The UK Telegraph reports: researchers in Holland have created what was described as ”soggy pork” and are investigating ways to improve the muscle tissue in the hope that people will one day want to eat it. They have not tasted the product, but it is believed the artificial meat could be on sale within five …
Cell mates: This microfluidics chip (top) contains 1,536 minute wells, each designed to force contact between two fluorescently labeled cells. An immune cell and a tumor cell are forced into contact inside a single well of a microfluidics chip (bottom). The setup allows researchers to identify, isolate, and study immune cells with particularly potent anticancer …
Galactic Suite is a Barcelona based company that plans to have a space hotel operating in orbit by 2012. Physorg had some information on this project funded by an anonymous billionaire. The cost of three nights on the Galactic Suite Space Resort (plus a two-month training course on a Caribbean island beforehand) will be $4.4 …
Amory Lovins wrote an article on Grist primarily making the case that nuclear power is not economic and has a 30+ page pdf on the “Four Myths of Nuclear” This will be the first of a few articles where I show where Lovins is wrong. Firstly he talks about gross dollar or energy amounts. Those …
Multi-frac horizontals are a “game changer” for oil and gas drilling because of their potential to increase recoveries from established plays. The technology is unlocking tens of thousands of barrels of oil per day in Canada and hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil in the USA and hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of …
Carnival of Space 123 is up at Weird Warp This site provided an update on the Space elevator games. Finally they are almost ready to go and the University of Saskatchewan team is a favorite to win. Planetary society runs down all of the current robotic space mission activity. Centauri Dreams indicates how robotic space …
Biological parts: Ginkgo BioWorks, a synthetic-biology startup, is automating the process of building biological machines. Shown here is a liquid-handling robot that can prepare hundreds of reactions. Credit: Ginkgo BioWorks MIT Technology Review reports that startup Ginkgo BioWorks aims to push synthetic biology to the factory level. Ginkgo BioWorks, a new synthetic-biology startup that aims …
Ouroboros continues writeups of the recently completed SENS 4 antiaging conference. Previous nextbigfuture coverage: Part 2 of 3 summary of Ouroboros SENS4 coverage The Seconds half of the SENS4 schedule with links to abstracts Part 1 of 3 summary of Ouroboros SENS4 coverage SENS4, Session 21: Tissue engineering Gabor Forgacs gave a very interesting talk …
PowerSat Corporation estimates they can make 2500 megawatts of space based solar power plants for roughly $3-4 Billion. PowerSat is anticipating being able to transmit power to commercial customers in 10-12 years. Launching a powersat is very similar to launching a communications satellite, and uses the same technology and equipment. Where PowerSat’s satellites differ is …
Neuron cell architecture. (a) Despite having only four pins (discs), cell circuitry (b) can compute analog dot products of large numbers of input signals and synaptic weights, using summing amplifiers. Cell processing implements shunting dynamics. (c) Dendrites (horizontal nanowires) collect inputs from other neurons; axons (vertical nanowires) carry information to other neurons New Scientist reports …
The First 43 Years from 1966 to 2009We start just a little before 1966 (when the first show of the TV series was aired, which would technically be the first 45 years) to get a sense of technology and the world while the Star Trek show was in its development phase through to today. In …