More progress on making stronger materials. Stronger materials means existing products can have the same strength but be lighter. Light weight can mean greater fuel efficiency. With enough strength entirely new applications become possible, such as space elevators. Physorg.com brings word of carbon nanotube composites A team of University of Pennsylvania and Rice University researchers …
A legislator from Southern California has introduced a bill to lift the state’s ban on new nuclear power plants. The bill would give a boost to plans by investors to bring nuclear power to the heart of the San Joaquin Valley. Update: Contact your california state assembly representative to indicate your support for this bill …
New anti-air pollutions bills that are going before congress. The Clean Air Planning Act would save thousands of lives each year. For instance, EPA estimated that the previous bill, when compared to “Clear Skies” in 2010, would mean 10,000 fewer premature deaths, 15,000 fewer trips to the emergency room and 1 million fewer work days …
Japanese scientists have developed an oral vaccine for Alzheimer’s disease that has proven effective and safe in mice. “We hope the Phase I trials go well,” Tabira said. “Animals are able to recover their functions after developing symptoms, but humans are less able to do so. It may be that this only works in the …
A Dwave system pdf that has questions and answers about their quantum computer and their quantum computer plans some more useful answers in the comments and discussion: “For the algorithms you demostrated, how many times do you have to run the quantum computer to get the right answer?” Generally the success rates are around 90% …
2006 2005 2004 Wealth Amount 5 3 2 US$30B+ Forbes list (which mainly catches owners 67 49 32 US$10B+ of public assets, can underestimate some 167 124 102 US$5B+ like CTO of Cisco, who may be billionaire 946 793 691 US$1B+ from cisco stock + large startup positions) 10000 8200 7500 US$160M+ (my own estimate) …
The material is a boron nitride “nanocomposite.” This means that, rather than consisting of one large continuous crystal, it is made of crystalline boron-nitride grains that are each a few to several nanometers in size. Although research groups have previously reported boron carbonitride materials, claimed to be the second and third hardest materials after diamond, …
Another indicator of accelerating progress. The Memjet technology uses a series of individual MEMS-based inkjet nozzles, fabricated using conventional semiconductor manufacturing techniques. Each chip measures 20 millimeters across and contains 6,400 nozzles, with five color channels, the company said. A separate driver chip calculates 900 million picoliter-sized drops per second. For a standard A4 letter …
This latest development from Henri Lezec and co-workers at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, US, could lead to a ‘superlens’ capable of producing optical images with detail to rival electron microscopes. The bolt on microscope resolution booster could be out to the top 1000 labs within 2 years. The target of 1 nanometer resolution for …
Nuclear magnetic resonance, or NMR, generates a true-to-life fingerprint – a unique pattern indicating the presence of specific molecules – for a research sample that is being analyzed. It has been found that a higher power magnet (21.1 tesla) increases the picture’s brightness by a factor of about 10 relative to low-field images (14.1 tesla) …
In conventional solar cells (a), light (dashed line) enters an antireflective layer (yellow) and then a layer of silicon (green) in which much of the light is converted into electricity. But some of the light (solid arrows) reflects off an aluminum backing, returns through the silicon, and exits without generating electricity. A new material (represented …
