Physicists say sunspot cycle is ‘going into hibernation’ which could cause a mini ice age within a decade

US solar physicists announce that the Sun appears to be headed into a lengthy spell of low activity, which could mean that the Earth – far from facing a global warming problem – is actually headed into a mini Ice Age. The Sun normally follows an 11-year cycle of activity. The current cycle, Cycle 24, …

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German Utility will try to bill the German Government for Nuclear Shutdown

Energy utility EOn is counting the cost of Germany’s new energy policies and preparing to put its case to government for a multi-billion euro compensation deal. The utility was told on 31 May that three reactors representing 3463 MWe of capacity would not be allowed to restart after a knee-jerk shutdown order in the early …

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Bulk thermoelectrics that are 22% efficient at heat to electricity conversion instead of 10-13%

Previously nextbigfuture had reported that a common bulk thermoelectric material had been vastly improved by researchers at Caltech. An alloy of lead telluride (PbTe), for example, which has long been used to generate electricity aboard satellites, has a ZT of around 0.8. Researchers have now made one of the most common thermoelectric materials more efficient …

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Progress to commercialization of gene therapy

Human Gene Therapy Journal – The success of gene therapy will depend on the ability to advance viral delivery vectors to commercialization At an ever-increasing pace, there is promising news regarding clinical results using investigational gene therapy products is emerging, including several exciting advances with recombinant adeno-associated virus (AAV). Yuan and coworkers present an improved …

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Researchers Create Terahertz Invisibility Cloak

Researchers at Northwestern University have created a new kind of cloaking material that can render objects invisible in the terahertz range. Though this design can’t translate into an invisibility cloak for the visible spectrum, it could have implications in diagnostics, security, and communication. Humans generally recognize objects through two features: their shape and color. To …

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Robert Bradbury who invented the matrioshka brain concept has died

Sentient Developments – Robert Bradbury passed away suddenly and unexpectedly last weekend of a massive hemorrhagic stroke at the age of 54. Transhumantech also reported this unfortunate news. A matrioshka brain is a hypothetical megastructure proposed by Robert Bradbury, based on the Dyson sphere, of immense computational capacity. It is an example of a Class …

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Skylon spaceplane

Five papers related from Reaction Engines Limited (who are making the SKylon spaceplane) are in the January, 2011 Journal of the British Interplanetary Society (JBIS). The papers can only be seen by purchasing downloads or buying the journal (or going to a library that has the JBIS). The papers are about SKYLON’s systems engineering processes …

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Carnival of Nuclear Energy 31

Carnival of nuclear energy 31 is at ANS Nuclear Cafe. There was coverage of the Nuclear Summit by Idaho Samizdat I contributed my cost comparison of energy sources using data from the DOE, OECD and california energy Nuke Power talk discusses wind farms var _phPubId = ‘dkr04’; var _phWidth = ‘300’; var _phHeight = ‘250’; …

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