At Japan’s National Institute of Informatics (NII), in Tokyo, a research team is trying to create an artificial intelligence program that has enough smarts to pass Japan’s most rigorous entrance exams. The AI will start by taking the standardized test administered to all secondary school students; once it masters that test, it will move on …
Geoffrey Landis has proposed aerostat habitats followed by floating cities in the atmosphere of Venus. It is based on the concept that breathable air (21:79 Oxygen/Nitrogen mixture) is a lifting gas in the dense carbon dioxide atmosphere, with over 60% of the lifting power that helium has on Earth. In effect, a balloon full of …
Backup slide information from David LeBlanc presentation on Molten Salt Reactors at TEAC 5 What factors differentiate between various Molten Salt designs? • R and D required and level of technological uncertainty • Amount and type of startup fissile load and thus deployability • Whether fission product removal is used and if so, its degree …
David LeBlanc of Terrestrial Energy makes a new presentation at the Thorium Energy Alliance Conference 2013. He compares molten salt reactors. He repeats that thorium vs uranium is not that important. Many Design choices are possible. * burner vs breeder reactors. * Single fluid vs two fluid. * Fast spectrum vs thermal. * Denatured and …
Applied Materials Adam Brand made a presentation at 2013 Semicon West which laid out a roadmap to get to 3 nanometer lithography. Precision Materials to Meet Scaling Challenges Beyond 14nm (18 pages) Beyond 14nm, as we move to 10 and 7nm, a new fin material will be required — probably silicon-germanium (SiGe), or perhaps just …
A guest post by Joseph Friedlander My [Joseph Friedlander] new Sun Explosion paper is out with Professor A.A. Bolonkin. Long term existential risk in case of a resumption of nuclear arms races with crazy dictators over the next thousand years. If you ever wondered why someone would want to go to the Oort Cloud rather …
The Google Chromecast ($35) is following devices that have already been available in China and Asia for over one year. A homegrown Chinese product could be bought for $40 in 2012 and it was sporting the latest ARM core at the time (Cortex A5). It turned any HDMI TV into a giant streaming display. Chromecast …
At the Def Con hacker conference Saturday, MIT students David Lawrence and Eric Van Albert plan to release a piece of code that will allow anyone to create a 3D-printable software model of any Schlage Primus key, despite the company’s attempts to prevent the duplication of those carefully-controlled shapes. With just a flatbed scanner and …
Udacity has evolved the MOOC (massive open online courses) concept into one that really helps people throughout the course; to complete the course. The most recent completion rates in pilots we’ve been running have been 85 percent, as opposed to 5 percent or 4 percent, which is common in MOOC-land. Started in 2012, Udacity’s goal …
An IAEA presentation from Mar 2013 discusses the countries that have solid plans to adopt nuclear energy. Most of the new nuclear reactors will be built in countries that already have nuclear power. Those countries are primarily China, India, Russia, and South Korea. Below are the countries with new nuclear energy plans and they are …
Here is an IAEA presentation from Mar 2013 on the status of global small modular nuclear reactor projects. Operational Issues for SMRs – Overcoming Constraints: • Licensability of non-LWR technologies in newcomer countries • Control room staffing and human factors • Connection to the grid • Site specific exclusion zones and EPZs Most of the …