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1. Scana Corporation subsidiary South Carolina Electric & Gas (SCG&E) yesterday announced its decision to cease construction of two AP1000 reactors at VC Summer. The announcement followed co-owner Santee Cooper’s decision to suspend construction because of projected completion delays and cost overruns. Scana is to file for regulatory permission to abandon the project. Santee Cooper said its decision to suspend construction was based “in large part” on analysis of detailed schedule and cost data provided by project contractor Westinghouse and subcontractor Fluor Corporation after Westinghouse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in March. That data, which has now been analysed

Researchers develop a novel technique using graphene to create solar cells they can mount on surfaces ranging from glass to plastic to paper and tape. Imagine a future in which solar cells are all around us — on windows and walls, cell phones, laptops, and more. A new flexible, transparent solar cell developed at MIT is bringing that future one step closer. The organic solar cell can be deposited on any kind of surface, rigid or flexible, transparent or not. The researchers are now working to improve the 4% efficiency of their graphene-based organic solar cells without sacrificing transparency. (Increasing

Desktop Metal was created to change the way we bring products to market. Current metal 3D printing is too expensive and industrial for prototyping and it’s not fast enough or cost-effective enough for mass production. Fundamentally different approaches are needed to move metal 3D printing beyond its current limits. Desktop Metal, a company specializing in bringing metal 3D printing systems to more manufacturers and engineers, has raised $115 million in a series D round of investment from a slew of notable investors, including GV (formerly Google Ventures), New Enterprise Associates (NEA), GE Ventures, Future Fund, Techtronic Industries (TTI), Lux Capital,

Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen to produce clean energy can be simplified with a single catalyst developed by scientists at Rice University and the University of Houston. The electrolytic film produced at Rice and tested at Houston is a three-layer structure of nickel, graphene and a compound of iron, manganese and phosphorus. The foamy nickel gives the film a large surface, the conductive graphene protects the nickel from degrading and the metal phosphide carries out the reaction. Rice chemist Kenton Whitmire and Houston electrical and computer engineer Jiming Bao and their labs developed the film to overcome barriers that

Researchers at Houston Methodist made a surprising discovery leading to the development of technology with the ability to rejuvenate human cells. And that couldn’t be more important for the small population of children who are aging too quickly – children with progeria. Cooke studied cells from children with progeria, a rare condition marked by rapid aging that usually robs them of the chance to live beyond their early teens. They focused on progeria, because the condition tells them a lot about aging in general that’s ultimately relevant to all of us. “These kids are dying of heart attack and stroke

North Korea has fired its second intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), stoking fears of the country’s potential nuclear capabilities. The missile was launched nearly vertically, traveled 1000 kilometers and reached an altitude of about 3000 kilometers before splashing down off the coast of Japan, according to the Japanese national broadcaster NHK. Other reports suggest that altitude may have been even higher. If those numbers are correct, the missile flown on a standard trajectory the missile would have a range 10,400 km (6,500 miles), not taking into account the Earth’s rotation. David Wright, physicist and co-director of the UCS Global Security Program,

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) announced that the Navy’s electromagnetic railgun is out of the laboratory and ready for field demonstrations at the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division’s new railgun Rep-Rate Test Site at Terminal Range. Initial rep-rate fires (repetition rate of fires) of multi-shot salvos already have been successfully conducted at low muzzle energy. The next test sequence calls for safely increasing launch energy, firing rates and salvo size. Railgun rep-rate testing will be at 20 megajoules by the end of the summer and at 32 megajoules by next year. To put this in perspective, one megajoule

The high-profile quest to spot moons orbiting distant planets has been a series of let-downs, with each hint of an ‘exomoon’ fading under closer inspection. So astronomer David Kipping, at Columbia University in New York City, didn’t want to reveal his team’s detection of another possible exomoon, until they could confirm it using the Hubble Space Telescope. That plan was abandoned a few days ago, after news of the team’s request for Hubble time rocketed around social media. It culminated in the announcement that “exomoon candidate Kepler-1625 b I” had been observed orbiting a planet 4,000 light years (1,230 parsecs)

Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford immediately phoned his South Korean counterpart Friday to discuss military options following North Korea’s second test launch this month of a missile with ICBM range to reach the U.S. The US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) recently concluded that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will be able to produce a “reliable, nuclear-capable ICBM” sometime in 2018. The latest launch put added pressure on U.S. President Donald Trump to sign a bill passed by veto-proof margins in the House and Senate that would tighten sanctions on North Korea, as well as Iran and Russia. In a

Marine BioEnergy is collaborating with a research team at the University of Southern California, Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies. US Department of Energy, Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) has provided $2.1 million in funding for a proof of concept. Help grows best 100 and 300 meters beneath the surface, or where there are natural upwellings, typically along coasts. Can submarine drones hold nets and lines to suspend kelp crops in the open ocean ? Marine BioEnergy proposes to tether their kelp farms to drone submarines that will submerge the entire farm every night, bringing all of the kelp

The United States on Sunday conducted a “successful” a test of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, military officials said. According to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, a U.S. Air Force plane fired a ballistic missile over the Pacific Ocean in Alaska and it was then intercepted by the system. This test was the 15th success in 15 trials for THAAD since 2005, when they system began operational testing. Sunday’s test comes weeks after the system’s first-ever successful intercept test against an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) target. Despite the proximity of these two recent THAAD tests to successive North

China’s total production from aquaculture tripled in the past two decades despite the loss of 57 percent of its coastal wetlands, 73 percent of its mangroves and 80 percent of its coral reefs since the 1950s. Marine ecosystems are being lost to land reclamation and urban development. The majority of aquaculture production is freshwater, marine aquaculture is still substantial, accounting for 40 percent of production in 2012. Reclamation of China’s coastal wetlands causes a loss of $31 billion annually in coastal ecosystem services, equivalent to 6 percent of gross marine products in China. Wetlands loss in China has contributed significantly

About 37 percent of Earth’s land area is used for agricultural land. About one-third of this area, or 11 percent of Earth’s total land, is used for crops. The balance, roughly one-fourth of Earth’s land area, is pastureland, which includes cultivated or wild forage crops for animals and open land used for grazing. There is a proposal to use about 9% of the oceans surface for massive kelp farms. The Ocean surface area is about 36 billion hectares. This would offset all CO2 production and provide 0.5 kg of fish and sea vegetables per person per day for 10 billion

The Russian defense industry says it will deploy powerful lasers on its next generation fighters that will be able to “burn” enemy homing systems on projectiles fired in their direction, to make them unable to hit a target. Air-to-ground or air-to-air missiles use a targeting system on the tip of the missile that uses radar or heat-seeking technology to find and lead the weapon to the target to destroy it. Russians have laser protection systems on their helicopters and larger planes already. Drone technology is also a high priority for the Russian defense industry. Manned aircraft flying alongside swarms of

The Us Navy partnered with Oak Ridge National Laboratory to 3D print its first submersible that could be used to deploy logistics capabilities and sensors. Through a partnership with the Navy’s Disruptive Technology Lab, the team at ORNL’s Manufacturing Demonstration Facility (MDF) created the military’s first 3D-printed submersible hull. The Optionally Manned Technology Demonstrator is a prototype vessel that could be used to deploy logistics capabilities and sensors. In the future, vessels will need to be manufactured faster and incorporate new designs to support each Navy mission. The team needed to create a 30-foot proof-of-concept hull out of carbon fiber

Researchers have built a nanolaser that uses only a single molecular layer, placed on a thin silicon beam, which operates at room temperature. Key to the new development is use of materials that can be laid down in single layers and efficiently amplify light (lasing action). Single layer nanolasers have been developed before, but they all had to be cooled to low temperatures using a cryogen like liquid nitrogen or liquid helium. Being able to operate at room temperatures (~77 F) opens up many possibilities for uses of these new lasers,” Ning said. The joint ASU-Tsinghua research team used a

The US electric car market rose to just above 1% of the broader car market in December 2016. Going from 0.01% to 1% market penetration takes 7 doublings. The same applies to 1% going to a 100%. GM’s EV1 was released in 1996 and it took us 20 years to get to 1% (or roughly a doubling every 3 years). According to Kurzweil’s theory, we need another 20 years to get to 100% new vehicles sold. In July 2017, Elon Musk predicted that more than half of all new cars produced in the United States will be electric “probably in

The South China Morning Post reports that China’s military has set up a new department modeled on DARPA to develop state-of-the-art weapons such as stealth ­aircraft and electromagnetic ­cannons. The Scientific Research Steering Committee was set up early this year, according to a documentary aired on state broadcaster CCTV that revealed the new department for the first time. The committee will fall directly under the Central Military Commission (CMC), which is chaired by President Xi Jinping. As everyone knows, the internet, global positioning systems, stealth fighters, electromagnetic guns, laser weapons as well as ­other advanced technologies – most are DARPA-related,”

Researchers have taken an important step toward the long-sought goal of a quantum computer, which in theory should be capable of vastly faster computations than conventional computers, for certain kinds of problems. The new work shows that collections of ultracold molecules can retain the information stored in them, for hundreds of times longer than researchers have previously achieved in these materials. These two-atom molecules are made of sodium and potassium and were cooled to temperatures just a few ten-millionths of a degree above absolute zero (measured in hundreds of nanokelvins, or nK). The results are described in a report this

In new research, Alex Green, an assistant professor at ASU’s Biodesign Institute, demonstrates how living cells can be induced to carry out computations in the manner of tiny robots or computers. The results of the new study have significant implications for intelligent drug design and smart drug delivery, green energy production, low-cost diagnostic technologies and even the development of futuristic nanomachines capable of hunting down cancer cells or switching off aberrant genes. “We’re using very predictable and programmable RNA-RNA interactions to define what these circuits can do,” Green said. “That means we can use computer software to design RNA sequences

Motortrend test drove the new Tesla model 3. Motor Trend’s review says the Tesla model 3 has great handling and great acceleration. A 2.0-liter Alfa Romeo Giulia feels like a wet sponge by comparison. * infographics reside on a 15.4-inch, landscape-oriented multitouch screen that’s perched on an austere, sweeping, almost Scandinavian-simple * a Premium (add $5,000), meaning better-grade materials, wood-veneered dash, 12-way front seats, 12-speaker sound, heated rear seats, side-by-side inductive phone chargers, and that panoramic glass ceiling that nevertheless protects like SPF 90 sunscreen. * One of the assignable functions of the twin thumb scrolls on the wheel spokes

Scientists from the Technical University of Munich has used a BACE inhibitor drug reduces the amount of amyloid beta in the brains of mice and restores the normal function of nerve cells and significantly improves memory. Around 50 million people worldwide suffer from dementia. To date, no effective drug is available that is able to halt or cure the disease. Moreover, the exact causes of the disease have yet to be definitively explained. However, there is a greater accumulation of the protein amyloid beta in Alzheimer’s patients than in healthy people. As a result, the protein clumps together and damages

Laser SETI is an audacious project to place specialized cameras around the globe to look for laser flashes from deep space. They have raised $53,000 of a $100,000 Indiegogo campaign. This is the first project ever to scan the *whole sky all the time* for signals from an extraterrestrial civilization. Laser SETI makes this possible by using multiple, redundant, and inexpensive detectors, located strategically around the globe. And experiments of the past two years have shown that this technology works. The Laser SETI campaign will fund the remaining development and the installation of two detectors in a fully operational observing

Centauri Dreams that Jordin Kare has died at the age of 60 due to aortic heart valve failure. He was involved in developing laser propulsion concepts. As a physicist and aerospace engineer, Kare focused primarily on laser propulsion, both from ground-to-orbit and deep space perspectives. A long-time researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he put together an early laser propulsion workshop at LLNL in 1986; his work on laser launch from ground to orbit drew support from the Strategic Defense Initiative. He designed a laser sail system called SailBeam and a ‘fusion runway’ concept. The gist of the sailbeam idea

Doctor Lantieri does more than mend broken bones; he tries to help his patients look as close to normal as possible. In the past, he spent long hours in the operating room, opening hundreds upon hundreds of boxes of generic plates, casts and screws, searching for the best fit for patients. Despite his painstaking work, he often felt frustrated because of the off-the-shelf parts he had to use: “Before we were just guessing, trying to do it with the CT scan and using standard material … it was complicated, we never had the correct, perfect shape.” That’s starting to change.

Elon Musk tweeted out a new Spacex Falcon Heavy launch date. It is now planned for November, 2017. Elon Musk has said that combining three Falcon 9 cores will triple the amount of vibrations and acoustics the rocket will experience during launch. Spacex had to restructure the center core to handle the new loads. SpaceX has only been able to test the three boosters separately up until now. But all three rockets — adding up to 27 engines — will need need to ignite simultaneously for the Falcon Heavy to fly. This has never tried before and Spacex does not

North Korea has launched “one unidentified missile” from its northern Jagang province, the South Korean Defense Ministry announced in a statement. The missile flew for about 45 minutes and appeared to have landed in the waters of Japan’s exclusive economic zone. The missile may have landed within 230 miles of Japan’s coast, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said. Experts say North Korea currently is known to have the capability to send missiles to all of South Korea, Japan, as well as to Guam. And the July 4 test-firing of its first intercontinental ballistic missile indicated the regime also might be

The US Navy completed testing on a software fix for its Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) that will allow the heaviest planes to take off with less stress to the airframe, Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) announced this week. The EMALS team found during April 2014 testing that airplanes carrying full 480-gallon wing-mounted external fuel tanks were experiencing a great amount of stress on the airframe. The software fix will now allow EMALS to handle the upper limit of its workload – the heaviest planes, Super Hornets and EA-18G Growlers with full external fuel tanks – without exceeding stress limits

Breakthrough Starshot brings the Silicon Valley approach to space travel, capitalizing on exponential advances in key areas of technology since the beginning of the 21st century. The nanocraft concept, combining light beamer, lightsail and StarChip, is by far the most plausible system for launching a realistic mission to Alpha Centauri within a generation. The key elements of the proposed system design are based on technology either already available or likely to be attainable in the near future under reasonable assumptions. Breakthrough Starshot has been provided $100 million in funding and currently has precursor chipsats in orbit. Nanocrafts Nanocrafts are gram-scale

Breakthrough Starshot plans to launch a fleet of tiny interstellar chipsize probes to Proxima Centauri in 30 or 40 years. Small chip probes have been launched into low Earth orbit on June 23. Sprites are ‘satellites on a chip,’. Research performed by Mason Peck and his team at Cornell University included Breakthrough Starshot’s Zac Manchester Zac used a Kickstarter campaign to develop the concept in 2011. These are the smallest fully functional space probes ever put into space. Each 3.5-by-3.5 centimeter probe built upon a single circuit board and weighing in at just four grams. A Sprite can contain solar

SpaceX, the rocket maker founded by billionaire Elon Musk, has raised up to $350 million in new financing and is now valued at around $21 billion, making it one of the most valuable privately held companies in the world. Five companies based in the United States that are valued at more than $20 billion — including Uber, Airbnb and WeWork — have upended established industries like transportation and real estate. Palantir, the analytics company that is in the $20 billion-plus valuation club, is vying to become a major government contractor, as is SpaceX. Elon Musk has about 54% of Spacex

Nearly a fifth of the $94 trillion in global infrastructure investment needed by 2040 risks being unfunded if current spending trends continue according to the G20-backed Global Infrastructure Hub. To close the spending gap, annual infrastructure spending needs to rise to 3.5 percent from 3 percent of global gross domestic product. The GIH, set up by the G20 in 2014, aims to help to increase opportunities for public and private investment in infrastructure around the world. It is funded by governments including Britain, Australia, China, Korea and Singapore. Every year, $3.7 trillion needs to be invested in infrastructure to meet

Strong light-matter coupling in these semiconducting tubes may hold the key to electrically pumped lasers Light-matter quasi-partic­les can be generated electrically in semiconducting carbon nanotubes. Material scientists and physicists from Heidelberg University (Germany) and the University of St Andrews (Scotland) used light-emitting and extremely stable transistors to reach strong light-matter coupling and create exciton-polaritons. These particles may pave the way for new light sources, so-called electrically pumped polariton lasers, that could be manufactured with carbon nanotubes. These findings, published in “Nature Materials”, are the result of a cooperation between Prof. Dr Jana Zaumseil (Heidelberg) and Prof. Dr Malte C. Gather

University of Arizona engineers are installing three 20-foot-long tubes for a new high-speed wind tunnel in the Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering Building. The Office of Navy Research (ONR) funded them with $2 million to study problems of instability and materials failure for aircraft and missiles flying at highly supersonic, or hypersonic, speeds of Mach 5 and above. High-Level Testing The wind tunnel under construction, expected to be ready for testing in spring 2018, is a low-disturbance, or quiet, Mach 4 tunnel. A second quiet tunnel, slated for completion in 2020, will shoot bursts of air at Mach 5, five times

Cambridge researchers have shown that energy-efficient superconductors can power super energy efficient spintronics devices. What once seemed an impossible marriage of superconductivity and spin may be about to transform high performance computing. In 2016, IBM found that humans now create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data daily. From the start of this decade to its end, the world’s data will increase 50 times over. The basic building blocks of electronic devices, such as the transistor, work by moving packets of charge around a circuit. A single unit of charge is an electron, and its movement is governed by semiconductors, commonly made

Researchers have designed a novel computing system made solely from carbon that might one day replace the silicon transistors that power today’s electronic devices. It is a spintronic device that could eventually operate as much as 1000 times faster than current processors. “The concept brings together an assortment of existing nanoscale technologies and combines them in a new way,” said Dr. Joseph S. Friedman, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UT Dallas who conducted much of the research while he was a doctoral student at Northwestern University. It exploits the magnetoresistance property of graphene. The device is like

The first known attempt at creating genetically modified human embryos in the United States has been carried out by a team of researchers in Portland, Oregon. Three previous reports of editing human embryos were all published by scientists in China. The US work is believed to have broken new ground both in the number of embryos experimented upon and by demonstrating that it is possible to safely and efficiently correct defective genes that cause inherited diseases. The US Crispr gene editing has convincingly shown that it is possible to avoid both mosaicism and “off-target” effects, as the CRISPR errors are

A team of architects and chemists from the University of Cambridge has designed super-stretchy and strong fibers which are almost entirely composed of water, and could be used to make textiles, sensors and other materials. The fibers, which resemble miniature bungee cords as they can absorb large amounts of energy, are sustainable, non-toxic and can be made at room temperature. This new method not only improves upon earlier methods of making synthetic spider silk, since it does not require high energy procedures or extensive use of harmful solvents, but it could substantially improve methods of making synthetic fibers of all

Facebook’s and Alphabet Inc.’s Google took 99% of the online ad industry’s growth last year, according to Pivotal Research. Facebook predicted that growth would slow in the second half of 2017. This month, Facebook started showing ads in its Messenger chat app and introducing ads in Marketplace, a Craigslist-like feature in the core Facebook app. Facebook has also been testing “ad breaks” in the middle of Facebook videos and ramping up ads in its photo-sharing app Instagram. Facebook is also investing in more lucrative ad products to help the company generate more money from every ad unit sold. In the

There is a CBS TV show called Salvation about a 7000 meter wide asteroid that will hit the Earth within 6 months. The show chooses to try to use an EMdrive, a propellantless propulsion system to deliver a gravity deflection mission to divert the asteroid. EMdrive is under some experimental study and there is some experiments which seem to indicate millinewtons of thrust per kilowatt. There are rumors that an EMdrive was flown in space by China and by the US Air force but there is no confirmation that the systems really work or that there have been any space

Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is an incurable X-linked muscle-wasting disease caused by mutations in the dystrophin gene. Gene therapy using highly functional microdystrophin genes and recombinant adeno-associated virus (rAAV) vectors is an attractive strategy to treat DMD. Here we show that locoregional and systemic delivery of a rAAV2/8 vector expressing a canine microdystrophin (cMD1) is effective in restoring dystrophin expression and stabilizing clinical symptoms in studies performed on a total of 12 treated golden retriever muscular dystrophy (GRMD) dogs. Locoregional delivery induces high levels of microdystrophin expression in limb musculature and significant amelioration of histological and functional parameters. Systemic intravenous

The first systematic review and meta-analysis of trends in sperm count reports a significant decline in sperm concentration and total sperm count among men from Western countries. The study is published today in Human Reproduction Update, the leading journal in the fields of Reproductive Biology and Obstetrics and Gynecology. By screening 7,500 studies and conducting a meta-regression analysis on 185 studies between 1973 and 2011, the researchers found a 52.4 percent decline in sperm concentration, and a 59.3 percent decline in total sperm count, among men from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand who were not selected based on

Russia is building two new icebreakers designed patrol the Arctic Ocean, capable of smashing through five feet of sea ice and Russia will add 30 to 200 kilowatt high-powered lasers. Russia began construction of two Project 23550, the Ivan Papanin-class icebreakers. The two ships will displace about 8,500 tons, about the size of modern destroyers, but much of that weight is due to the reinforced hull needed by icebreakers to plow through thick sea ice. Dimensionally, the Papanin class will be only about the size of a frigate. The ships will carry one AK-176MA 3-inch multipurpose deck gun (76.2-millimeter), a

The US government does not want new helicopter replacements to be built with closed proprietary systems. Open architecture is typically defined as the military’s push to create a universal set of standards for weapon systems that industry shares. An open architecture platform makes it easier for the military to modifications, upgrade and add on to weapon systems. The US military is trying to establish open standards during the Future lift program design phase.

NASA is proposing to spend $390 million over five years to build a demo quiet supersonic plane and test it over populated areas. NASA plans to share the technology resulting from the tests with U.S. plane makers, meaning a head start for the likes of Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Boeing, and startups such as Boom Technology and billionaire Robert Bass’s Aerion. Lockheed helped create NASA’s design, using fluid dynamics modeling made possible in the past decade or so by increasingly powerful computers. Together, Lockheed and NASA tested and mapped how subtle differences in aircraft shapes affect the supersonic shock waves

The unique swimming strategies of natural microorganisms have inspired recent development of magnetic micro/nanorobots powered by artificial helical or flexible flagella. However, as artificial nanoswimmers with unique geometries are being developed, it is critical to explore new potential modes for kinetic optimization. For example, the freestyle stroke is the most efficient of the competitive swimming strokes for humans. Here we report a new type of magnetic nanorobot, a symmetric multilinked two-arm nanoswimmer, capable of efficient “freestyle” swimming at low Reynolds numbers. Excellent agreement between the experimental observations and theoretical predictions indicates that the powerful “freestyle” propulsion of the two-arm nanorobot

Google is helping the Tri-alpha energy nuclear fusion project with improved algorithms, sensor data analysis and simulations. Google developed a new computer algorithm that significantly speeds up progress. The team achieved a 50% reduction in energy losses from the system and a resulting increase in total plasma energy, which must reach a critical threshold for fusion to occur. Tri-alpha runs a real plasma “shot” on the C-2U machine every 8 minutes. Each shot consists of creating two spinning blobs of plasma in the vacuum sealed innards of C-2U, smashing them together at over 600,000 miles per hour, creating a bigger,

A new way of producing the seasonal flu vaccine could speed up the process and provide better protection against infection. For decades, vaccine manufacturers have used chicken eggs to grow the flu virus strains included in the seasonal flu shot. But because these human strains frequently mutate to adapt to their new environment in eggs, the resulting vaccine is often an imperfect match to the actual virus that it is supposed to protect against. Duke researchers have devised a way to keep the human influenza virus from mutating during production, generating a perfect match to the target vaccine in a

North Korea should be able to finish a missile that can reach the continental United States within one year, according to several administration officials briefed on the new assessment by US Intelligence agencies. Until a few weeks ago, the official estimate was that it would take roughly four years, give or take 12 months, for North Korea to develop a missile that could carry a nuclear weapon small enough to fit into the missile’s warhead and capable of surviving the stresses of re-entry and deliver it to the United States. But the realities of the past few months, especially a