamond crystals so that they store information long enough to function as quantum memory, which encodes information not as the zeros and ones crunched by conventional computers but in states that are both …
Residents of Libya’s de facto rebel capital of Benghazi joined in a massive street party after the United Nations Security Council approved ‘all necessary measures’ to protect Libyans from Col. Muammar Qaddafi’s forces. UPDATE: Qaddafi’s Libya backs down and declares ceasefire rather than face France and UK in a war The serious threat of serious …
Heiko Timmers, a physicist with the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy, said it would be difficult to control the nuclear reactors damaged by Japan’s worst earthquake on record. The situation may become more difficult if the containment chambers of the reactors are breached, he said in a telephone interview …
Gizmag – Move turns Killzone 3 from a fantastic first-person shooter to the most immersive, visceral experience you’ll find on a console today. Guardian UK – Killzone 3 added some well thought-out tweaks to the control system, such as twisting to reload and a melee attack which is launched with a stabbing motion. Online, Killzone …