IMF GDP and PPP forecasts to 2016

The IMF has new purchasing power parity forecasts out to 2016 and new nominal GDP forecasts out to 2016. The IMF does not seem to make any attempt to have accurate currency forecasts for its nominal exchange rate forecasts. Brazil and Russia are forecasted to pass France, Italy and the UK. Brazil will be the …

Read more

Less is More: Researchers Pinpoint Graphene’s Varying Conductivity Levels

Graphene is the material from which graphite, the core of your No. 2 pencil, is made. It is also the latest “wonder material,” and may be the electronics industry’s next great hope for the creation of extremely fast electronic devices. Researchers at North Carolina State University have found one of the first roadblocks to utilizing …

Read more

Helion Energy – Nuclear fusion by supersonic field reversed configuration plasmoids

Nuclear Fusion Journal – Creation of a high-temperature plasma through merging and compression of supersonic field reversed configuration plasmoids (H/T Talk Polywell) A new device, the Inductive Plasma Accelerator, was employed to simultaneously form and accelerate two oppositely directed field reversed configurations (FRCs) where the relative velocity (600 km s−1) of the plasmoids was much …

Read more

Carnival of Nuclear Energy 48

Carnival of Nuclear Energy 48 is up at the ANS Nuclear Cafe Idaho Samizdat updates the Fukushima situation and considers the challenges and costs of a full decommission. Two giant nuclear consortium are forming to manage the cleanup of the Fukushima site, remove of all reactor fuel, and eventually make it a much less dangerous …

Read more

HP envisions data centers 100 times more efficient than current designs – Sander Olson interviews Partha Ranganathan

Partha Ranganathan is Hewlett Packard’s Principal Investigator for HPs exascale datacenter project and is an expert on data center design. Modern data centers are not nearly as efficient as they could be and waste prodigious amounts of energy. Unless these inefficiencies are addressed, exascale supercomputers and data centers will never be feasible. In an interview …

Read more

Bioactive Peptides Found to Promote Wound Healing

Cells on the move: Blood vessel cells are shown migrating from left to right in response to injury. The red label shows the structures that cells use to move around. Credit: Jennifer Durham Newly-created bioactive peptides promote wound healing through the growth of new blood vessels and epithelial tissue, such as skin. These wound-healing peptides, …

Read more

Mile High Tower update

Construction of the Kingdom Tower in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah is proceeding and will comprise 275 floors, making it twice as high as the current tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. CORRECTIONS – There was some confusion from the recent articles about the cost and internal area of the building. Here …

Read more

Drug combo provides 10 percent weight loss for obese in a one-year clinical trial

An investigational combination of drugs already approved to treat obesity, migraine and epilepsy produced up to a 10 percent weight loss in obese individuals participating in a one-year clinical trial, according to researchers at Duke University Medical Center Appearing online in The Lancet, the study found that treatment with the controlled-release combination therapy consisting of …

Read more

Summary of lasers for weapons

Navy Shipboard Lasers for Surface, Air, and Missile Defense: Background and Issues for Congress (53 pages) Department of Defense (DOD) development work on high-energy military lasers, which has been underway for decades, has reached the point where lasers capable of countering certain surface and air targets at ranges of about a mile could be made …

Read more