Bigelow Aerospace lays off 40 of 90 staff

Bigelow Aerospace, which is developing inflatable space habitats for commercial use, laid off some 40 of its 90 employees Sept. 29. The BA 330 is a six-person inflatable space station Bigelow Aerospace of North Las Vegas, Nev., is developing to serve commercial and government human spaceflight markets. The BA 330 is one of the proposed …

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Downclock smartphone metabolism for battery saving sleep mode

A new “subconscious mode” for smartphones and other WiFi-enabled mobile devices could extend battery life by as much as 54 percent for users on the busiest networks. Here’s how E-MiLi works: It slows down the WiFi card’s clock by up to 1/16 its normal frequency, but jolts it back to full speed when the phone …

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Stem cells could be used for tissue engineering spare part for your heart by 2016

Stem cell researchers in Hong Kong and the United States are trying to grow spare parts for the human heart that may be ready for tests on people within five years. (H/T Fightaging) Scientists have already made basic heart muscle from stem cells, but the Hong Kong-led team wants to refine it so it can …

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UNC researchers find variants of Cytosine DNA base that are modifed by Tet Proteins

For decades, scientists have known that DNA consists of four basic units — adenine, guanine, thymine and cytosine. In recent history, scientists have expanded that list from four to six. Now researchers from the UNC School of Medicine have discovered the seventh and eighth bases of DNA. These last two bases – called 5-formylcytosine and …

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Basic Roadmap to Kardashev Level Two

image by Steve Bowers, this power collection swarm consists of thousands of elements in inclined orbits, each with a slightly different ascending node and pericenter. This arrangement ensures the elements never come close to each other. The various orbits form a toroid shape, surrounding the star. Kennedy quote – Some people see things as they …

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Harvesting Low Quality Heat Using Economically Printed Flexible Nanostructured Stacked Thermoelectric Junctions

University of Illinois: Harvesting Low Quality Heat Using Economically Printed Flexible Nanostructured Stacked Thermoelectric Junctions Low quality heat constitutes a 2 TW untapped source of energy in the US. High coefficient of performance thermoelectrics with a figure of merit (ZT) exceeding 1, can potentially harness approximately 4.3% of this waste heat and add up to …

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Integral challenges physics beyond Einstein

Gamma-ray burst (European Space Agency) ESA’s Integral gamma-ray observatory has provided results that will dramatically affect the search for physics beyond Einstein. It has shown that any underlying quantum ‘graininess’ of space must be at much smaller scales than previously predicted. Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity describes the properties of gravity and assumes that space …

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Instead of a 100 year plan for interstellar space there should be a 50 year plan

NASA and DARPA have a project called the 100 year Starship study. The 100 Year Starship™ Study is an effort seeded by DARPA to develop a viable and sustainable model for persistent, long-term, private-sector investment into the myriad of disciplines needed to make long-distance space travel practicable and feasible. The Icarus project has projected dates …

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Commercial Myostatin modulator endorsed by Wayne Gretzky

Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player ever, is joining the Atlas Therapeutics marketing team and to promote MYO-T12 (Myostatin modulator which has clinical testresults) Gretzky will begin his work with the company effective 6/23/11, and ads featuring Gretzky will first appear in mid-July. Myo-T12 is a myostatin modulator clinically validated to reduce average serum myostatin …

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Efficiently solving Rubik Cubes of any size

Erik Demaine, an associate professor of computer science and engineering at MIT; his father, Martin Demaine, a visiting scientist at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory; graduate student Sarah Eisenstat; Anna Lubiw, who was Demaine’s PhD thesis adviser at the University of Waterloo; and Tufts graduate student Andrew Winslow showed that the maximum number …

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Brain-like computing a step closer to reality using phase change materials

Computers currently deal with processing and memory separately, resulting in a speed and power ‘bottleneck’ caused by the need to continually move data around. This is totally unlike anything in biology, for example in human brains, where no real distinction is made between memory and computation. To perform these two functions simultaneously the University of …

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