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Alibaba CEO Jack Ma says China is shifting from exporting to importing and China is going to to be the world’s largest consumption place and that engine is going to drive the world economy. Ma said this during Gateway ’17, the e-commerce giant’s biggest public event in the US, where he addressed 3,000 small business owners and urged them not only to import from China, but also to sell to China. Back in January, Ma even told President Donald Trump that within five years Alibaba could create 1 million US jobs for small businesses that sell goods to Chinese consumers.

An unknown, unseen “planetary mass object” may lurk in the outer reaches of our solar system, according to new research on the orbits of minor planets to be published in the Astronomical Journal. This object would be different from — and much closer than — the so-called Planet Nine, a planet whose existence yet awaits confirmation. According to the calculations, an object with the mass of Mars orbiting roughly 60 AU from the sun on an orbit tilted by about eight degrees (to the average plane of the known planets) has sufficient gravitational influence to warp the orbital plane of

Terrestrial Energy has begun a feasibility study for the siting of the first commercial Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories’ (CNL) Chalk River site, with a further vision of creating a technology hub at CNL to support the commercialization of small modular reactors (SMR). Terrestrial Energy CEO Simon Irish said the company, which aims to deploy the IMSR in the 2020s, was pleased to begin the process to identify a suitable location to build the plant. CNL and Terrestrial Energy last year signed a memorandum of understanding to conduct testing and validation activities in support of Terrestrial’s

A sniper with Canada’s elite special forces in Iraq has shattered the world record for the longest confirmed kill shot in military history at a staggering distance of 3,540 meters (2 miles). The 3.54 kilometer confirmed kill is 1065 meters past old record and was about 40% further. The Canadian Armed Forces confirmed Thursday that a member of Joint Task Force 2 made the record-breaking shot, killing an Islamic State insurgent during an operation in Iraq within the last month. The elite sniper was using a McMillan TAC-50 sniper rifle while firing from a high-rise during an operation that took

A few thousand microsatellites with deployable telescopes could provide constant image monitoring of the earth at 0.25 meter to 0.5 resolution. This would scale up persistent drone monitoring to a global scale. There would be issues of data transmission and storage. There is a company with 149 microsatellites that each weight about 5 kilograms and can provide resolution of 3 to 5 meters now. The current larger commercial earth observation (EO) satellites provide images with approximately 0.5 meter GSD and fly at altitudes of approximately 600 km above the earth’s surface. These parameters drive the size of the primary mirror

The House Armed Services Committee released its draft of the 2018 defense policy bill, which asks the US Army to accelerate its air-deployable Mobile Protected Firepower (MPF) vehicle. The committee believes the Army is developing strategies to potentially accelerate the MPF schedule given that the current projected schedule has MPF fielding beginning in 2024. The committee directs the Secretary of the Army to provide a briefing to the House Committee on Armed Services by October 5, 2017, that outlines potential opportunities for MPF program acceleration. The briefing should include a review of testing requirements and potential areas for consolidation; funding

Planet Labs uses 149 microsatellites to monitor the pulse of our planet with daily news and imagery, stories, and tech updates. Current satellite imaging only allows us to look at various disconnected locations. Planet’s always-on, daily imagery provides a global monitoring capability never before possible. Frequent satellite imagery is often a critical component to understanding our increasingly complex, interconnected world. Use Planet’s timely imagery to monitor and understand global activity and patterns of life. They already have on average over 150 images for each location on the Earth’s land surface. This can be accessed with there Planet Explorer. Disney Parking

The discovery of a superconducting phase in sulfur hydride under high pressure with a critical temperature above 200 K has provided fresh impetus to the search for superconductors at ever higher temperatures. Although this system displays all of the hallmarks of superconductivity, the mechanism through which it arises remains to be determined. Here researchers provide a first optical spectroscopy study of this superconductor. Experimental results for the optical reflectivity of H3S, under hydrostatic pressure of 150 GPa, for several temperatures and over the range 60 to 600 meV of photon energies, are compared with theoretical calculations based on Eliashberg theory. Two significant features

Fusion power has the potential to provide clean and safe energy that is free from carbon dioxide emissions. However, imitating the solar energy process is a difficult task to achieve. Two young plasma physicists at Chalmers University of Technology have now taken us one step closer to a functional fusion reactor. Their model could lead to better methods for decelerating the runaway electrons, which could destroy a future reactor without warning. ​It takes high pressure and temperatures of about 150 million degrees to get atoms to combine. As if that was not enough, runaway electrons are wreaking havoc in the

The IMF now projects China’s GDP growth at 6.7 percent in 2017 and an average annual growth of 6.4 percent between 2018-20 period. The First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund David Lipton said the IMF was confident that China will once again find its way through the challenges ahead. China has the potential to safely sustain strong growth over the medium term. While some near-term risks have receded, reform progress needs to accelerate. specific recommendations build on the progress achieved and the government’s existing reform agenda. In particular: China needs to further boost consumption . Continued increases

The US Navy would be able to buy aircraft carriers more quickly and increase its carrier fleet from 11 to 12 under 2018 budget plans being written by the House Armed Services Committee. The legislation unveiled by the committee Tuesday calls for a new carrier every three years rather than the current pace of one every five years, and would order the service to maintain a dozen of the ships after 2023. The plans will be rolled into the committee’s version of the National Defense Authorization Act, which will set defense policy and priorities for 2018, but any sped-up acquisition

There’s an explosive NEW real estate in town. It doesn’t have any walls, and it’s driven by our voracious appetite for technology and connectivity. But the biggest opportunity is a highly profitable $75.6-billion niche segment few investors know about. When the wireless revolution first swept across the U.S., most investors were skeptics, thinking cell phones were for the already-rich, or for drug dealers. But those that saw this opportunity for what it was—and what we see now—made billions. And they are still making billions today. This is a sponsored article Ronald Reagan dished out public domains to private

Boeing has pledged to make hypersonic passengers planes a reality – and says they could be operating within a decade. ‘I think in the next decade or two you’re going to see them become a reality,’ Boeing Chairman and CEO Dennis Muilenburg told CNBC at the Paris Air Show. However, he admitted the firm still has to prove there are enough people who could afford tickets to make it worthwhile. Boeing believes hypersonic jets – flying at up to 3,800 mph – could serve a small but important market of travelers willing to pay a premium to reach far-flung destinations

The russian Zircon mach 6 to mach 8 hypersonic missile has been claimed to be able to overwhelm existing missile defenses. Russia has claimed the missile could be ready by 2018. However, existing anti-missile systems are getting some success countering mach 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Patriot anti-missile systems have mach 4 interceptors. How the Zircon flies will ultimately reveal much more about the missile’s power than simply understand its speed. If the missile can work with a low trajectory, and then hurl itself into a ship with a sudden and unpredictable maneuver at the end of its flight, it’s

Jordin Kare described his fusion pellet proposal in the 1990s. Pellets (with deuterium and tritium or other fusion gases) are laid down in an outbound track for the spacecraft that will eventually use them, deployed in advance by small spacecraft seeding the runway along the route of flight. Kare thinks in terms of a runway about half a light-day in length. The accelerating spacecraft would gobble up the fusion pellets one at a time, taking about ten days to exit the Solar System, moving along a runway track that stretched from near Earth to beyond the orbit of Pluto. The

Researchers have detailed the implausible assumptions and many flaws in the Jacobson proposal to provide 100% of the USA’s power with wind, water and solar. Jacobson et al. (2015) consider whether the future primary energy sources for the United States could be narrowed to almost exclusively wind, solar, and hydroelectric power and suggest that this can be done at “low-cost” in a way that supplies all power with a probability of loss of load “that exceeds electric-utility-industry standards for reliability”. The analysis involves errors, inappropriate methods, and implausible assumptions. Their study does not provide credible evidence for rejecting the conclusions

A tech savvy taxi driver in Japan also had an iPad pro mounted in his car. There are several 4.5 star rated options for large tablet mounting at Amazon.

I was traveling in Japan and a taxi used 20+ USB outlets, mobile wifi and multiple device charging. He upgraded the wire from the battery so it could handle all the devices. He had two wires from the battery. The regular wire to the charger was not good enough. Each gadget draws perhaps 2 amps he was using almost 30 outlets. 40-60 Amps of toal fuses would be enough to handle them (and their spiking current demands when you first plug them in or turn them on). Here is a discussion at O’Reilly books about upgrading the wire in the

Elbit Systems offers a comprehensive range of UAS – from the man-portable Skylark™ LEX mini UAS, through the versatile tactical UAS and up to the next-generation Hermes™ 900 medium altitude long endurance (MALE) UAS. Elbit Systems Elbit Systems Reveals at Paris Airshow SkEye WAPS™ – a Revolutionary Airborne Wide-Area Persistent Surveillance Solution for HLS and Defense Needs. The SkEye system provides a unique, “Eye in the Sky”, overall situational awareness of “on-the- ground” intelligence data, and enables a large number of users to receive real-time, high-resolution imagery and even go “back-in- time” Elbit Systems will reveal at the 2017 Paris

The US Army used cyber weapons and electronic warfare (EW) technology to thwart a simulated tank assault at a training exercise conducted at the Army National Training Center at California.A The exercise reinforced the need for the EW and cyber protection technology that is under development by entities such as the Army Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) and U.S. Cyber Command. The cyber weapon used in the exercise specifically targeted the radio and wireless communication systems of the tankers. Cyber warfare can include both jamming of communication signals and hacker infiltration into networks, which they can then either disable or manipulate

Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are making virtual and robotic assistants increasingly capable in performing complex tasks. For these “smart” machines to be considered safe and trustworthy collaborators with human partners, however, robots must be able to quickly assess a given situation and apply human social norms. Such norms are intuitively obvious to most people—for example, the result of growing up in a society where subtle or not-so-subtle cues are provided from childhood about how to appropriately behave in a group setting or respond to interpersonal situations. But teaching those rules to robots is a novel challenge. To address that

The Department of Physics of the UPV/EHU-University of the Basque Country researchers have explored superelasticity properties on a nanometric scale based on shearing an alloy’s pillars down to nanometric size. The researchers have found that below one micron in diameter the material behaves differently and requires much higher stress for it to be deformed. This superelastic behavior is opening up new channels in the application of microsystems involving flexible electronics and microsystems that can be implanted into the human body. By using a piece of equipment known as a Focused Ion Beam, “an ion cannon that acts as a kind

Alphabet’s Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt cited a study by McKinsey released at the Viva Tech conference in Paris on Thursday, which suggested 90 percent of jobs are not fully automatable. The Alphabet chairman said that while some of the routine of a job could be replaced, much of what a human does cannot. The future of work is you with a computer, not you replaced by a computer. “People keep saying, what happens to jobs in the era of automation? I think there will be more jobs, not fewer.” At Viva Tech, Jeff Immelt, the outgoing chief executive of General

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere has developed a new approach to deep learning AI computing, using light instead of electricity, which they say could vastly improve the speed and efficiency of certain deep learning computations Soljačić says that many researchers over the years have made claims about optics-based computers, but that “people dramatically over-promised, and it backfired.” While many proposed uses of such photonic computers turned out not to be practical, a light-based neural-network system developed by this team “may be applicable for deep-learning for some applications,” he says. Traditional computer architectures are not very efficient when it comes to

six leading U.S. technology companies will receive funding from the Department of Energy’s Exascale Computing Project (ECP) as part of its new PathForward program, accelerating the research necessary to deploy the nation’s first exascale supercomputers. The awardees will receive funding for research and development to maximize the energy efficiency and overall performance of future large-scale supercomputers, which are critical for U.S. leadership in areas such as national security, manufacturing, industrial competitiveness, and energy and earth sciences. The $258 million in funding will be allocated over a three-year contract period, with companies providing additional funding amounting to at least 40 percent

Lyft announced new climate goals for the Lyft platform as we do our part to ensure the United States remains on track to meet the goals of the Paris accord. To guide them in these efforts, we are proud to welcome pioneering environmentalist and author Paul Hawken, Executive Director of Project Drawdown, as an advisor to Lyft. Paul will inform our climate action strategy and help us maximize the environmental benefits of our platform as we take this important step for sustainability. Lyft Climate Impact Goals * All electric autonomous vehicles operating on the Lyft platform will be powered by

IEEE Spectrum asked AI experts about when human level AI will be achieved and as usual there was a massive range of dates from a few years to hundreds of years. Gary Marcus talks about many decades before AI’s can process inputs and situations with the flexibility and adaptability of humans. As usual the questions are how can sufficient flexibility and extensibility be solved. Also can the AI’s be placed with usefully broad constrained environments. Can sensors and other solutions be used to solve the adaptability issues. We see this with the self driving cars in the wild problems and

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Whole Foods Market, Inc. (NASDAQ:WFM) today announced that they have entered into a definitive merger agreement under which Amazon will acquire Whole Foods Market for $42 per share in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $13.7 billion, including Whole Foods Market’s net debt. “Millions of people love Whole Foods Market because they offer the best natural and organic foods, and they make it fun to eat healthy,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO. “Whole Foods Market has been satisfying, delighting and nourishing customers for nearly four decades – they’re doing an amazing job and we want

Michael Clauss is the German ambassador to China in the SCMP suggest two ways to deal with China’s Silk Road ambitions. 1. partner with China to close development gaps, while reinforcing the open, transparent and non-hierarchical world order, as seems to be working with the AIIB. 2. Europe could offer its own concept to act as another friendly pole with the power to attract. Local content – that is, maximum participation by local labour, local companies and local products – could be the signature of connectivity, European-style. Open tenders where the best offer wins, hopefully through a bid from the

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Monday that Japan is ready to cooperate with China’s “One Belt, One Road” cross-continental infrastructure development scheme, under certain conditions. Speaking at a forum in Tokyo on Asia’s future, Abe said those conditions would include “harmony with a free and fair Trans-Pacific economic zone,” alluding to the terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade pact, to which Japan is a signatory but China is not. The One Belt, One Road initiative, put forward by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, would involve massive investment to connect up both a land-based economic belt based off the

Veritas Genetics is offering full genome sequencing of newborns in China,, ordered by a doctor. They will report back on 950 serious early- and later-life disease risks, 200 genes connected to drug reactions, and more than 100 physical traits a child is likely to have. Called myBabyGenome, the service costs $1,500 and could help identify serious hidden problems in newborns, the company says. But some doctors say the plan is a huge overstep. “I think it’s vastly premature to peddle a completely unproven set of data, especially to a vulnerable population like neonates,” says Jim Evans, a professor of genetics

Tesla model 3 reservation holders will be able to test drive the Model 3 in late 2017. The Model 3 will be able to accelerate from 0-60 MPH time of 5.6 seconds and the entry-level model will have a range of 215 miles. The base Model 3 will have a price of $35,000. Tesla plans to open the Model 3 online design studio to early reservation holders in July and should begin deliveries. The first vehicles will be delivered to employees so Tesla can manage test drives internally for those orders.

China launched a quantum satellite called Micius from the Gobi desert last August. It is all part of a push towards a new kind of internet that would be far more secure than the one we use now. The experimental Micius, with its delicate optical equipment, continues to circle the Earth, transmitting to two mountain-top Earth bases separated by 1,200km. The optics onboard are paramount. They’re needed to distribute to the ground stations the particles, or photons, of light that can encode the “keys” to secret messages. “I think we have started a worldwide quantum space race,” says lead researcher

Air Force 2018 budget shows United Launch Alliance launch the “unit cost” of a single rocket launch in fiscal year 2020 is $422 million, and $424 million for a year later while Spacex cost $83 to 97 million each. SpaceX sells basic commercial launches of its Falcon 9 rocket for about $65 million. But, for military launches, there are additional range costs and service contracts that add tens of millions of dollars to the total price.

Researchers at Swinburne’s Centre for Micro-Photonics are one step closer to producing commercially viable, chemical-free, long-lasting, safe batteries. Professor Baohua Jia and Dr Han Lin lead a team developing the Bolt Electricity Storage Technology (BEST) battery – a graphene oxide-based supercapacitor offering high performance and low-cost energy storage. The technology could, according to one investor, make chemical batteries a thing of the past. “The battery is very thin, it’s carbon based and it’s environmentally friendly,” Professor Jia says. “We filed a patent on the technology last year.” The technology is on the brink of becoming a commercial prototype. Investment in

Oil has extended its slump below $50 a barrel as concerns grow that rising U.S. supplies will offset the production curbs by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and allies including Russia. Output at major American shale fields will reach a record in July, according to the EIA. West Texas Intermediate for July delivery slid $1.73 to settle at $44.73 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, the lowest close since Nov. 14. Total volume traded was about 71 percent above the 100-day average. The U.S., Brazil, Canada and other producers outside OPEC will increase output next year by

Solar power, once so costly it only made economic sense in spaceships, is becoming cheap enough that it will push coal and even natural-gas plants out of business faster than previously forecast. That’s the conclusion of a Bloomberg New Energy Finance outlook for how fuel and electricity markets will evolve by 2040. The research group estimated solar already rivals the cost of new coal power plants in Germany and the U.S. and by 2021 will do so in quick-growing markets such as China and India. The scenario suggests green energy is taking root more quickly than most experts anticipate. It

Production of the fossil fuel coal dropped by a record amount in 2016, according to BP Plc’s annual review of global energy trends. China, the world’s biggest energy consumer, burned the least coal in six years and use dropped in the U.S to a level last seen in the 1970s, the company’s data show. However, BP indicates that global coal consumption fell by 53 million tonnes of oil equivalent (mtoe), or 1.7%, the second successive annual decline. Coal’s decline has been driven largely by competition from cheap shale gas, prompting skepticism that the country’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement

Researchers have developed a solar paint that can absorb water vapor and split it to generate hydrogen – the cleanest source of energy. The paint contains a newly developed compound that acts like silica gel, which is used in sachets to absorb moisture and keep food, medicines and electronics fresh and dry. But unlike silica gel, the new material, synthetic molybdenum-sulphide, also acts as a semi-conductor and catalyses the splitting of water atoms into hydrogen and oxygen. RMIT lead researcher Dr Torben Daeneke said: “We found that mixing the compound with titanium oxide particles leads to a sunlight-absorbing paint that

Spacex is estimating they wil be able to achieve $140,000 per ton for the trips to Mars. If a person plus their luggage is less than that, taking into account food consumption and life support, the cost of moving to Mars could ultimately drop below $100,000. Cost will be brought down 5 million percent with * fully reusable rocket * orbital refueling * Propellent production on Mars * CH4 / O2 DEEP-CRYO Methalox fuel The Spacex ITS (Interplanetary Transport Systme) rocket booster is really a scaled-up version of the Falcon 9 booster. There are a lot of similarities, such as

Rolls-Royce’s director of technology and engineering, John Molyneux gave more details on Rolls-Royce’s new reactor design and the next steps in its development when speaking to the European Young Nuclear Generation Forum event in Manchester, organised by the European Nuclear Society and the UK Nuclear Institute. Still without a publicized name, Rolls-Royce’s design is a pressurized water reactor in a close-coupled four-loop configuration. A team of about 150 people have been working on it for around two years. The first months were taken with major design decisions including the use of a light-water as coolant and moderator and to select

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Made In Space is putting 3D printing into space and is working on other space based manufacturing. They are looking to make large light structures as well. They call these systems Archinaut. It is an alternative approach to the Tether unlimited spiderfab. In November 2015, NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) announced its selection of the Made In Space project proposal for utilizing public-private partnerships to advance Tipping Point Technologies. The NASA funded project, designated Archinaut™, is designed to develop the necessary technologies and subsystems which will enable the first additive manufacturing, aggregation, and assembly of large and complex systems

Juergen Schmidhuber is the father of Deep learning Artificial Intelligence. Since age 15 or so, the main goal of professor Jürgen Schmidhuber has been to build a self-improving Artificial Intelligence (AI) smarter than himself, then retire. His lab’s Deep Learning Neural Networks (NNs) (since 1991) and Long Short-Term Memory have transformed machine learning and AI, Deep Learning since 1991 – Winning Contests in Pattern Recognition and Sequence Learning Through Fast and Deep / Recurrent Neural Networks and are now (2017) available to billions of users through the world’s most valuable public companies including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. In 2011,

Westinghouse Electric Company yesterday announced the formal launch of its “accident-tolerant fuel solution”, EnCore Fuel, during the company’s Fuel Users’ Group Meeting. EnCore Fuel is intended to offer “design-basis-altering safety, greater uranium efficiency and estimated economic benefits up to hundreds of millions of dollars” to Westinghouse’s nuclear fuel customers. Delivered in two phases, the initial EnCore Fuel product consists of coated cladding containing uranium silicide pellets, which Westinghouse says distinguishes the fuel from other accident-tolerant fuel solutions thanks to their higher density and higher thermal conductivity. “We are leveraging the breadth and depth of our resources, combined with US Department

US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) researchers recently demonstrated that nontoxic liquid metals can create multifunctional, reconfigurable electronics and flexible power connections for nontraditional electronics. The advance may help lead to self-healing electronics, shape-shifting antennas and clothing woven with conductive threads to electronically connect devices. Christopher Tabor, a research scientist in the nanoelectronics branch of AFRL’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate, and his team demonstrated that liquid metal alloys could be flowed through channels embedded in structural aerospace components. The result: physically reconfigurable electronic material able to change antenna and electrical circuit characteristics, virtually on demand. The team is in the

William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel , makes the case at Tom Dispatch that the USA is behaving much like the Soviet Union before its collapse. Nextbigfuture thinks the USA is not in any danger of collapsing but there is excessive military spending especially when including the spending on Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. The costs in the wars is increased by the million dollars per soldier that will be spent on increased veteran health costs. The USA would be far stronger now and in the future with less military spending for a decade or more. The USA has spent

Lithium is the hottest commodity on the planet right now, and investors trying to profit from it don’t understand how to invest in it. MOST ARE MAKING A CRITICAL MISTAKE and investing in the wrong companies. Sponsored post That’s because, in this game, lithium GRADE is the key to profitability. Why? First, lithium… Lithium is the most important component of electric vehicles, high-energy batteries, power storage, a vast menu of consumer electronics—and even Nirvana-reaching drugs. Even today’s hyper-growth EV industry is just the tip of the iceberg compared with where it is headed to. Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts that