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SpaceX said it plans to launch thousands of satellites on Falcon 9 rockets beginning in 2019 to establish what would one day become a global broadband internet constellation. Patricia Cooper, SpaceX’s vice president of satellite government affairs, told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation that the company is aiming to launch 4,425 small satellites to low Earth orbit beginning in 2019, with full deployment expected by 2024. All would launch in phases on Falcon 9 rockets. Spacexwill start testing the satellites themselves, launch one prototype before the end of the year and another during the “early months” of

SpaceX is on track for a Monday evening (May 15, 2017) launch of an Inmarsat-5 communications satellite. If the launch is successful then it would be the sixth Spacex launch in four months. Spacex could launch again at the beginning of June a cargo supply mission to the International Space Station. SpaceX could be on pace for as many as 18 to 24 launches this year. Spacex may end up having six booster relaunches this year.

The carcass of a giant sea creature has washed up in Indonesia. It was originally thought to be a type of giant squid but it seems to have bones and a fin. This would suggest it is some kind of whale. The video seems to show a dead whale which has grown almost unidentifiable because of decay. This shows that if zombie whales existed that they would be quite scary.

China has lent $100 billion so far for One Belt and One Road projects. The Hassyan clean coal project in the United Arab Emirates received two loans worth $2.3 billion, a gas transporter based in Azerbaijan secured $600 million and Pakistan won $400 million. Other debtor countries include Oman, Indonesia, Bangladesh, India and Tajikistan. Thomas Hugger, chief executive officer and founder of Asia Frontier Capital Ltd., expects Pakistan to gain “significantly” from the initiative, thanks to the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor, which has lured $46 billion in investment commitments from China. “Besides Pakistan, the Central Asian economies especially Kazakhstan should benefit.

Heartbeat measurement app Cardiogram and the University of California, San Francisco used the Apple Watch for 97 percent accurate detection the most common abnormal heart rhythm when paired with an AI-based algorithm. The study involved 6,158 participants recruited through the Cardiogram app on Apple Watch. Most of the participants in the UCSF Health eHeart study had normal EKG readings. However, 200 of them had been diagnosed with paroxysmal atrial fibrillation (an abnormal heartbeat). Engineers trained a deep neural network to identify these abnormal heart rhythms from Apple Watch heart rate data. About a quarter of strokes are caused by an

China 2020 urbanization plan centers around megacities. Jing-Jin-Ji is designed to hold 110 million people and merge outer parts of Beijing, Hebei and Tianjin. In April, China announced plans to create Xiongan, an enormous new city 60 miles south of Beijing which sits within the Jing-Jin-Ji urban megaregion. While details are still emerging about the future of Xiongan – which will cover the counties of Xiongxian, Rongcheng and Anxin, as well as the Baiyangdian wetlands – reports envisage a city that will grow to three times the size of New York. It will incorporate universities, institutions and residents from the

China has conducted a number of weapons tests, which included the launch of a new missile type in the northeastern Bohai Sea close to the Korean Peninsula, the Information Bureau of China’s Ministry of National Defense announced on May 9. Speculations about the missiles test fired range from * a new variant of the intermediate-range DF-26 ballistic missile, the DF-26B * a new submarine-launched ballistic missile dubbed the JL-3 * a DF-21D medium range ballistic missile

In a Nature Communications publication, the results of the collaboration between scientists of the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL), the University of Parma, ISIS and the University of Manchester, the (Cr7Ni)2 dimer has been used as a benchmark system to demonstrate the capability of ‘four-dimensional’ inelastic neutron scattering to investigate entanglement between molecular qubits. By utilising high-quality single crystals and the full capabilities of the time-of-flight spectrometer IN5, the team was able to demonstrate and quantify the entanglement through the huge amount of data they were able to extract from the 4D phase space (Qx,Qy,Qz,E), where Q is the momentum-transfer vector and

Elon Musks Boring company wants to do just three things to get to approximately an order of magnitude improvement, and beyond that. 1. Cut the tunnel diameter by a factor of two or more. So a single road lane tunnel according to regulations has to be 26 feet, maybe 28 feet in diameter to allow for crashes and emergency vehicles and sufficient ventilation for combustion engine cars. But if you shrink that diameter to what we’re attempting, which is 12 feet, which is plenty to get an electric skate through, you drop the diameter by a factor of two and

Rethinkx has a new report Rethinking Transportation 2020-2030: The Disruption of Transportation and the Collapse of the ICE Vehicle and Oil Industries. By 2030, 95% of U.S. car miles traveled will be in self–‐driving, electric, shared vehicles. Nextbigfuture has discussed similar concepts in prior articles. Rethinkx has put together a comprehensive report and analysis. Nextbigfuture also interviewed the authors. Tony Seba: Report co-author, RethinkX co-founder, author of “Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation,” and instructor at Stanford Continuing Studies. James Arbib, report co-author, RethinkX co-founder, technology investor and philanthropist. It is the combination of self driving cars, electric cars and

NVIDIA today launched Volta™ — the world’s most powerful GPU computing architecture, created to drive the next wave of advancement in artificial intelligence and high performance computing. The company also announced its first Volta-based processor, the NVIDIA® Tesla® V100 data center GPU, which brings extraordinary speed and scalability for AI inferencing and training, as well as for accelerating HPC and graphics workloads. “Artificial intelligence is driving the greatest technology advances in human history,” said Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive officer of NVIDIA, who unveiled Volta at his GTC keynote. “It will automate intelligence and spur a wave of social

MIT physicists have found that a flake of graphene, when brought in close proximity with two superconducting materials, can inherit some of those materials’ superconducting qualities. As graphene is sandwiched between superconductors, its electronic state changes dramatically, even at its center. The researchers found that graphene’s electrons, formerly behaving as individual, scattering particles, instead pair up in “Andreev states” — a fundamental electronic configuration that allows a conventional, nonsuperconducting material to carry a “supercurrent,” an electric current that flows without dissipating energy. The researchers’ graphene platform may be used to explore exotic particles, such as Majorana fermions, which are thought

Battery material testing machines that Tesla and Jeff Dahn h ve developed enabled them to test new chemistries more accurately and much faster. This has enabled significant discoveries for the longevity of batteries. Aluminum coated batteries lasted longer than any other material. Novonix is a specialized start-up company spun out of Dr. Jeff Dahn’s lab at Dalhousie University. We have expertise in materials and cell testing, with strong focus on the use of High Precision Coulometry for lifetime evaluation of lithium-ion cells. Novonix has spent the last year developing industry leading high precision chargers able to measure the coulombic efficiency

The Carnival of Space 508 is up at The Evolving Planet Universe Today – Only 10 Light-Years Away, there’s a Baby Version of the Solar System Astronomers are understandanly fascinated with the Epsilon Eridani system. For one, this star system is in close proximity to our own, at a distance of about 10.5 light years from the Solar System. Second, it has been known for some time that it contains two asteroid belts and a large debris disk. And third, astronomers have suspected for many years that this star may also have a system of planets. On top of all

Many analysis of global power and being a superpower often compare nations or regional power blocs based upon who would win or lose in an all out military conflict. Nations and groups can also analyze situations and potential conflicts and they would choose to avoid engaging in conflicts where their side would be a clear cut loser. The first and second Iraq Gulf War were relatively unique situations where there was a large miscalculation by Saddam Hussein. World War 2 and World War 1 had some miscalculations. There was an over-estimation by Germany and Japan of their own military and

John Cioffi described Terabit DSL (TDSL). It include carrying 50-600 GHz wireless signals through the tiny spaces between individual twisted pairs or the cables that bundle a hundred of them. “We are shooting for a terabit/second over 100 meters, 100 Gbits/s at 300 meters and 10 Gbits/s at 500 meters — all those are 200 to 1,000 times better than traditional DSLs,” said Cioffi, whose research at Stanford in the 1980s led phone companies to embrace DSL for broadband. “Those numbers could be off 10-25 percent, but even if they are off by 10x, it’s still a substantial improvement—there’s a

Vuckovic’s Stanford team is developing materials that can trap a single, isolated electron. Working with collaborators worldwide, they have recently tested three different approaches to the problem, one of which can operate at room temperature – a critical step if quantum computing is going to become a practical tool. In all three cases the group started with semiconductor crystals, material with a regular atomic lattice like the girders of a skyscraper. By slightly altering this lattice, they sought to create a structure in which the atomic forces exerted by the material could confine a spinning electron. “We are trying to

Life expectancy by county ranged from 67 to 85 in the USA in 2014. Examining life expectancy by county allows for tracking geographic disparities over time and assessing factors related to these disparities. This information is potentially useful for policy makers, clinicians, and researchers seeking to reduce disparities and increase longevity. People are less likely to live longer if they are poor, get little exercise and lack access to health care, the researchers found. Mokdad said the quality and availability of that health care — for example, access to screening for signs of cancer — has a significant effect on

Researchers from the University of Antwerp and KU Leuven have succeeded in developing a process that purifies air and, at the same time, generates power. The device must only be exposed to light in order to function. “We use a small device with two rooms separated by a membrane,” explains Professor Sammy Verbruggen (UAntwerp/KU Leuven). “Air is purified on one side, while on the other side hydrogen gas is produced from a part of the degradation products. This hydrogen gas can be stored and used later as fuel, as is already being done in some hydrogen buses, for example.” In

A new printing process can print images at 100,000 dpi, suggesting much higher resolution than can be obtained using pigmenting. Some test images were just 50 nanometres wide and were printed at a resolution of 127,000 DPI (dots per inch). The display on an iPhone 7, for comparison, is 326 DPI. Science Advances – Resonant laser printing of structural colors on high-index dielectric metasurfaces Man-made structural colors, which originate from resonant interactions between visible light and manufactured nanostructures, are emerging as a solution for ink-free color printing. We show that non-iridescent structural colors can be conveniently produced by nanostructures made

MIT spinout New Valence Robotics (NVBOTS) has brought to market the only fully automated commercial 3-D printer that’s equipped with cloud-based queuing and automatic part removal, making print jobs quicker and easier for multiple users, and dropping the cost per part. To use the printer, called NVPro, a user submits a project from any device, which queues up in the NVCloud software. When a part gets printed, a retractable blade cuts the piece out and moves it into a bin, and the next project begins automatically. Projects can be monitored remotely via webcam. It was commercially launched last April, the

Apple now has a valuation of over $800 billion. It is the most valuable publicly traded company. Google is at $649 billion. Microsoft is at $531 billion. Amazon is at $448 billion Facebook is at $434 billion. Berkshire Hathaway is at $408 billion as the largest non-tech company. Alibaba, the Chinese internet company, is the highest valuation for a non-US public company.

Pre-election polls had forecast a sizable Macron victory, and he appeared to have delivered, with projections issued after polls closed showing him with around 65 percent of the vote. Macron promised to reform two institutions notoriously resistant to change: the European Union and the French bureaucracy. Macron promised to do more for the weaker EU nations. This win could strengthen the EU currency and at least temporarily weaken Bitcon and Etherium.

SpaceX’s second re-launch of a previously used Falcon 9 rocket booster is targeted for next month, for a mission launching a Bulgarian communications satellite from Kennedy Space Center. The turnaround time between missions will be significantly shorter — five months instead of 12, if a mid-June target date holds. Maxim Zayakov, CEO of Bulsatcom and BulgariaSat, does not think reusing the booster makes the mission riskier and in fact could make it safer. Zayakov said insurers supported the decision to reuse a rocket, but the terms improved after the successful SES-10 mission.

Bitcoin and Etherium have been surging for months. There seems to be an increasing amount of capital flows into bitcoin from around the globe. “The biggest driver right now is you’re starting to see institutional investors take a keen interest in the entire sector,” said Brian Kelly, founder of Brian Kelly Capital, which recently launched a digital assets fund for outside investors. Bitcoin is at $1548 now. Etherium is at $99. One analyst indicates- if Le Pen wins, bitcoin and cryptocurrency markets will have a very strong run. On a Le Pen defeat, there would likely be a moderate retrace

Huochebang, aka Truck Alliance, is a Unicorn private company which is valued at US$1 billion or more. They received another $156 million in funding in a round led by Baidu. At the end of 2016 they had received $115 million in funding. Dai Wenjian, Huochebang’s founder, told a Beijing forum last month the company has connected some 2.6 million trucks with around 400,000 logistic companies in China, and is set to deliver a profit in 2017. The latest investment comes at a time when Baidu is gearing up to rebuilt itself as an artificial intelligence(AI)-focused company, and transportation is seen

Around the time of WW2 Navy ships transitioned from Battleships and ships with large cannons to the era of ships mainly carrying planes with bombs. Later ships used planes with missiles or launched missiles directly. Hypervelocity projectiles will shoot over twice as fast as current projectiles from the same navy guns. They would boost range from 30 miles to over 100 miles depending on what it’s fired out of. If network connectivity is added to the HVP’s design, it could be guided in-flight with command updates coming from external sensors. This means it can hit moving vehicles using a remote

A potential cure for Type 1 diabetes looms on the horizon in San Antonio, and the novel approach would also allow Type 2 diabetics to stop insulin shots. The discovery, made at The University of Texas Health Science Center, now called UT Health San Antonio, increases the types of pancreatic cells that secrete insulin. UT Health San Antonio researchers have a goal to reach human clinical trials in three years, but to do so they must first test the strategy in large-animal studies, which will cost an estimated $5 million. Those studies will precede application to the U.S. Food and

The Director of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Siberian Branch Vasily Fomin sayd Russian scientists have surpassed their colleagues from the United States on hypersonic speed advances. The Russian Defense Ministry said Russia is targeting initial hypersonic missile and other advanced weapons deployments by 2025 within the framework of the 2018-2025 State Armaments Program. China has been performing successful mach 7 hypersonic scramjet tests since 2015. China will test a prototype combined-cycle hypersonic engine later this year that they hope will pave the way for the first demonstration flight of a full-scale propulsion system by 2025. If successful, the engine

China is developing a new drone that uses ground effect technology to skim the surface of the ocean, allowing it to fly just eighteen inches off the water. The unmanned vehicle could be a challenging opponent for potential adversaries, some of whom would find it difficult to detect. The new ultra-low altitude anti-ship unmanned system can fly as low as 50 cm above the sea, can reach a maximum altitude of 3,000 km, along with an endurance of 1.5 hours – depending on the flight profile. The maximum take-off weight (MTOW) is 3000 kilograms and can carry a 1000 kg

Reaction Engines Ltd. today began construction of a new engine test facility where it plans to undertake the first ground based demonstration of its revolutionary SABREâ„¢ air-breathing rocket engine. SABREâ„¢ (Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine) is a leading contender for the next generation of hypersonic flight and space access vehicles. There are three core building blocks to the SABRE engine technology, the pre-cooler, the engine core and the thrust chamber. Each of these systems can be developed and validated using ground based demonstrations which saves cost and time relative to flight test, a design feature that benefitted the development of the

Scott Aaronson talked about the China quantum computer researchers achieving 5 photon boson sampling and the theoretical work of a Bristol team. The Bristol give numerical evidence that BosonSampling, with n photons and m modes, can be approximately simulated by a classical computer in “merely” about n2n time (that is, the time needed to calculate a single n×n permanent), as opposed to the roughly mn time that one would need if one had to calculate permanents corresponding to all the possible outcomes of the experiment. As a consequence of that, they argue that achieving quantum supremacy via BosonSampling would probably

Chinese researchers have built a 10 qubit quantum computer. China builds ten qubit quantum computer, They will scale to 20 qubits by end of this year and could beat the performance of any regular computer next year with a 30 qubit system. A chinese research team led by Pan Jianwei is exploring three technical routes to quantum computers: 1. systems based on single photons, 2. ultra-cold atoms and 3. superconducting circuits. Experimental set-up for multiphoton boson-sampling. The set-up includes four key parts: the single-photon device, demultiplexers, ultra-low-loss photonic circuit and detectors. The single-photon device is a single InAs/GaAs quantum dot

The first large airliner designed and built in China successfully completed its maiden flight in Shanghai Friday. The C919 is roughly the size of the Boeing 737 MAX 8 and the Airbus A320neo. Yet western experts believe it won’t put much of a dent in the market share of the dominant U.S. and European players. Launched nine years ago and now running three years late, the C919 jet won’t enter service until 2019 or 2020. The C919 is remarkably similar to the A320. The Chinese even chose to give the flight deck the same Airbus-style side-stick pilot controls rather than

The US Navy is making progress developing unmanned systems and directed energy weapons. Congress would like to see more effort operationalizing and fielding these technologies. The Navy has done a good job getting test versions of the laser weapon system and electromagnetic railgun out to sea ahead of full development: in the case of railgun, the Navy is still pursuing a pulsed power system to allow for continuous firings, and in the case of the laser weapon system the Navy is at 150 kilowatts of power compared to the 300 KW goal. The Navy had reached the point where it

China’s ambitious One Belt, One Road (OBOR) initiative is likely to have “modest” short-term impact on total investment and overall economic growth in the vast region, says Oxford Economics. Launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013, OBOR aims to create an infrastructure network by building roads, ports and railway tracks along ancient trading routes that will span 65 countries and connect some 60% of the global population. “While it’s hard to quantify the total number of projects and amount of financing, the China Development Bank alone has reserved US$890 billion (S$1.24 trillion) for over 900 projects, highlighting the magnitude of

Unlike conventional radios, which are designed to work with specific waveforms (AM and FM, cellular, digital TV, and WiFi, for example), software defined radios can send and receive many different waveforms, and toggle between them on the fly by means of software code that defines their behavior at any particular moment. As such, they have the electronic guts and, increasingly, the artificial intelligence needed to navigate and even coordinate activity at the interface of the physical and digital domains. What is still needed, and what DARPA is aiming to energize, is a community of SDR users to map out and

Prof. Sergio Canavero, a neurosurgeon from Torino, Italy, is planning the world’s first transplantation of a human head (aka body transplant) within ten months. He gave an interview to OOOM magazine. Sergio is together with various teams in the US, China and South Korea, the author of more than 140 scientific publications continued to pursue the plan he called HEAVEN (Head Anastomosis Venture). In his GEMINI protocol, Canavero outlines every necessary step of the procedure in detail, laid out like in an instruction manual. * The world’s first human head transplant will be performed within the next ten months. *

The final collapse of the Venezuela government is a matter of when and not if. Also, the when will probably be in some number of months Juan Barreto at Foreign Policy magazine writes: Venezuela is not the first developed country to put itself on track to fall into a catastrophic economic crisis. But it is in the relatively unusual situation of having done so while in possession of enormous oil assets. The Venezuelan government doesn’t claim to be full-fledged in its devotion to Marxism-Leninism. It has been pursuing as absurd an economic policy mix as its Soviet predecessor. It has

An improved J-31 stealth fighter prototype has increased test flights in April 2017. This stealth fighter could be used for Chinese aircraft carriers. China now has a refurbished Ukrainian aircraft carrier and a domestically produced aircraft carrier. Both carriers use older jump ramp technology instead powered launching systems. The twin-engine J-31 is roughly the same size as the American F-35, with a range of 775 miles, a maximum takeoff weight of 28 tons, and a Mach 1.8 top speed. The improved prototype first flew on December 26, 2016. The new J-31 prototype is three tons heavier and about 20 inches

The first phase of the United States’ THAAD anti-missile defense system has been activated on a golf course in South Korea to guard against the North Korean threat, Western news agencies said Monday. “It has reached initial intercept capability,” a U.S. official, speaking on grounds of anonymity, told Agence France Presse of the hit-to-kill Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System. The activation of the THAAD system, first reported by Reuters, was still in the initial phases and would not be fully operational with launchers ready to shoot down short and medium-range missiles for several months, a U.S. official said. South

An Indonesian man claimed to be 146 years old – the longest living human ever. He died in his village in Central Java. According to his papers, Sodimedjo, also known as Mbah Ghoto (grandpa Ghoto), was born in December 1870. But Indonesia only started recording births in 1900 – and there have been mistakes before. Yet officials told the BBC his papers were valid, based on documents he provided and interviews with him. He was taken to hospital on 12 April because of deteriorating health. Six days later he insisted on checking out to return home. Mbah was an Indonesian

Researchers from Harbin Medical University in China and controversial neurosurgeon Sergio Canavero built upon earlier head-grafting experiments to figure out how to avoid damage to the brain tissue during the operation, as well as long-term immune rejection. Previously, scientists have attempted the procedure on dogs and monkeys, which helped to test neural preservation when blood flood to the brain had been cut off. The researchers used three rats for each operation: a smaller rat, to be the donor, and two larger rats, acting as the recipient and the blood supply. To maintain blood flow to the donor brain, they connected

There is updated technical information on the Lockheed compact fusion reactor project. It was originally believed that the compact reactor would fit on a large truck. It looked like it might weigh 20 tons. After more engineering and scientific research, the new design requires about 2000 ton reactor that is 7 meters in diameter and 18 meters long. This would be about one third the length of a Dolphin diesel submarine and it would be slightly wider and taller. It would be similar in size to a A5W submarine nuclear fission reactor. We would not know for sure because the

Indonesia is exploring a number of new options for nuclear power, including high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (HTGRs) and a thorium molten salt reactors. Indonesia has signed several nuclear deals * In early 2015, they signed a contract to build and test a pebble-bed HTGR at Serpong with a consortium of Russian and Indonesian companies led by NUKEM Technologies. * in August 2016, they signed a cooperation agreement with China Nuclear Engineering to develop small HTGRs in Kalimantan and Sulawesi by 2027. * they have signed agreements with Russia’s Rosatom to develop a floating nuclear power plant to power smaller inhabited islands.

Britains new aircraft carriers will have mach 3 anti-missile missiles which Russia will be deploying new mach 6 missiles. Russia’s 3M22 Zircon wil attach at Mach 6, or 4,600 miles per hour. The Sea Ceptor defensive missiles on the Queen Elizabeth–class carriers can only intercept targets traveling up to Mach 3, or about 2,300 miles per hour. The Zircon has an estimated range of 250 miles. Russia is also developing hypersonic missiles with 400 to 500 mile range.

In a world first, Montreal-based startup Lyrebird today unveiled a voice-imitation algorithm that can mimic a person’s voice and have it read any text with a given emotion, based on the analysis of just a few dozen seconds of audio recording. With this innovation, Lyrebird is going a step further in the development of AI applications by offering to companies and developers new speech synthesis solutions. Users will be able to generate entire dialogs with the voice of their choice or design from scratch completely new and unique voices tailored for their needs. On the website lyrebird.ai, samples using the

Elon Musk had a 40-minute interview with TED’s Chris Anderson on Friday, April 28, 2017 at the TED 2017 conference in Vancouver. Some quotes- * only improves if a lot of people work very hard. * by itself, it degrades. * You look at ancient civilizations like ancient Egypt and they were able to make the pyramids and they forgot how to do that. And the Romans, they built these incredible aqueducts, they forgot how to do it. * If the future doesn’t include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species,

SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon 9 rocket on solid ground again, after launching the vehicle from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The rocket stage landed at Spacex Landing Zone 1 which is located just off the coast of the Cape. It’s the fourth time SpaceX has landed one of its rockets on land, and the 10th time the company has successfully recovered a rocket post-launch. Spacex launched a secret spy satellite called NROL-76 for the National Reconnaissance Office. This is the first mission that SpaceX has done for the US military. Falcon 9 first stage has landed at LZ-1 https://t.co/gtC39uBC7z pic.twitter.com/766RxdZ99X —