Promise and hurdles to printed organs and some printed replacement parts in human trials by 2013 to 2016

“If the federal government created a ‘human organ project’ and wanted to make the kidney, I literally think it could happen in 10 years,” said chemical engineer Keith Murphy, co-founder of Organovo, a firm that makes and works with high-end bioprinters. But that would require a massive commitment of people, resources and billions of dollars.

Implantable fabricatable body parts

Bioprinting technology is years and possibly decades from producing such complex organs, but scientists have already printed skin and vertebral disks (the soft tissue that grows in the spine between the vertebrae) and put them into living bodies. So far, none of those bodies have been human, but a few types of printed replacement parts could be ready for human trials in two to five years.

Once scientists get over the financial and technical hurdles of bioprinting, they will have to square the process with the Food and Drug Administration, which will have to decide how to regulate something that is not simply a device, a biological product or a drug, but potentially all three.

Before printed organs are implanted into people, bioprinting may be used in other ways. Murphy’s group is working on a project that will replicate tissue for testing the effects of medications, particularly cancer drugs. This could eliminate some of the drawn-out, trial-and-error process of trying a series of drugs on a person before finding one that works.

Progress to mind controlled prostheses with a sense of touch

University of Chicago researchers aim to design prostheses that will not only be able to move, but would also provide amputees and quadriplegics a sense of touch.

Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and spurred by the return of injured Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, the research aims to design prostheses that will not only be able to move, but will also provide amputees and quadriplegics with a sense of touch.

Oncologists were willing to prescribe treatments that cost $245,972 per quality-adjusted life-year

Oncologists were willing to prescribe treatments that cost $245,972 per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY; SD $243,663 per QALY) in life-prolonging situations v. only $119,082 per QALY (SD $197,048 per QALY) for treatments

that improve quality of life but do not prolong survival. This difference did not depend on age, gender, percentage of time in clinical work, or self-reported preparedness to use and interpret cost-effectiveness information.
It would interesting to see if new life extension treatments became available whether any kind of similar spending prescriptions would carry over. It would probably be difficult to sustain more than 20% of a persons income and 20% of tax revenue for effective life extension treatment.

Doing good without doing good enough- using the model of AIDS patient advocacy for longevity science advocacy

A long piece from Chronosphere covers a fair amount of ground, and holds up the AIDS patient advocacy of the 80s and 90s as a model of success that could be and should be emulated for longevity science advocacy.

Fightaging summarizes the lengthy Chronopause article.

[For example], mature, clinically available, and FDA-approved therapies to slow or halt brain cell loss are a decade, and likely closer to two decades, away. And when clinical application does come, it will likely be only for the most serious disease states, such as [Alzheimer's disease], Huntington's Disease (HD), and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Even in these conditions, access to treatment may be limited by many factors, including high cost and government regulation. Thus, for many of us, even another decade of waiting will be too long. ... One of the hardest things for people to understand is that it is possible to do good, without doing good enough; and nowhere is this more the case than in medical research

COURAGE and the ability to understand that human experimentation, preferably by those with the most to lose and the most to gain, is the only path to the development of fast and effective therapies. Animals are not people, just as certainly as people are not animals: and while animal research can provide useful leads, and help to explicate the mechanics of both disease processes and therapies, it is no substitute for human experimentation. The increasing absence of the latter has arguably become one of the most critical elements in slowing medical progress today.

Google Chromebook Economics and Market

The Worldwide professional PC market is about $160 billion per year (about 125 million professional desktop PCs).

Google's Chromebook is trying to capture a large piece of that market. Google unveiled a subscription program for businesses and schools to get Chromebooks. For businesses the cost is $28 per machine per month. And for schools, the cost is $20 per machine per month. The subscription fee includes the hardware, administrative support, hardware upgrades, and warranty.

People pay a monthly fee and get software, hardware and support for the Chromebook. Small and large users can drastically reduce the need for IT support staff by switching to Chromebook.

A business can weigh whether hiring more $60,000-100,000/year IT staff and costs and issues and limitations of their current IT desktop support model is more costly versus the Google Chromebook model.

Hong Kong researchers produce inexpensive thin film solar cells with 17% conversion efficiency

Hong Kong researchers achieved a conversion efficiency of 17% with a CIGS solar cell that is thin and portable. Thin-film solar cells can be installed on roofs and outer walls and can also be integrated into consumer products such as handbags and backpacks for charging electronic products instantly.

CIGS solar cell has the highest efficiency, comparable to crystalline solar cell, yet 50 times thinner and fabrication costing 50% less. When mass production technology matures and becomes widely adopted, we believe that CIGS will be the most cost competitive solar cell, demonstrating bright market prospects.”

Primus Power working on scaling up $500 per kilowatt hour flow batteries and has started a different $100 per kwh design

Primus Power has a low cost, versatile and power dense battery system that economically addresses a wide range of energy storage applications. They are working to commercialize, deploy and monitor a 25 MW • 75 MWh energy storage system for a California utility.

MIT Technology Review explains what Primus Power is doing to make flow batteries radically cheaper

Primus Power is trying to overcome one of the fundamental problems that have plagued flow batteries. The technology, in theory, at least, could be one of the cheapest forms of grid storage, since it requires inexpensive and abundant materials. But in practice, flow batteries have been very expensive, in part because they're large and have to be custom-built on site. Primus is hoping get around this with a new design that can be mass-produced in factories

.

Lawrenceville Plasma Physics working out solutions to achieve higher yield and fix insulation

1. As Lawrenceville Plasma Physics’s (LPP) research team suspected a few weeks ago, uneven tungsten pins at the inner edge of the cathode plate appear responsible for a markedly asymmetrical current sheath, which in turn led to the formation of the early beam and lower-than-predicted fusion yields.

Continuous knife-edge cathode base, previously produced, is ready for installation in June and expected to bring increase in yield (replaces the uneven pins). Soot contamination also to be improved.

Apple iCloud

Apple's iCloud works in the background to keep music, photos, and documents in sync across all Apple devices, mobile or otherwise.

iCloud will not make it possible for people to stream music purchased on iTunes over the airwaves from any device—leaving it short of a feature found in recently launched services from Amazon and Google. However, iCloud's capabilities extend beyond music and will become a central feature of all Apple products. Apple's previous cloud service, MobileMe, "no longer exists as a product," said Jobs.

Planar transistors are given a new lease on life

Suvolta released its Powershrink CMOS transistor technology that it claims will reduce the power consumption of CMOS circuits. The firm's Powershrink technology uses Deeply Depleted Channel (DDC) CMOS transistors and DDC-optimised circuits and design techniques.

The use of DDC allows chipmakers to reduce power supply voltages by up to 30 per cent and reduce power leakage by 80 per cent. Most importantly, DDC technology can be used in the fabrication of CPUs and system-on-chip packages built for use in smartphones and tablets.

New electronics enable an eight megapixel performance in a prototype 3D Television Display

Samsung has shown off a prototype of an ultra-high-definition 3-D television. The 70-inch prototype uses a novel electronic circuitry to control eight million pixels. It's not likely to go into volume production soon, and there isn't any content to display on it, says Paul Semenza, a senior analyst at Display Search.

Samsung is the latest TV manufacturer to demonstrate a technology that uses a type of backplane—the array of transistors used to switch the pixels on and off—based on metal oxide semiconductors. These materials offer higher performance than the amorphous silicon widely used today, without increasing costs. In April, manufacturer Sharp announced it will begin manufacturing displays based on metal oxide transistor arrays by the end of the year at its plant in Kameyana, Japan.

A detailed Qualitative Approach to the Cold Fusion Nuclear Reactions of H/Ni

Christos Stremmenos has presented a new theory about the Rossi and Focardi low energy nuclear reactions

The following two questions should be answered:

1. Which is the supposed mechanism that overcomes the powerful electrostatic repulse (Coulomb barrier) between the “shielded proton” and the Nickel nucleus?

2. For what reason there is almost no radiation of any kind (experimental observation), while according to the Focardi and Rossi’s hypothesis there should have been some γ radiation (511 KeV) produced by the predicted annihilation of the β+ and β- particles that are being created during the Fusion?

Stremmenos has thoughts based on general and elementary structures, data and principles of universal scientific acceptance, might shed some light to this exciting phenomenon. More specific, he refers to Bohr’s hydrogen atom, the speed of nuclear reactions (10^-20 sec) and the Uncertainty Principle of Heisenberg.

the Russia Competitiveness Report 2011

World Economic forum has the Russia Competitiveness Report 2011 (237 pages)

the report also has detailed analysis of the economic competitiveness of

Australia
Brazil
Canada
Chile
China
Czech Republic
Estonia
Finland
France
Germany
Hungary
India
Indonesia
Israel
Japan
Kazakhstan
Korea, Rep.
Macedonia, FYR
Norway
Poland
Saudi Arabia
South Africa
Turkey
Ukraine
United States
Venezuela

Research creates nanoparticles perfectly formed to tackle cancer

Researchers from the University of Hull have discovered a way to load up nanoparticles with large numbers of light-sensitive molecules to create a more effective form of photodynamic therapy (PDT) for treating cancer.

The nanoparticles have been designed so the pressure in the blood vessels will push them through the space between the cells to get into the tumor tissue.

Minivectors renew gene therapy hopes for lung cancer and asthma treatments

Minivector™ DNA – very small circular therapeutic DNA molecules – survive the stress of aerosolization (being forced into suspension in air) and can carry gene therapy deep into the lungs, said researchers from Baylor College of Medicine

The ability to get deep in the lungs means that the Minivectors could be a potential treatment for a host of lung diseases, including lung cancer and asthma. These Minivectors, developed in the laboratory of Dr. Lynn Zechiedrich, associate professor of molecular virology and microbiology, biochemistry and molecular biology, and pharmacology at BCM, are not toxic, unlike existing vectors that are typically modified viruses. They survive longer than plasmids (large DNA circles containing bacterial sequences that can be turned off in human cells) and continue to work longer than small interfering RNAs, which are used now to turn off genes in the laboratory setting.

Gene therapy reverses type 1 diabetes in mice with 78% success rate

An experimental cure for Type 1 diabetes has a nearly 80 percent success rate in curing diabetic mice. The results, to be presented Saturday at The Endocrine Society's 93rd Annual Meeting in Boston, offer possible hope of curing a disease that affects 3 million Americans.

"With just one injection of this gene therapy, the mice remain diabetes-free long term and have a return of normal insulin levels in the body," said Vijay Yechoor, MD, the principal investigator and an assistant professor at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

MIT has new semi-solid flow batteries that have ten times the energy density of liquid flow batteries

A sample of 'Cambridge crude' — a black, gooey substance that can power a highly efficient new type of battery. A prototype of the semi-solid flow battery is seen behind the flask. Photo: Dominick Reuter

Flow batteries have existed for some time, but have used liquids with very low energy density (the amount of energy that can be stored in a given volume). Because of this, existing flow batteries take up much more space than fuel cells and require rapid pumping of their fluid, further reducing their efficiency.

The new semi-solid flow batteries pioneered by Chiang and colleagues overcome this limitation, providing a 10-fold improvement in energy density over present liquid flow-batteries, and lower-cost manufacturing than conventional lithium-ion batteries. Because the material has such a high energy density, it does not need to be pumped rapidly to deliver its power. “It kind of oozes,” Chiang says. Because the suspensions look and flow like black goo and could end up used in place of petroleum for transportation, Carter says, “We call it ‘Cambridge crude.’”

Progress to using stem cells to improve bone healing

Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have shown in an animal study that transplantation of adult stem cells enriched with a bone-regenerating hormone can help mend bone fractures that are not healing properly.

The UNC study team led by Anna Spagnoli, MD, associate professor of pediatrics and biomedical engineering, demonstrated that stem cells manufactured with the regenerative hormone insulin-like growth factor (IGF-I) become bone cells and also help the cells within broken bones repair the fracture, thereby speeding the healing.

The new findings were presented June 5, 2011 at The Endocrine Society's 93rd Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.

A deficiency of fracture healing is a common problem affecting an estimated 600,000 people annually in North America. "This problem is even more serious in children with osteogenesis imperfecta, or brittle bone disease, and in elderly adults with osteoporosis, because their fragile bones can easily and repeatedly break, and bone graft surgical treatment is often not successful or feasible," Spagnoli said.

Approximately 7.9 million bone fractures occur every year in the United States alone, with an estimated cost of $70 billion. Of these, 10 to 20 percent fail to heal.

Scaling up Mach Effect Propulsion

We reported today that Dr. James Woodward is now seeing consistent thrust signatures that are reversible in the 1.0 micro-Newton thrust range as captured using his ARC-Lite torque pendulum, which has a force resolution of ~0.05 micro-Newtons.

Paul March has explained what scaling up could look like if development were to proceed smoothly from here:

Jim’s current speed of sound limited acoustical based PZT stack design can be scaled up to at least the 1-omega 600 kHz power frequency range before their manufacturing has to done with integrated circuit like production approaches due to the small sizes needed work with mechanically resonant systems. That should allow Woodward to increase his thrust levels by at least a factor of 100 or even 1,000 times his current 1.0 uN thrust levels especially if the 2-omega force rectification signal can be boosted from its currently abysmal ~2.0% to 5.0% of the amplitude of the applied 1-omega delta mass drive signal up to 100% or higher due to the bandwidth limitations of his Carvin amplifiers and homegrown matching transformers.

Carnival of Nuclear Energy 55

The Carnival of Nuclear Energy 55 is up at Yes Vermont Yankee.

Atomic Power Review discusses how this is a critical time for nuclear advocacy

As pro-nuclear advocates go, we may find ourselves at a watershed moment when nuclear literacy is in demand, when the NRC is being exposed for what it really is, when the NRC and the EPA might actually be thought of as being at odds (given the CO2 emissions that will increase if nuclear is abandoned) and when little media such as the blog you are reading is getting 1200 page views a day from all around the world, or better. At the surface it seems a bad moment for pro-nuclear advocacy but in point of fact there may be no better hour to act boldly, with confidence that what the public really wants is the truth, and results. something the EPA, global warming advocates, and the NRC cannot hope to produce.

Idaho Samizdat talks about Germanys Nuclear panic attack

In her blog post, Nuclear Power and the Witch Hunt, Margaret Harding shows that the spent fuel pools at Fukushima are a witch story. They didn’t burn, they did run out of water and caused problems for TEPCO, but we should not over-react in the need to “fix” a problem that isn’t there. There is risk that a fix could create other issues.

2011 and 2012 could be technical takeoff years for several super technologies

2011 and 2012 are shaping up to be years where key technologies establish a technical takeoff.

J Storrs Hall defines a technical takeoff
- Embodies the essential function of the proposed technology
- is proof that the concept works
- focuses technical effort
- is a vehicle for practical experience
- attracts financial (etc) resources
- forms a crack in the dam

1. Adiabatic quantum computers are thus well passed technical takeoff, with a $10 million commercial sale to Lockheed Martin. However, they are achieving an secondary technical takeoff where the tens of millions that have been invested are justified and further funding and development to the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollar level will be achieved. Billions of dollar will be needed to truly establish a vibrant quantum computer industry with million or billion qubit machines. Researchers are extending the superposition of quantum superconducting flux qubit using microwave pulses to 23 microseconds.

New generation asthma drug could improve metabolism for safe and effective fat burning and muscle building pill

Formoterol, a new generation asthma medication, shows great promise for improving fat and protein metabolism, say Australian researchers, who have tested this effect in a small sample of eight men.

The new drug is also more selective for a similar receptor found in muscle and fat. In theory at least, it should have beneficial metabolic effects – like the older class of medication – without affecting the heart.

Energy metabolism increased by more than 10%, fat burning increased by more than 25%, while protein burning fell by 15%.

So although whole body metabolism increased, these men burned fat while reducing the burning of protein. That's a good thing because in the long run these effects may lead to a loss in fat mass and an increase in muscle.

If the long term trials of a large population prove out - this could be a safe fat burning / muscle increasing pill.

Obesity can reduce life expectancy by several years. Since the drug has already been approved for use for treating asthma then it should be able to go right to phase 2 and 3 clinical trials. Or at least spend less time in phase 1 safety trials.

James Woodward reports a consistent and reversible 1 micronewtons Mach Effect

THE “ARC-LITE” Torque Pendulum THRUST BALANCE with latest Mach-Effect Data from Several PZT-Stacks Presented (24 pages)

Paul March explains that Dr. Woodward is now seeing consistent thrust signatures that are reversible in the 1.0 micro-Newton thrust range as captured using his ARC-Lite torque pendulum, which has a force resolution of ~0.05 micro-Newtons. The thrust magnitude and direction output of these PZT stacks are very phase dependent, so as these devices had their drive frequency swept through their mechanical resonant frequency just below 60 kHz, several thrust reversals are observed due to the phase reversals also observed between the 1-omega mass fluctuation signal and the 2-omega force rectification signal that was injected directly or generated in the PZT stack by its nonlinear response to its 1-omega drive signal. These M-E like forces are still very small, but they are now repeatable and appear to observe M-E scaling.

The effect is 3 times larger than the Seismic noise of 0.33 micronewtons. Woodward now thinks he understands the non-linear PZT-Stack's phase relationships between the 1-omega mass fluctuation and 2-omega force rectification drive signals well enough, to see a way forward. I.e., the engineering of usable M-E based thrusters can now start in earnest per Woodward. How many unknown, unknowns are yet to be tripped over on the way to making Paul March's M-E powered WarpStar concept vehicle a reality is yet to be determined. Paul March and James Woodward believe that a way forward now seems possible...

Woodward is of the opinion that he knows enough now to actually build the next M-E drive prototype that should produce at least an order of magnitude higher thrust than the current PZT unit’s ~1.0 uN.

Current ion thrusters produce 100 to 1000 millinewtons of thrust

There is 3 micronewtons in one direction and 2 micronewtons in the reverse. This sentence is referring to the negative going 3.0 uN force calibration pulse supplied by the two B-field coils attached to the ARC-Lite torque pendulum needed to calibrate the as built torque pendulum. This is the normal way one calibrates these kinds of torque pendulums and that is to use a know force supplied by the repulsion or attraction between two magnetic coils or two electrostatic plates. The PZT-Stack itself was only generating forces on the order of +/-1.0 uN with approximately 150V-p applied to the Stack dependent on the relative phase between the 1-omega drive signal and 2-omega force rectification signal.

Evidently, there is a thrust signal – at the level of about 1.0 uN – that reverses direction as the frequency sweeps down through the stack’s mechanical resonance at 60 KHz and below, (where the second harmonic of the voltage signal is not completely suppressed by the limitations of the power amplifier and low pass characteristics of the power circuit)

Iraq sees oil output at 3 million bpd by endof 2011 and up to 4 million bpd by end of 2012

Iraq expects its oil output to rise to 3 million barrels per day by the end of this year and sees it growing an additional 500,000 to 1 million bpd next year, Deputy Prime Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said on Saturday.

Canadian oil sands projected to produce 3.7 million barrels per day by 2025

Oil sands growth and new production from existing conventional oil reserves will drive Canadian crude oil production to about 4.7 million barrels per day by 2025 according to the latest forecast from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. (40 pages) This is about 401,000 b/d higher than previously forecast, due primarily to the higher conventional production and the inclusion of some additional in situ projects that were previously put on hold.

Canadian Crude Oil Production Forecast* (million b/d)

                              2010 Actual  2011   2015   2020   2025

Oil Sands                            1.5    1.6    2.2    3.0    3.7
Conventional                         0.9    1.0    1.0    0.9    0.7
Pentanes/Condensate                  0.1    0.1    0.1    0.1    0.1
Offshore                             0.3    0.3    0.2    0.2    0.1
Total Canadian Crude Oil Production  2.8    2.9    3.5    4.2    4.7

iPhone 5 rumors, ios 5 and icloud

iPhone 5 is rumored to use curved glass like the iPod nano and the Samsung Nexus S The iPhone 5 is also rumored to have an 8 megapixel camera.

Apple announced in a press release that they will present iOS 5, the new software platform that will support mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software - Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch; and iCloud, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.

Cost to increase car fleet gas fuel efficiency

The U.S. Auto Industry and the Market of 2025 (45 page) The Center for Automotive Research (CAR) analysis calculates fuel economy costs to be from $4,190 to $6,435 per vehicle and a lifetime fuel savings of only $1,690 to $2,693.

* a 10.2% net vehicle price increase can enable fleetwide 41.7 mpg
* a 22.3% net vehicle price increase at 60.1 mpg

Using Loss of Life Expectancy Statistics for a plan to get everyone to live to 100 years or more

Risks in Perspective by BernardL.Cohen,Ph.D. 2003. the Journal of Physicians and Surgeons (H/T Al Fin) Perhaps the most meaningful way of putting risks into perspective is to consider the loss of life expectancy (LLE) that they cause. The chart is mostly for US cities. World poverty and air pollution have larger impacts on populations outside the United States.

One of the greatest risks to an individual is living in poverty: LLE is 9 years for 19 large U.S. cities and for Montreal. In Britain, the difference in life expectancy between professional people and unskilled laborers is 7.2 years, and in Finland it is also 7.2 years. When Canadian men are ranked by income, those in the 90th percentile live 6 years longer than those in the 10th percentile. The latter have a higher mortality rate by 32 percent for heart disease and stroke, by 34 percent for cancer, and by 88 percent for accidents, poison, and violence. On an international scale, poverty plays a much bigger role – life expectancy is typically 30 years longer in affluent countries than in poor countries. For example, in 1990 it was 77 years in Japan, Sweden, and Canada compared with 38 years in Afghanistan and Gambia and 42 years in Ethiopia and Guinea; the world average was 61 years.

By 2030, over 6 billion of the total population of 8.5 billion will be considered middle class or wealthier ($10-100 per day or better) and those people will be urbanized as well. China, India, Brazil, Indonesia and many other countries could make massive economic progress if they get their policies right.

Carnival of Space 200

1. Weird warp - The Kepler telescope, which has been looking for planets outside our solar system, has found a new rocky planet a bit like a scorched molten Earth. It orbits around a sun like star called Kepler-10 in only 45 days.

2. Music of the Spheres looks at the Skylon Spaceplane

Protecting coastlines and generating wave power by reflecting or absorbing 90 per cent of wave energy

Xinhua Hu and colleagues at Fudan University in Shanghai, China, have come up with a way to create shield against water waves that, unlike Enoch and Guenneau's set-up, could also double up as a wave-energy plant. Hu's team proposes using a rectangular array of stationary cylinders fixed to the sea floor in coastal waters. "The resonating cylinder array that we studied can be seen as a type of metamaterial for water waves," Hu claims.

Each hollow cylinder would be split vertically into quarter-circle arcs that fill up with water, and discharge it, depending on the water level surrounding them (see diagram). Although the cylinders are completely still, this constant filling and discharging is a form of oscillation and so is analogous to the electromagnetic oscillators that interfere with light waves in an invisibility cloak.

By adjusting the width of the vertical slits, the size of the cylinders, and their spacing, Hu calculates that the array could be tuned to water waves of a particular frequency so that it drains the peaks and then discharges to fill in the wave troughs - in effect dismantling those waves.

Using several arrays with different spacing and various sizes of cylinder, it might even be possible to block waves of several different frequencies - and perhaps even tsunamis, Hu claims. The result should be a huge reduction in waves within the array, and as a result, protection for any coastline or shore behind it, he says.

Physical Review Letters - Negative effective gravity in water waves by periodic resonator arrays

Over 4000 books of the National Academies Press are available as free PDFs

As of June 2, 2011, all PDF versions of books published by the National Academies Press (NAP) will be downloadable to anyone free of charge. There are more than 4,000 books plus future reports produced by NAP--publisher for the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council.

Space Solar Power proposal by Keith Henson

Keith Henson has an update of his plan for space based solar power up at the Oildrum.

Power satellites convert sunlight (via photovoltaic or thermal cycle) to electrical power and then turn the power into microwaves beamed to the ground and converted back to electrical power.

Critical to achieving costs of $100/kg or less to get material to geosynchronous orbit is to use spaceplanes that can fly frequently and a laser boosting system. This launch complexity would not be needed if there were simpler ways to achieve the cost target of $100/kg or less. However, Keith is putting together systems that have active development and some momentum towards actually being developed within the next 10-20 years.

Power satellites are a way of harvesting dilute solar energy with several advantages over the solar PV on the ground or rooftops:

* A system of power satellites scales to human civilization's needs (tens of TW).
* They don't need storage since their location (the 24 hour orbit, geosynchronous or GEO) is illuminated 99% of the time. (Satellite TV antennas point to a location on that orbit.)
* No day-night cycle and no clouds or air gives power satellites an average advantage of about nine times over the same area of solar collectors on the ground.
* Power satellites use relatively little material. Being in orbit (zero gravity), and no wind they can be much lighter per kW than collecting sunlight on the ground.
* They have a very short energy payback time.

They have some disadvantages, however:

* For optical reasons, they don't scale down to small sizes; 5 GW is about as small as you want to make one.
* At 50% loss electricity-in space to electricity-on-the-ground, the cost is doubled from one cent per kWh to two. On the other hand, that's 40 times less cost than transmitting the same power over wires for the same distance.
* They take a large investment to get the cost of transporting parts to GEO down to where they make economic sense.

Pandora IPO to raise about $123 million and about $1.4 billion in valuation

1. Pandora Media Inc., the Internet- music company that’s lost $92.1 million since it started in 2000, is seeking to raise as much as $123.2 million in a U.S. initial public offering. The Oakland, California-based company will offer 13.7 million shares for $7 to $9 each,

X-Prize director describes incentive prizes in an interview with Sander Olson

Incentives prizes have been successfully used for centuries in order to solve various technical and engineering problems. In the 20th century the Ortega prize resulted in the Lindbergh transatlantic flight. In 1995 the X-Prize foundation was founded with the express purpose of fostering a series of prizes to stimulate technological development. In an interview with Sander Olson, X-prize director Erika Wagner discusses the history of the X-prize, the enormous potential Return On Investment (ROI) that a prize can generate, and the technologies that she would like to see developed in the near future.

Erika Wagner

Question: Tell us a little about the history of awarding prizes for technological innovations. How far does this concept go back?

The concept of rewarding technical innovations with high profile prizes goes back at least to the 17th century, when the British Government offered the Longitude prize. And the basic concept is even older than that. In fact, there were actually longitude prizes offered in the 16th and 167th centuries by the Spanish and Dutch Governments. As opposed to traditional programs of grants, contracts and patronage, prizes work particularly well when there is a problem for which there are multiple potential solutions, but the optimal solution isn't known.

Salt loving plants in India

A pilot project to see if cash crops can be grown in the salty ground of India's coastal areas was launched in 2010. The area in Tamil Nadu state will house dozens of species of halophytes - or salt-loving plants - that can be used for producing cash crops.

Halophytes can be used to produce edible oils, medicines, vegetables, and cattle and fish feed. Halophytes can be found throughout the coastal areas of India.

Saline water plants can also be used to produce fine chemicals, biofuels and even building materials. Field studies conducted in the US and East Africa have suggested that halophytes such as sea asparagus can be grown as commercial crops.

Phase Change Memory-Based "Moneta" System is up to seven times faster than flash memory drives

A view of the internals of the Moneta storage array with phase change memory modules installed

A University of California, San Diego faculty-student team is about to demonstrate a first-of-its kind, phase-change memory solid state storage device that provides performance thousands of times faster than a conventional hard drive and up to seven times faster than "current state-of-the-art" solid-state drives (SSDs, flash memory). Micron has released new flash memory SSDs that have faster read and write speeds. “Moneta,” uses phase-change memory (PCM), an emerging data storage technology that stores data in the crystal structure of a metal alloy called a chalcogenide

AIDS tranmission could be stopped with about a 40% increase in funding and effort

About $16 billion a year is spent on AIDS in poor and middle-income countries. Half is generated locally and half is foreign aid. A report in this week’s Lancet suggests a carefully crafted mixture of approaches that does not involve treating all those without symptoms would bring great benefit for not much more than this—a peak of $22 billion in 2015, and a fall thereafter. Moreover, most of the extra spending would be offset by savings on the treatment of those who would have been infected, but were not—some 12m people, if the boffins have done their sums right. At $500 per person per year, the benefits would far outweigh the costs in purely economic terms.

The drugs used to treat AIDS may also stop its transmission. If that proves true, the drugs could achieve much of what a vaccine would. An extra 40% in spending for the next 5 to 10 years could stop the transmission AIDS and then enable the disease to be fought more cheaply than what is currently done.

Researchers extend the time a superconducting flux qubit can stay in superposition using microwave pulses

a, Scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of a device (qubit and SQUID shown) with identical design parameters as the one measured during this work [1]. b, Schematic. Qubit loop (shaded) and galvanically coupled read-out SQUID. The crosses are Josephson junctions; R, bias resistors; C, shunt capacitances; L, inductances.

Researchers at MIT, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Japan’s Institute of Physical and Chemical Research and NEC describe a new technique that extends the time a qubit can stay in superposition. The same technique can be used to measure the physical characteristics of qubits that knock them out of superposition in the first place, paving the way to better qubit designs. The previous published record for keeping a superconducting qubit in superposition was less than 10 microseconds and now it is 23 microseconds.

Dwave Systems uses superconducting flux qubits.

Nature Physics - Noise spectroscopy through dynamical decoupling with a superconducting flux qubit

Levels of Affluence and Wealth in America income levels and net worth

A major predictor of wealth is one's earning a high income before the age of 34. Households earning between $100,000 and $199,999, identified as the "Emerging" tier, have a far greater chance of eventually crossing the golden threshold of $200,000 than those who achieve household income of $100,000 later in life, identified above as "Aspiring."

Net Worth

Millionaire households worldwide represented just 0.9 percent of all households but owned 39 percent of global wealth, up from 37 percent in 2009. The number of millionaire households increased by 12.2 percent in 2010 to about 12.5 million.

Saudi Arabia plans 16 nuclear reactors by 2030 and Luthuania plans two reactors

1. Saudi Arabia plans to construct 16 nuclear power reactors over the next 20 years at a cost of more than 300 billion riyals ($80 billion), according to Abdul Ghani bin Melaibari, coordinator of scientific collaboration at King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy. Speaking during the Gulf Environment Forum in Jeddah, he said, "After ten years we will have the first two reactors. After that, every year we will establish two, until we have 16 of them by 2030.

Groupon IPO and the Bay Area Startup Ecosystem

San Francisco-based VentureLoop reports that job openings at venture-backed startups in the Bay Area have more than doubled to 3,609, compared with 1,739 before the financial crisis, in 2008. That compares with a 69 percent increase to 3,311 from 1,961 over the same period nationwide.

The index relies on data from 13 top venture-capital firms, including Benchmark Capital, Sequoia Capital and Founders Fund and illustrates the rapid buildup of demand for talent in the region.

Standard Chartered Projects China to be largest economy by 2020 and India to be third largest

India in the Super-Cycle by Standard Chartered Bank - 64 page report

Standard Chartered’s initial report into the global super-cycle, published in November 2010, explained how the world economy is now experiencing its third super-cycle, a period of strong growth lasting a generation or more and aimed to put some context around the considerable uncertainties and risks facing the global economy. However, just as importantly, the report stressed the importance of recognising the upside opportunities now being witnessed by the shift in the balance of economic and financial power from the West to the East.

For India, the policy framework will be particularly important as it seeks to overcome its regulatory burden and address its infrastructure needs. The initial focus is on its hard infrastructure, such as its transport system but its soft infrastructure is also key, with the need to see continued improvement in education and skills. India’s population is rising. Over the next twenty years the working-age population should increase by over 200 million and with half of the total population under twenty-five, India has a demographic dividend, but only if it delivers the policies and economic growth needed

Longevity studies for extreme exercise, RasGrf1, embryonic stem cells and hormosis

1. Increased Average Longevity among the "Tour de France" Cyclists. Tour de France Cyclists live 8 years longer than the general population. The longevity of 834 cyclists from France (n=465), Italy (n=196) and Belgium (n=173) who rode the Tour de France between the years 1930 and 1964. Dates of birth and death of the cyclists were obtained on December 31, 2007. We calculated the percentage of survivors for each age and compared them with the values for the pooled general population of France, Italy and Belgium for the appropriate age cohorts. We found a very significant increase in average longevity (17%) of the cyclists when compared with the general population

2. Hormosis - small damage and longevity

Fightaging - Hormesis is the process by which a little damage or stress to our biology can lead to a longer life span, as it wakes up the repair mechanisms and makes them do a better job than they otherwise would - a net gain in resiliency. This review aims to summarize published evidence that several longevity-promoting interventions may converge by causing an activation of mitochondrial oxygen consumption to promote increased formation of reactive oxygen species (ROS). These serve as molecular signals to exert downstream effects to ultimately induce endogenous defense mechanisms culminating in increased stress resistance and longevity, an adaptive response more specifically named mitochondrial hormesis or mitohormesis.

Extending life span by increasing oxidative stress

German Utility will try to bill the German Government for Nuclear Shutdown

Energy utility EOn is counting the cost of Germany's new energy policies and preparing to put its case to government for a multi-billion euro compensation deal.

The utility was told on 31 May that three reactors representing 3463 MWe of capacity would not be allowed to restart after a knee-jerk shutdown order in the early days of the Fukushima crisis.

In addition, the firm's remaining four units, worth 5405 MWe, will have to shut down earlier than proposed by legislation put through earlier this year. Isar 2 had been promised to operate until 2034, but 12 years were cut from that this week. Based on its lifetime capacity factor of over 89%, the 1400 MWe unit could have produced 132 billion kWh in that time - with a market value of over €16 billion ($23 billion) at today's prices.

Rossi Provides More Answers about the Energy Catalyzer and Nasa's Dennis Bushnell lists it as the number one energy solution

Three E-cats without insulation and one insulated. Text in blue indicates hydrogen inlet, main heater, auxiliary heater and water inlet. Foto: Giuseppe Levi


Focardi and Rossi have demonstrated a device that produces copper which they say is due to the fusion of atomic nuclei of nickel and hydrogen, the ingredients that feed their reactor. The 'Missing Mass' has been transformed into energy: it is in the order of a few kilowatts, two hundred times the energy that was the beginning of the reaction.

Rossi -
Beta decay has nothing to do with my process, Widom Larsen theory has nothing to do with my process.

Rossi has stated he now has an understanding of what exactly is taking place in his device, and that "Widom Larsen" theory does not explain it.

Rossi - 1 gram of matter (Nickel) produces 23 million kWh of power. Rossi is describing the energy that is generated as thermal/heat and at a low grade temperature. Converting to electricity would be at about 5% efficiency.

1 kg would produce 23 terawatt hours (heat)
100 kg would produce 2300 TWh
1 ton would produce 23,000 TWh

World production of electricity in 2008 was 20261 TWh.
In 2008, total worldwide energy consumption was 474 exajoules (474×10^18
J=132,000 TWh).

Rossi - Should all the energy of the world be made with this system, only the 1% of the world production of Ni would be consumed.

World nickel production has been about 1.4 to 1.6 million tons per year

However, only 1% of Nickel is the Nickel 64 isotope, which is the reactive part.

Rossi did not reconcile and explain the two statements of power generation per gram and nickel production. I have provided the statistics and information about how the Rossi process is supposed to work to try to fill the gap.

Interview with Dwave System's CTO Geordie Rose at Forbes

Dwave systems has produced a 128 qubit quantum computer called Dwave One that uses quantum annealing to solve problems. They sold a system to Lockheed Martin for $10 million including support services.

Dwave Systems CTO Geordie Rose was interviewed by Alex Knapp at Forbes.

Applications for Dwave One -

D-Wave One is the first in a line of products that help people begin to incorporate quantum computing into the way that they solve problems. D-Wave’s systems are best at solving the types of problems found in the fields of optimization and machine learning. These problems can be broadly described as data analysis and pattern recognition problems.

The D-Wave One allows users to experiment with algorithms and APIs we have developed at D-Wave or to implement their own learning algorithms to explore ways to attack these tasks.Being quantum mechanical in nature, The D-Wave One machine is also excellent at simulating quantum mechanical systems of interest to materials scientists, physicists and chemists. As such they may also prove extremely useful as academic research tools.