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The US Air Force will award an engineering, manufacturing and development contract in early fiscal year 2018 to either Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Orbital ATK or Raytheon. Only those companies could produce the weapon within the USAF’s timeframe, according to a 21 July notice of contract action on the US Federal Business Opportunities website. The hypersonic conventional strike weapon will provide a precision strike capability against fixed and moving targets in an anti-access, area-denial environment using Global Positioning System and Inertial Guidance System navigation. It will be shot from existing fighter jets and bombers. There will be other contracts

Elon Musk has said that he has changed his plans for Mars landing craft and Mars colonization. He will not use a dragon capsule for Mars. It is believed that the design for the Interplanetary Transport System revealed in 2016 has been changed. The new Mars launch system will likely be 9 meters in diameter instead of 12 meters. This will allow it to be built in the current Spacex factories. This will likely mean 21 raptor engines and not 42 engines like in the 2016 design. The 2016 ITS had a very large crew section. It is not clear

Elon Musk says Mark Zuckerberg’s understanding of Artificial Intelligence is limited. Elon Musk has warned that there needed to be regulation on AI development before it’s too late. “I keep sounding the alarm bell, but until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react, because it seems so ethereal,” he said, adding that the technology represents a “fundamental risk to the existence of civilization.” Zuckerberg thinks you can build things and the world gets better, and with AI especially, Zuckerberg is really optimistic. He think people who are naysayers and try to drum

Two separate scientific studies determined that the Earth mantle contains a lot of water in the form of water bearing rock and the moon’s mantle and volcanic rock deposits on the moon contain a lot of water in water bearing rock. Previously the moon’s interior was believed to not hold any water and previously the Earth’s mantle was believed to hold a lot less water in water bearing rock. The moon’s water deposits will have a large impact on future human colonization of the moon and for providing water converted into fuel for space missions all over the solar system.

New work by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists shows the dispersal of water (incorporated as hydrogen in olivine, the most abundant mineral in the upper mantle), could account for high electrical conductivity seen in the asthenosphere (part of the upper mantle just below the lithosphere that is involved in plate tectonic movement). Minerals formed deep in the mantle and transported to the Earth’s surface contain tens to hundreds of parts per million in weight (ppm wt) of water, providing evidence for the presence of dissolved water in the Earth’s interior. Even at these low concentrations, water greatly affects the

A bracelet harvests energy from the wearer’s wrist movements. This energy can be converted into electricity and used to extend the battery lifetime of personal electronics or even fully power some of these devices. An energy harvesting bracelet (EHB) based on two mutually exclusive circular motion permanent magnetic movers is demonstrated, which is able to capture energy through the natural motions of the wearer’s wrist. The EHB can transform the translational motion in any orientation except the axial into the rotational motion of the movers, which passes through four coil transducers and induces significantly large electro-motive forces across the coils.

Researchers at North Carolina State University have significantly increased the temperature at which carbon-based materials act as superconductors, using a novel, boron-doped Q-carbon material. The previous record for superconductivity in boron-doped diamond was 11 Kelvin, or minus 439.60 degrees Fahrenheit. The boron-doped Q-carbon has been found to be superconductive from 37K to 57K, which is minus 356.80 degrees F. “Going from 11K to 57K is a big jump for conventional BCS superconductivity,” says Jay Narayan, the John C. Fan Distinguished Chair Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at NC State and senior author of two papers describing the work. BCS

Laboratory analyses of lunar samples provide a direct means to identify indigenous volatiles and have been used to argue for the presence of Earth-like water content in the lunar interior. Some volatile elements, however, have been interpreted as evidence for a bulk lunar mantle that is dry. Here we demonstrate that, for a number of lunar pyroclastic deposits, near-infrared reflectance spectra acquired by the Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument onboard the Chandrayaan-1 orbiter exhibit absorptions consistent with enhanced OH- and/or H2O-bearing materials. These enhancements suggest a widespread occurrence of water in pyroclastic materials sourced from the deep lunar interior, and thus

A novel screening method developed by a team at Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center — using CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing technology to test the function of thousands of tumor genes in mice — has revealed new drug targets that could potentially enhance the effectiveness of PD-1 checkpoint inhibitors, a promising new class of cancer immunotherapy. Researchers report that deletion of the Ptpn2 gene in tumor cells made them more susceptible to PD-1 checkpoint inhibitors. PD-1 blockade is a drug that “releases the brakes” on immune cells, enabling them to locate and destroy cancer cells. “PD-1 checkpoint inhibitors have transformed

Three Square Market claims it will be the first company in the United States to implant chips in its employees. RFID (Radio Frequency ID) chips would allow those employees who volunteer to participate in the program to open doors, pay for purchases, share business cards, store medical information, pay for stuff at other RFID terminals and login to their computers … all with a wave of the hand. The company is expecting over 50 staff members to be voluntarily chipped. 32M is partnering with BioHax International and Jowan Osterland, CEO, based out of Sweden.

Silicon Valley startup Helix will sequence your genes for $80 and lure app developers to sell you access to different parts of it. For an initial $80, Helix sequences the most important part of the genome—about 20,000 genes plus some other bits—called the exome. That information is digitized and stored by Helix, which doles out pieces of the information to companies selling other apps through Helix. “It’s our goal that someone will have a lifelong relationship with their DNA data,” Thurston says. Previously exome sequencing cost several hundred to more than a thousand dollars. Helix was founded in 2015 with

The Department of Defense’s proposed FY 2018 budget includes a $75 million allocation for DARPA in support of a new, public-private “electronics resurgence” initiative. The initiative seeks to undergird a new era of electronics in which advances in performance will be catalyzed not just by continued component miniaturization but also by radically new microsystem materials, designs, and architectures. The new funds will supplement the Agency’s FY 2018 R andD portfolio in electronics, photonics, and related systems to create a coordinated effort valued at more than $200 million, to be further supplemented by significant commercial sector investments. Among the new fronts

Three new nuclear power reactors in China have passed significant pre-operational tests and inspections. * Sanmen 1 passed a comprehensive safety check ahead of fuel loading * a containment integrity test was completed at Haiyang 2. * cold function tests were completed at Yangjiang 5. Four AP1000 units are under construction in China – two each at Sanmen and Haiyang – and are all scheduled to start commercial operation in 2018. Sanmen will be the first. Tests on the containment vessel at another AP1000 unit under construction in China – unit 2 of the Haiyang plant in Shandong province –

The Bossier and Haynesville Formations of the onshore and State waters portion of the U.S. Gulf Coast contain estimated means of 4.0 billion barrels of oil, 304.4 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, and 1.9 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, according to updated assessments by the U.S. Geological Survey. These estimates, the largest continuous natural gas assessment USGS has yet conducted, include petroleum in both conventional and continuous accumulations, and consist of undiscovered, technically recoverable resources. The Bossier and Haynesville Formations lie within the Gulf Coast Basin, which extends from the Texas-Mexico border in the west to the Florida

According to calculations by Gilbert Masters, Stanford Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Emeritus, current oil supplies in all nations combined would last the world for only about 41 years. Gilbert Masters neglected to mention that this is based on the assumption that oil and gas firms stopped trying to find new oil and stopped trying to improve how they extract oil. The world is using about 95 million barrels of oil per day which is about 35 billion barrels per year. This was about the pace of oil usage since the 1990s but most years the new oil discovered

Stargate Origins will focus on Catherine Langford, the scientist whose lifelong obsession with alien hieroglyphs unearthed on her father’s archaeological expedition led to the events that kick off the 1994 film Stargate. Langford then recurred as a character throughout the long-running TV series Stargate SG-1, which aired on the Sci-Fi network (before it was renamed Syfy) from 1997 through 2007. Now she gets her own 10-episode prequel web series exploring her life, her adventures, and maybe even her grand romance. A new digital streaming service, Stargate Command, that will host the new show.

Star Trek: Discovery premieres September 24th on CBS All Access.

Thor Ragnarok will be the third Thor movie. The release dates for upcoming Marvel movies are. Thor: Ragnarok release date: Nov 3, 2017 Black Panther release date: Feb 16, 2018 The Avengers: Infinity War release date: May 4, 2018 Ant-Man & The Wasp release date: Jul 6, 2018 Captain Marvel release date: Mar 8, 2019 The Avengers 4 / Untitled Avengers Movie release date: May 3, 2019 Untitled Spider-Man: Homecoming Sequel release date: Jul 5, 2019

Harvard and MIT are making a wide variety of robots. Swarming bots Soft bots Insect bots Folding bots Here are some videos of them

Due to the continuous improvement of scanning probe microscopy techniques, the long thought inaccessible goal of inducing and visualizing chemical reactions at the atomic scale is now routinely achievable by many groups around the world. In the framework of so-called mechanochemistry, mechanical force induced reactions have been studied using NCAFM. Recent works reported force induced atomic-scale switching, quantitative force measurements to induce the diffusion of single atoms and molecules, as well as studying molecular conformers and tautomerization. A few earlier studies also showed examples of mechanically induced vertical manipulation of single atoms.

Harvard’s George Whitesides and Alex Nemiroski, a former postdoctoral fellow in Whitesides’ Harvard lab, have created a type of semi-soft robot capable of standing and walking. The team also created a robotic water strider capable of pushing itself along the liquid surface. The robots are described in a recently published paper in the journal Soft Robotics. Unlike earlier generations of soft robots, which could stand and awkwardly walk by inflating air chambers in their bodies, the new robots are designed to be far nimbler. Though real-world applications are still far off, the researchers hope the robots eventually could be used

In July 2017, China’s statistics bureau has revised the way it calculates the country’s gross domestic product by including contributions from healthcare, tourism and “new economy”. This move increased the total of 2015 GDP by 1.3 percent to 68.55 trillion yuan ($10.3 trillion), but that year’s growth rate was only marginally amended and basically remained 6.9 percent. The calculation of China’s GDP for the first half of 2017 has not been affected, and stood at about 38.2 trillion yuan ($5.6 trillion), up 6.9 percent year-on-year. Global Credit rating agency Fitch said in its most recent Global Economic Outlook (GEO) that

The Government Accountability Office reviewed six ships valued at $6.3 billion that had completed the post delivery period, and found they were provided to the fleet with varying degrees of incomplete work and quality problems. GAO used three quality assurance metrics, identified by Navy program offices, to evaluate the completeness of the six ships—LPD 25, LHA 6, DDG 112, Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) 3 and 4, and SSN 782—at delivery and also at the time each ship was provided to the fleet. Although the Navy resolved many of the defects by the end of the post-delivery period, as the table

An international team of physicists, materials scientists and string theoreticians have observed a phenomenon on Earth that was previously thought to only occur hundreds of light years away or at the time when the universe was born. This result could lead to a more evidence-based model for the understanding the universe and for improving the energy-conversion process in electronic devices. Previously it was thought to only occur in the early stages of the universe and within neutron stars and black holes. IBM scientists predict this discovery will open up a rush of new developments around sensors, switches and thermoelectric coolers

The US Navy work will focus over the next year on increasing railgun power with which projectiles are fired to the target of 32 megajoules and increasing the firing rate to 10 shots per minute, or one every six seconds. said Dr. Tom Beutner, head of Naval Air Warfare and Weapons for ONR. At 32 megajoules, the railgun will have a range of about 110 nautical miles. Engineers will bring a new composite launcher designed to support the increased power and rep rate to where railgun prototypes are already being fired using a demonstration barrel. SOURCE – Defense Tech

Third way has a report on 48 north american companies and research institutions working on advanced small nuclear reactors. Only five of those north american projects are considered to be in more advanced development by the World Nuclear association. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) is conducting Phase 1 of a pre-licensing vendor design review on the Terrestrial Energy molten salt IMSR, which it expects to be completed in September 2017 as it moves into the engineering phase. It plans to submit either an application seeking design certification or a construction permit application for the IMSR-400 no later than October

India added only 827 megawatt of solar power generation capacity in the first three months of the current financial year. This is about one third of the pace needed to achieve a 10,000 megawatt addition in solar power target for this year. India also has a target of having 100 gigawatt (100,000 megawatt) of solar power installed by 2022. It will primarily be large solar farms supplemented by grid-connected rooftop installations. This forms part of a large renewable energy program that scientists built a total of 175 GW of alternate power capacity, including 60 GW from wind and 10 GW

India’s plans to build ten indigenously designed pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWRs). The Indian cabinet approved the plan in May, 2017. The reactors are to be built at four plant locations – including two new sites – by 2031. They approved the construction of ten 700 MWe units to fast-track India’s domestic nuclear power program. Atomic Energy Minister Jitendra Singh said * two of the reactors would be constructed as units 5 and 6 of the Kaiga nuclear power plant in Karnataka state; * two as units 3 and 4 of the Gorakhpur plant in Haryana state; * two as

China’s solar industry is expected to produce 25 percent more panels in 2017 than last year, supported by domestic sales and demand from the United States and emerging markets, the head of a Chinese industry association said. China was expected to produce solar panels with a combined capacity of 60 gigawatts (GW) this year, said Wang Bohua, secretary general of China’s photovoltaic industry association. China produced panels with capacity of 48 GW in 2016. The United States has told the World Trade Organization it was considering putting emergency “safeguard” tariffs on imported solar cells, a move aimed at shielding its

The Boring Company released a statement following Musk’s tweets saying its talks with officials should lead to breaking ground on a tunnel “later this year.” If Musk truly is considering starting a new company to build a hyperloop, his track record with Tesla and SpaceX signals a major shake-up among the small group of start-ups that are getting closer to building these futuristic transportation platforms. Brogan BamBrogan (x-Spacex engineer and former Hyperloop One CTO) recently started a competing Hyperloop company here called Arrivo. All three main hyperloop companies — Hyperloop One, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), and newly minted Arrivo are

Google Cloud Platform (GCP) now features a cutting-edge new congestion control algorithm, TCP BBR, which achieves higher bandwidths and lower latencies for internet traffic. This is the same BBR that powers TCP traffic from google.com and that improved YouTube network throughput by 4 percent on average globally — and by more than 14 percent in some countries. “BBR allows the 500,000 WordPress sites on our digital experience platform to load at lightning speed. According to Google’s tests, BBR’s throughput can reach as much as 2,700x higher than today’s best loss-based congestion control; queueing delays can be 25x lower. Network innovations

Today ASML is selling billions in Extreme Ultraviolet lithography machines. These machines will help deliver chips at the 5 nanometer to 2 nanometer nodes. ASML (Veldhoven, the Netherlands) sold eight more EUV (next-generation extreme ultraviolet lithography) systems in the second quarter. This brings its EUV backlog to 27 tools valued at about 2.8 billion euro (about $3.26 billion). The firm also announced that it demonstrated the key productivity metric of 125 wafers per hour (125) on an EUV tool at its headquarters. Second quarter sales increased to 2.1 billion euro (about $244) million, up 8 percent compared to the year

China authorizing the maximum speed of the Shanghai-Beijing high-speed rail line to increase to 350 kilometers per hour. China is upgrading its high speed rail trains to new trains with a 400 kph top speed. Hundreds of trains will be upgraded to the higher top speed and more lines will be permitted to run at the higher 350 kph speed and perhaps in two years or so the trains will be permitted to run at 400 kph. Travelers will be able to zip between the two cities in just 4 hours aboard the G1. Currently, those bullet trains crawl across

If Elon Musk’s Boring company makes a New York City to Washington DC hyperloop tunnel, then it would be 226 miles long. This would be nearly three times longer than the current longest tunnel. Elon Musk tweeted out that he has been given verbal approval by someone in the US government to build a New York to DC hyperloop tunnel. Here is the wikipedia list of longest tunnels. The Gotthard Base Tunnel (GBT) is a railway tunnel in the heart of the Swiss Alps expected to open in 2016. With a route length of 57 km (35.4 mi) and the

DARPA created the Safe Genes program to gain a fundamental understanding of how gene editing technologies function; devise means to safely,A responsibly, and predictably harness them for beneficial ends; and address potential health and security concerns related to their accidental or intentional misuse. DARPA announced awards to seven teams that will pursue that mission, led by: The Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; Harvard Medical School; Massachusetts General Hospital; Massachusetts Institute of Technology; North Carolina State University; University of California, Berkeley; and University of California, Riverside. DARPA plans to invest $65 million in Safe Genes over the next four years

A 2011 NASA analysis showed that developing the Spacex Falcon rocket would have cost $4 billion in a cost plus contract versus the $443 million that Spacex actually spent. Musk said NASA could avoid unnecessary delays and costs by transitioning to a system of competitive awards for fixed-price contracts, in which companies are only paid when they meet “milestones” such as completing a flight test or satisfying NASA about the safety performance of a vehicle. Additionally, he said, at least two entities should compete during the development process. Musk talked about

Elon Musk said “To really get the public real fired up, I think we’ve got to have a base on the moon.” “Having some permanent presence on another heavenly body, which would be the kind of moon base, and then getting people to Mars and beyond — that’s the continuance of the dream of Apollo that I think people are really looking for,” Musk told NASA ISS program manager Kirk Shireman, who interviewed him onstage at the conference. Musk also said today that his tunneling company (The Boring Company) could aid in Mars colonization as well. Advanced tunneling technology will

Elon Musk has just received verbal government approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins. This would be 29 minutes from New York city center to Washington DC city center. Boring Comapny would put up to a dozen or more entry/exit elevators in each city. Just received verbal govt approval for The Boring Company to build an underground NY-Phil-Balt-DC Hyperloop. NY-DC in 29 mins. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 20, 2017 For sure. First set of tunnels are to alleviate greater LA urban congestion. Will start NY-DC in parallel. Then prob LA-SF and

A 2016 study that claims feeding cows small amounts of seaweed along with their normal diet of grass can reduce methane emissions by up to 99 per cent. The study, by a team of researchers at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, found in live trials with sheep that recorded methane levels fell between 50 – 70 per cent when they ate a diet including 2 per cent seaweed. The Australian study was originally based on the experience of a Canadian farmer who realised that his cattle that ate washed up seaweed were healthier and produced “rip roaring heats” with

Disneyland is planning two main Star Wars attractions, including one that will let guests pilot the famed Millennium Falcon, Disney Imagineers described the area as one that will essentially be large-scale immersive theater. The Millennium Falcon attraction will feature a lifesize re-creation of the ship. It appears to be nestled in a corner closer to the First Order-themed area of the land, will be tailored to individual guest experiences. Everyone will be in character. “If you’re flying the Millennium Falcon on a mission and you bring that ship in all banged up, the boss man might not be too happy,”

DARPA has awarded BAE Systems a $4.6 million contract for its Mobile Offboard Clandestine Communications and Approach (MOCCA) program. The MOCCA program’s goal is to enable submarines to detect other submerged vessels at greater distances, while minimizing the risk of counter-detection. Active sonar, which sends out a pulse of sound — that loud “PING” you hear in war movies — has a much longer range than passive sonar, which merely listens. But submarines generally rely on passive sensors, because the enemy can home in on active pulses. If the sub can launch an unmanned underwater vehicle with active sonar, though,

The first stage of test flights for the Russian PAK FA Stealth fighter(Perspective Airborne Complex of Front-line Aviation), or T-50, is planned to be over in December 2017, commander-in-chief of the Russian aerospace forces, Viktor Bondarev, said. On Tuesday. The prototypes currently under evaluation are fitted with a modified engine from the Su-27 and Su-30 fighter jets. It is a derivative of the Saturn AL-41F1S engine, called AL-41F1, which has also been installed on the upgraded Sukhoi Su-35S Flanker-E. The first T-50 (PAK FA) prototype fitted with the new engine was expected to perform its debut flight in the last

In 2018, Spacex will have nearly two thirds of the global commercial space launch market. Other orgs shd also develop reusable orbital rockets. If an airplane co had reusable airplanes, buying single use airplanes wd seem crazy. pic.twitter.com/OJotlGmPHt — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 13, 2017 Worth noting that Boeing/Lockheed ("Other US" on chart) get a billion dollar annual subsidy even if they launch nothing. SpaceX does not. https://t.co/Mi27ZnYLRJ — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 13, 2017

Elon Musk confirmed that SpaceX is developing a revised version of the overall 2016 Mars exploration architecture. The previous plan involved the development of giant reusable launch vehicles, called the Interplanetary Transport System. The new Mars plan figures out how to make the whole Mars system affordable. He will decrease the size of the vehicles somewhat. “You make it capable of doing Earth orbit activity as well as Mars activity,” he said. “Maybe we can pay for it by using it for Earth orbit activity. That’s one of the key elements of the new architecture.” Falcon Heavy and commercial crewed

A new 3D printer creates metal parts at commercial production speeds. Their SPEE3D printer has the potential to turn 3D metal printing, which currently is just making prototypes of parts, into a tool for manufacturing actual parts for use. It is up to 1000 times quicker than conventional 3D metal printers. The entrepreneurs behind an exciting new 3D metal printer are all about speed. Speed is what gives their product a unique edge, and it’s essential if they are to get their new technology to markets before competitors. CEO Byron Kennedy and chief technology officer, Steve Camilleri, established their SPEE3D

Space Startup Moon Express plans several robotic lunar missions over the next three years. The missions are initial lander and tiny rover missions, a polar mission to confirm water and then a sample return mission. They plan to scale up the sample return to mine for lunar ice to provide low cost rocket fuel and water to earth orbiting satellites. Expedition One: Lunar Scout the 1st Commercial Voyage to the Moon The Lunar Scout expedition will be the first commercial voyage to the Moon. This historic expedition will demonstrate the cost effectiveness of entrepreneurial approaches to space exploration, carrying a

What if you could improve your average running pace from 9:14 minutes/mile to 8:49 minutes/mile without weeks of training? Researchers at Harvard’s Wyss Institute and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) at Harvard University have demonstrated that a tethered soft exosuit can reduce the metabolic cost of running on a treadmill by 5.4 percent, bringing those dreams of high performance closer to reality. “Homo sapiens has evolved to become very good at distance running, but our results show that further improvements to this already extremely efficient system are possible,” says corresponding author Philippe Malcolm,

Researchers use expensive machinery to develop ways to harness DNA as a synthetic raw material to store large amounts of digital information outside of living cells. In 2016, a team at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and Harvard Medical School (HMS) led by Wyss core faculty member George Church built the first molecular recorder based on the CRISPR system. The recorder allows cells to acquire bits of chronologically provided, DNA-encoded information that generate a memory in a bacterium’s genome. The information is stored as an array of sequences in the CRISPR locus and can be recalled and used

There were problems with the calibration of a sensor on the first of several satellites launched to measure the height of the sea surface using radar. Adjusting the data to remove that error suggests that sea levels are indeed rising at faster rates each year. Nerem’s team calculated that the rate of sea-level rise increased from around 1.8 millimeters per year in 1993 to roughly 3.9 millimeters per year today as a result of global warming. In addition to the satellite calibration error, his analysis also takes into account other factors that have influenced sea-level rise in the last several

Moon Express has revealed their family of three lunar robot explorers. * MX-1 Scout * MX-2 dual stage Scout * MX-5 Discovery class The moon express MX-1scout is the lowest cost planetary spacecraft ever. It is designed for Scout Class exploration capabilities starting from low Earth orbit, MX-1 delivers flexibility and performance to revolutionize access to the Moon and cis-lunar space. MX-1 is environmentally green, using eco-friendly fuels, advanced carbon composites and silicates, powered by the Moon Express PECO rocket engine, for an unparalleled capability in space robotics. Available in orbiter, lander and deep space probe configurations. MC-1 SPECS ~5.8km/s