Significance journal – How Usain Bolt can run faster – effortlessly Usain Bolt holds the current 100m world record, at 9.58s, and has been described as the best sprinter there has ever been, dramatically reducing his running times since he first won the world record in 2008. Bolt ran 9.58 seconds for the 100 meters …
IMF reforms will shift 6% of current quotas to dynamic emerging and developing countries according to Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Their role is significantly evolving. It reflects, as I was telling you for the credibility issue, the economic evolution of those countries. It is best manifested in three areas. …
1. How to build a space telescope for 1% of the cost: Fabrication of large space optics that are accurately shaped to better than a 1000th of the width of a human hair is an enormous challenge. Traditional space telescope fabrication methods require rigid and therefore heavy mirrors, expensive spacecraft and massive rocket launch vehicles. …
LA Times – Imagine a car that gets more than 40 miles per gallon in everyday traffic and 50 on the highway — and it isn’t an expensive hybrid and it doesn’t require special fuel. Get ready for a new generation of cars equipped with surprisingly powerful three-cylinder engines that, according to early reviews out …
MSNBC – Scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy facility in New Mexico, used a supercomputer to model nukes’ anti-asteroid effectiveness. They attacked a 1,650-foot-long (500-meter) space rock with a 1-megaton nuclear weapon — about 50 times more powerful than the U.S. blast inflicted on Nagasaki, Japan, to help end World …
Business Week – Libyan production rose to 1.3 million barrels a day last month, up 150,000 barrels from the previous month, according to IEA estimates. The country’s output is about 300,000 barrels less than its average before the uprising against Muammar Qaddafi last year. Saudi will probably produce 9.8 million barrels a day this month, …
Nature – Snails have joined the growing ranks of animals whose own metabolism can be used to generate electricity. Next lobster implants and rats and eventually human bio-blood powered implants. Designing devices that are far more energy efficient or only needs occasional bursts of power will increase the range of applications. This technology clearly has …
DARPA – Today, the lowest echelon members of the U.S. military deployed in remote overseas locations are unable to obtain on-demand satellite imagery in a timely and persistent manner for pre-mission planning. This is due to lack of satellite overflight opportunities, inability to receive direct satellite downlinks at the tactical level and information flow restrictions. …
International Journal of Smart and Nano Materials – The development and challenges of rechargeable non-aqueous lithium–air batteries Lithium–air (Li–air) batteries have recently received much attention due to their extremely high theoretical energy densities. The significantly larger theoretical energy density of Li–air batteries is due to the use of a pure lithium metal anode and the …
Star Wars Phantom Menace 3D will make about $45-50 million domestically. It will make about two times that amount in foreign box office. It is already at $46 million in foreign box office. There will be Blu-ray and other revenue and it re-invigorates toy sales. Toys sales are about 4 times the movie box office …
Working at a scale applicable to infrared light, the Harvard team has used extremely short and powerful laser pulses to create three-dimensional patterns of tiny silver dots within a material. Those suspended metal dots are essential for building futuristic devices like invisibility cloaks. “If you want a bulk metamaterial for visible and infrared light, you …