Joe Bonometti, gave a Google Tech talk on liquid fluoride thorium reactors. 11MB of powerpoint slides “ Besides the low amount of waste and almost complete burning of all Uranium and Plutonium, another big advantage of liquid fluoride reactors is fast and safe shutoff and restart capability. This fast stop and restart allows for load …
Joe Eck at superconductors.org continues his research with superconductors and reports signs of superconductivity over 212K by doping a recently-discovered 200K tin-copper-oxide superconductor with a small amound of indium. The improved formula becomes (Sn5In)Ba4Ca2Cu10Oy. Although the 212K phase forms as a very small volume fraction within the bulk, sharp resistive and diamagnetic transitions are clearly …
Dramatic enhancement in energy harvesting for a narrow range of dimensions in piezoelectric nanostructures around the critical size of 20-23 nanometer thick beams. Lead zirconate titanate (PZT) material employed in the form of cantilever beams, our results indicate that the total harvested power peak value can increase by 100% around 21 nm beam thickness (under …
1. BAM, a “ceramic alloy”, is created by combining a metal alloy of boron, aluminium and magnesium (AlMgB14) with titanium boride (TiB2). It is the hardest material after diamond and cubic boron nitride. -BAM is much slipperier than Teflon, with a coefficient of friction of .02 compared to .05. Lubricated steel has a friction coefficient …
Starts With A Bang has the Carnival of Space Week 80, the Thanksgiving Edition. This site talked about technology coming together which could enable large scale nuclear fission power on the moon starting by 2020 if there was the will and the funding. Bad Astronomy talks about the new evidence for oceans on Mars Centauri …
Most existing heat-harvesting technologies are efficient only at temperatures above 150 °C, and much waste heat just isn’t that hot. Now Ener-G-Rotors, based in Schenectady, NY, is developing technology that can use heat between 65 and 150 °C. [338-453 Kelvin] The company expects to convert 10 to 15 percent of low-temperature waste heat into electricity, …
1. A Colombian woman has become the world’s first recipient of windpipe tissue constructed from a combination of donated tissue and her own cells. Stem cells harvested from the woman’s bone marrow were used to populate a stripped-down section of windpipe received from a donor, which was then transplanted into her body in June. The …
Previously this site had speculated on using current and in development technology to create a Bolo supertank from science fiction. From Roland Piquepaille’s Technology Trends : Caterpillar engineers and computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University have teamed up to develop an autonomous 700 ton mining truck. The super-large mining truck was a baseline from which …
The 26th Army Science conference theme is “Transformational Army Science and Technology – Harnessing Disruptive S&T for the Soldier.” The four day agenda is here. Dr. John A. Parmentola, Director of Research and Laboratory Management, gave a talk a few months ago that will form the basis of his keynote address highlighting top research. Dr. …
Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., has improved their diamond making process to enable thousand carat diamonds and larger. The largest cut diamond is 545.67 carats. The Carnegie team could take these synthetic diamonds and anneal them at temperatures up to 3,632 degrees Fahrenheit (2,000 degrees Celsius) at pressures below atmospheric pressure. The annealing process turns …
Armadillo aerospace won the $350,000 lunar lander prize but missed the $1 million prize. Level 1 ($350,000) contest called for teams to fly their remote-controlled, rocket-powered landers up to a height of 50 meters (yards), hover for at least 90 seconds, land at another pad 100 meters (yards) away, refuel and then retrace the route …