Figures released by the Russian Federal Treasury have confirmed that Russia’s defence budget has been cut by 25.5% for 2017, falling from RUB3.8 trillion (USD65.4 billion) to RUB2.8 trillion. The reduction represents the largest cut to military expenditure in the country since the early 1990s. The reduction follows an extended period of large increases to …
A new study by Manasvi Lingam and Avi Loeb at Harvard says that fast radio bursts (FRBs) could come from extraterrestrial radio beams being used as beacons or to power alien light sails. The source of FRBs, which are milliseconds-long but incredibly bright pulses of radio waves, have intrigued and mystified astronomers for years – …
Speaking at the Aspen Abu Dhabi Ideas Forum, Dr Brad Perkins, chief medical officer, Human Longevity, said: “Right now the most daunting and expensive human health problem that the world is facing is age related chronic disease. Our hypothesis at Human Longevity is that genomics and the technologies that support its application in medicine and …
Russia has announced the start of commercial operation of its first VVER-1200 reactor, unit 1 of the Novovoronezh II nuclear power plant. Also known as Novovoronezh 6, the unit was connected to the network in early August last year, but Rosatom said this week that it had officially started commercial operation on 27 February. This …
NASA has selected proposals for the creation of two multi-disciplinary, university-led research institutes that will focus on the development of technologies critical to extending human presence deeper into our solar system. The new Space Technology Research Institutes (STRIs) created under these proposals will bring together researchers from various disciplines and organizations to collaborate on the …
Elon Musk indicated at a recent conference that to some degree, we are already cyborgs. You think of the digital tools that you have, the applications that you have. You can ask a question and instantly get an answer from Google. You already have a digital tertiary layer. I say ‘tertiary’ because you think of …
Solar energy prices have been dropping for decades. There is a lag in the price per watt of off grid solar for solar home systems behind the cost for solar per watt for the most efficient utility solar projects. 1.2 billion people currently do not have electricity. It costs $800-2000 per person to connect people …
The Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program passed its Milestone B decision review and can move into detail design, an official told USNI News. The potential USD128 billion ORP has entered the engineering and manufacturing development phase. These SSBNs should cost about $8 billion apiece, Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn.), whose district includes the prime contractor, told …
In 2008, ITU – International Telecommunication Union said that 4G would deliver 1Gbit/sec for stationary devices, and 100Mbit/s for those moving. 4G brought a considerable improvement in speed over 3G, but even in 2017 real-world speeds are averaging out at around 7-40 Mb/s. 4G real world speeds actually delivered on the promised speeds for 3G. …
The original Bladerunner was one of my favorite movies and it had a very interesting vision of the future. Now there is the sequel coming Oct 6, 2017. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News …
A team of researchers from Microsoft, Cray, and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) have been working on a project to speed up the use of deep learning algorithms on supercomputers. They accelerated the training process. Instead of waiting weeks or months for results, data scientists can obtain results within hours or even minutes. With …