Researchers are testing whether high-throughput DNA sequencing can help screen out abnormal embryos during in vitro fertilization. In a trial, researchers will use DNA sequencing to count the number of chromosomes in each of the embryos they create by fertilizing a woman’s eggs in a dish. An abnormal number of chromosomes is the most common …
The Google Chromecast ($35) is following devices that have already been available in China and Asia for over one year. A homegrown Chinese product could be bought for $40 in 2012 and it was sporting the latest ARM core at the time (Cortex A5). It turned any HDMI TV into a giant streaming display. Chromecast …
The Carnival of Nuclear Energy 131 is up at Hiroshima Syndrome ANS Nuclear Cafe – Small Modular Reactors, or SMRs, have been under consideration in many quarters of late as a new focus for nuclear power generation. While the recent deadline for Department of Energy grant money came and went without so much as a …
Summarizing the concepts needed to transform to a more robust and faster recovering (from disaster) society. 1. Pre-sort and have system for quickly resolving the politics of rebuild 2. Bring infrastructure up to a fast maintainable or fast fixable state. (R&D needed) 3. Strategic reserve of building and infrastructure 4. Defense beyond defense against war. …
World Energy Consumption changes from 1990 to 2008. Total energy consumption increased over 19 years 20% in the USA and 39% in the World and even 7% in Europe. It increased 146% in China. All of the conservation and efficiency improvement efforts of the past years has slowed the growth in energy usage. The energy …
The Engineer – Moths’ eyes have inspired the development of nanoscale materials that could reduce radiation dosages received by patients being X-rayed and improve the resolution of the resulting images. In lab experiments, Yi and colleagues found that adding the thin film to the scintillator of an X-ray mammographic unit increased the intensity of the …
The Carnival of Nuclear Energy 107 is up at Idaho Samizdat Atomic Insights – Exaggerated myths about nuclear accidents CAUSE negative health effects. A video was produced by the World Nuclear Association (WNA). It shows that the predicted health consequences of nuclear accidents are often orders of magnitude greater than the actual, measured health consequences …
Scientists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have directed the first self-assembly of nanoparticles into device-ready materials. Through a relatively easy and inexpensive technique based on blending nanoparticles with block co-polymer supramolecules, the researchers produced multiple-layers of thin films from highly ordered one-, two- and three-dimensional …
ICube is a fabless semiconductor company developing semiconductor System-On-Chip (SOC) solutions based on our Harmony Unified Processor Technology, genuinely integrating two different processor types: a central processing unit (CPU) and a graphics processing unit (GPU), into one unified core. Founded by Silicon Valley veterans (Simon Moy, CTO was Principal Engineer at NVIDIA and Fred Chow, …
Arxiv – Experimental determination of Ramsey numbers with quantum annealing (16 pages) In an interview that I had with CTO Geordie Rose, he mentioned that published papers lag the actual work by about 2 years. Currently, Dwave Systems is working on their prototype 512 qubit chips which will be commercially available later in 2012. Ramsey …
Microsoft offers a glimpse into what they see as the future of productivity in 2016-2021. (H/T KurzweilAI) All of the ideas in the video are based on real technology. Some of the capabilities, such as speech recognition, real time collaboration and data visualization already exist today. Others are not yet available in specific products, but …