Extremetech – A group of Korean scientists, working at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), have developed a fast-charge lithium-ion battery that can be recharged 30 to 120 times faster than conventional li-ion batteries. The team believes it can build a battery pack for electric vehicles that can be fully charged in …
When I consider what will happen the future. I look at how much money and how aggressive the people, companies and nations are who are trying to bring about technology. Some people forecast some kind of shocking upheaval and the junking of capitalism. I also try to cast a broader view at what can substitute …
The recent successful Spacex test flight means they can start working off a $1.6 billion contract with NASA to fly cargo to the space station. It also clears a key hurdle for SpaceX to compete for Department of Defense business as well, which would mean launching military satellites. Flying three times successfully was among the …
Bloomberg – “Indonesia is being driven by this huge consumption engine,” says Pong Ho Yin, a Hong Kong-based fund manager at Allianz Global Investors, which oversees 279 billion euros ($370 billion) worldwide. “The opportunity that is coming from this phenomenon is going to be enormous.” In the last quarter of 2011, Indonesia’s GDP growth, while …
Integration, Architecture, and Applications of 3D CMOS Memristor Circuits (67 pages) Professor Tim Cheng adn Dimitri Strukov at the University of California at Santa Barbara described how 3-D techniques could realize the dream of semiconductor memristors. Using a hybrid 3-D integration technique, Cheng’s memory structure sandwiched the memristive material between the perpendicular lines of a …
1. WSJ – Vinod Khosla is a major investor in renewable and alternative energy and Daniel Yergin is an expert on fossil fuels. They were asked – How many years do you think it will be before half of our global energy production comes from non-fossil fuels? MR. YERGIN: World energy probably is going to …
What if the most economical use of a nuclear powered spacecraft is not direct to escape but just to get above the atmosphere? The economics of nuclear thermal rockets A guest article by Joseph Friedlander Brian Wang has covered many nuclear thermal rocket ideas from gas-core reactors to NERVA and DUMBO to Liberty Ship and …
Extremely short throat “absurdly benign” wormholes enabling near instantaneous travel to arbitrarily remote locations in both space and time – stargates – have long been a staple of science fiction. The physical requirements for the production of such devices were worked out by Morris and Thorne in 1988. They approached the issue of rapid spacetime …
Eurekalert – Electronics could be 100 times less energy-hungry thanks to a quantum phenomenon known as the tunnel effect – by 2017 in consumer electronics By 2017, quantum physics will help reduce the energy consumption of our computers and cellular phones by up to a factor of 100. For research and industry, the power consumption …
Researchers announced new artificial muscles that twist like the trunk of an elephant, but provide a thousand times higher rotation per length. These muscles, based on carbon nanotubes yarns, accelerate a 2000 times heavier paddle up to 590 revolutions per minute in 1.2 seconds, and then reverse this rotation when the applied voltage is changed. …
Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute have today announced a new technique to reprogramme human cells, such as skin cells, into stem cells. Their process increases the efficiency of cell reprogramming by one hundred-fold and generates cells of a higher quality at a faster rate. Until now cells have been reprogrammed using four specific …