The last time this site had looked at the work of Reaction Engines, the designers of the Skylon Single-stage to Orbit vehicle proposal, they had designed the Mach 5 – A2 commercial Concorde replacement. Reaction Engines has gotten tens of millions of dollars in funding for various engine and cooler subsystem development and testing. They …
The USA has the Very High Temperature Gen IV reactor candidate, which could have deep burn [65% of the nuclear material would be used instead of about 1% for current reactors] and temperatures up to 1000 degrees. High temperatures is efficient for providing heat for many industrial applications. The difference between the US and China …
Eric Drexler indicates in a new post that stiffness matters for nanotechnology. Drexler also continues his discussion on stiffness of materials and different proteins at e-drexler.com Drexler also has an article about molecular assembly lines and getting away with less programmability. In the comments, Chris Phoenix notes that it is easy to add a useful …
SiCortex, maker of energy-efficient high-productivity computing (HPC) platforms, today announced that it has doubled the price/performance metric of its entire product line. This breakthrough is the result of increased processor speed, advancements to system software and leading-edge compilers. SiCortex computers scale from 72 to 5,832 processors running Linux and other open-source codes, in packages ranging …
China has launched a supercomputer based on homegrown server standards that, at its peak, can make 230 trillion per second. The supercomputer, named Dawning 5000, was developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Dawning Information Industry Co. Ltd. and has recorded a LINPACK speed of 160 trillion FLOPS (floating point operations per second), …
a 100 Tesla magnet is needed to test the properties of new high-temperature superconductors like iron oxyarsenide, which may improve the performance of MRI machines and high-voltage power lines while lowering their cost. A 100‑T magnet would also let you conduct certain zero-gravity experiments without traveling into space and let you develop magnetic propulsion systems …
Singapore’s National Heart Centre should start human clinical trials for stem cells for treating heart disease in one or two years. Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. This follows recent news of using stem cells to create an unlimited disease free blood supply and the possibility of using stem cells …
The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is requesting that the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reinstates the construction permits for two unfinished reactors at its Bellefonte site in Alabama. It continues to pursue regulatory approval for two further units at the site. Bellefonte 1 (1213 MWe, 88% complete) and 2 (1213 MWe, 50% complete) are pressurized …
The Bussard fusion design, also known as inertial electrostatic confinement or Polywell fusion, has completed the WB7 test which was a replication of the promising WB6 test which was showing a breakthrough in low-cost fusion power. The results of the first-phase test are now being reviewed by the funders and experts in the fusion energy …
Caterpillar, the world’s largest manufacturer of construction equipment, is starting to support research on the “Contour Crafting” automated construction system that its creator believes will one day be able to build full-scale houses in hours. This is concrete-jet instead of inkjet printing technology. Printing buildings to speed up the economy is one of the key …
Michele Mosca of the Institute for Quantum Computing and Dept. of Combinatorics & Optimization, University of Waterloo and St. Jerome’s University, and Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics reviews Quantum Algorithms. Aug, 2008 [71 pages] Some of the categories of algorithms: Factoring, Discrete Logarithms and the Abelian Hidden Subgroup Problem : like Shor’s algorithm. Quantum Walk …