Dun and Bradstreet have a global economic outlook for the next 5 years. The recovery from the 2008-2009 recession is the slowest and most problematic of the past century, highlighted by changes in D and B’s country risk ratings: 56 of the 132 countries (42.4%) rate worse than in October 2009 when the recovery started, …
What explains the growing class divide between the well educated and everybody else? Noted author Brink Lindsey, a senior scholar at the Kauffman Foundation, argues that it’s because economic expansion is creating an increasingly complex world in which only a minority with the right knowledge and skills–the right “human capital”–reap the majority of the economic …
1. Entergy plans to close and decommission its Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Station. The station is expected to cease power production after its current fuel cycle and move to safe shutdown in the fourth quarter of 2014. Cheap Natural Gas and subsidized wind The decision was driven by sustained low power prices, high cost structure …
On Aug.13, Lawrence Livermore’s National Ignition Facility (NIF) focused all 192 of its ultra-powerful laser beams on a tiny deuterium-tritium filled capsule. In the nanoseconds that followed, the capsule imploded and released a neutron yield of nearly 3×10^15, or approximately 8,000 joules of neutron energy — approximately three times NIF’s previous neutron yield record for …
Desert based solar power has energy utilization of 25% versus 15% for average solar power in Europe. Space based solar power can be considered To have 130% of earth based solar power utilization. There is more solar insolation in space and it is available at all times. However, microwave or laser transmission reduces the power …
Geordie Rose, CTO of Dwave Systems is interviewed at Singularity 1 on 1. Geordie discusses * the founding of D-Wave * what D-Wave is all about * superconducting processors * quantum computers * Rose’s Law (doubling qubits every year) * the multiverse * the Singularity * artificial intelligence 1:08-1:12 The unknown performance of the Dwave …
Russia has designs for an inflatable space station module. Wrapped into multilayered synthetic skin instead of metal, the expandable module could be attached to the Russian part of the International Space Station and inflated like a beach ball, providing greater comfort for the crew and extra room for yet-to-be-disclosed experiments Russian space web also has …
Brian Wang of nextbigfuture has participated in a brainstorming session for the Institute for the Future’s (IFTF) latest Ten Year forecast There were twitter postings under the hashtag #TH2014 from the brainstorming session. Matterport has an interesting 3D capture technology and demonstrated it at the IFTF session. I met Matt Bell at the IFTF meeting. …
Bigelow Aerospace is a private company developing inflatable space stations. In 2007, Bigelow launched the Genesis II, which was their second experimental space habitat designed. Genesis II was identical in size to Genesis I. It is a one-third scale of the full-size BA 330 model, with on-orbit measurements of 4.4 metres (14.4 ft) in length …
Loosely inspired by a biological brain’s approach to making sense of visual information, a University of Michigan researcher is leading a project to build alternative computer hardware that could process images and video 1,000 times faster with 10,000 times less power than today’s systems—all without sacrificing accuracy. DARPA has awarded up to $5.7 million to …
While today’s commercial solar panels typically have an efficiency of at most 25 percent, a silicon solar cell harnessing singlet fission should make it feasible to achieve efficiency of more than 30 percent, Baldo says — a huge leap in a field typically marked by slow, incremental progress. In solar cell research, he notes, people …