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Our World in data shows the trends in advances against extreme poverty and other gains. Our World in Data tracks population, health, energy, food and other statistics.

Boeing and SpaceX have indicated that they are on track to hit target launch dates in 2018. A July 20 report released by NASA shows that SpaceX is still targeting an unmanned test flight in February 2018 and a crewed flight in June 2018, and Boeing is aiming to launch an unmanned test flight in June 2018 and a crewed flight in August 2018. Boeing also plans to conduct pad abort tests in early 2018. SpaceX plans to launch its Dragon 2 on an upgraded version of the Falcon 9 rocket known as Block 5, currently in development. The Block

This month a new high-speed railway line began operating between Paris and Bordeaux—reducing travel time from three hours twenty-five minutes to two hours and four minutes. This makes day trips between cities practical, and will further open up southwest France to visitors. Although there are currently multiple daily flights between cities, travel time between city centers and outlying airports can take between 30 and 45 minutes, making the train journey a more rapid alternative to flight. It took five years of serious civil engineering efforts, and $9.1 billion (7.8 billion Euros) to lay these tracks and infrastructure across 117 communities

Spacex will launch a 5400 kilogram SES-11 satellite into geosynchronous orbit using a previously used first stage. Launching Dragons to low Earth orbit (LEO) makes for a considerably cooler and less damaging recovery for Falcon 9 first stages, likely leading to an easier refurbishment process. Spacex previously launched SES-10 with a reused first stage that launched SpaceX’s CRS-8 mission.

Tesla will only build the $49,000 310 mile range Tesla Model 3 with upgraded interior version until at least November. The base $35,000 Model 3 will not be available until sometime in 2018. A $5,000 package upgrades the interior to something more in keeping with luxury car standards. It costs another $1,500 if you want 19″ wheels instead of the standard 18″ wheels, $1,000 for a color other than black, and $5,000 to activate Autopilot. An extra $3,000 will unlock “full self-driving” capabilities — once regulators give the green light. A fully loaded Model 3 would cost nearly $60,000 today.

Stealth, or aircraft signature reduction, is a potent and viable military capability in modern combat, and will remain so well into the future. It is not, however, an all or nothing capability, as some critiques have suggested. Investments in stealth technology significantly improve the ability of US aircraft to penetrate enemy air defenses and create significant costs for adversaries who attempt to defend against this technology. In certain environments, stealth may have the ability to penetrate with little support. However, stealth is most effective when employed in concert with other aircraft, tactics, and capabilities. Adding stealth to a multicapability force

A drug commonly used to treat diabetes may have disease-modifying potential to treat Parkinson’s disease, a new UCL-led study suggests, paving the way for further research to define its efficacy and safety. The study, published in The Lancet and funded by The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research (MJFF), found that people with Parkinson’s who injected themselves each week with exenatide for one year performed better in movement (motor) tests than those who injected a placebo. “This is a very promising finding, as the drug holds potential to affect the course of the disease itself, and not merely the

IBM recently announced one with 16 qubits—the components needed to build a quantum computer—and Google is gunning for around 50 qubits this year. Rigetti has made chips with 8 qubits; it says the new fab will speed up the experimentation needed to increase that number. Rigetti has developed a highly coherent and scalable quantum integrated circuit architecture. Two key ingredients are a new fab process for superconducting through-silicon vias, and a low-temperature bonding process for 3D integration. As part of a 3D quantum integrated circuit architecture, a cap chip forms the upper half of an enclosure that provides isolation, increases

A new wearable device hopes to deliver supplies to US Marines and soldiers on demand, instead of leaving members of the armed forces to carry supplies on their back. The PCARD, or personal combat assistant and reporting device, has been created by Marine staff sergeant Alexander Long and allows those is the field to tap into the likes of food, water and ammunition in real time. The device itself is smaller than a standard smartphone, with each individual fire team member able to submit a request when supplies are running low. This is then conveyed to the squad leader, who

Supercapacitors have long been far faster charging than batteries but usually have 40 times less energy density (5 watt hours instead of 200 watt hours) compared to batteries. There are new supercapacitors being commercialized with 60 watt hours of energy density and 100 watt hour energy density is being reported in lab results. Yunasko is commercializing a 40 watt hour per kilogram hybrid battery-supercapacitor. The University of Surrey has reported contact lens polymer materials offering supercapacitors that are between 1,000-10,000 times more powerful than existing supercapacitors. There are also research on graphene based supercapacitors which also are promising to beat

General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems (GA-EMS) announced today that its new 10 Mega Joule (MJ) medium range multi-mission railgun system has completed final assembly and factory acceptance test in preparation for transport to Dugway Proving Ground in Utah to begin testing. The 10 MJ railgun system has been designed and built by GA-EMS to provide multi-mission, multi-domain capability with greater flexibility and a smaller footprint for ship, land and mobile platforms. “The 10 MJ railgun system has our third generation railgun launcher, and includes our fifth generation pulsed power system and a new mounting system that allows the launcher to elevate

The Long Range stand off (LRSO) nuclear cruise missile program has been funded since 2013 and has received about $500 million in funding. The program will eventually cost $15-30 billion. There have been calls to cancel it. The LRSO would have a variable-yield weapon using a modified W80 warhead. The Air Force wishes to procure: 1,000–1,100 LRSO. That looks like a significant increase in the number of air-launched cruise missiles available for bomber missions. The Department of Energy is producing a new variant of the B61 gravity bomb that will be highly accurate and have a variable yield of 0.3

Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative is part and parcel of President Xi Jinping’s strategy to solidify China’s emergence as a great economic and military power, a leading expert on Asian economies said Wednesday. In May, 2017, China’s President Xi Jinping has pledged $124 billion (£96bn) for the scheme, known as the Belt and Road initiative. China will funnel an additional RMB 100 billion ($14.5 billion) into the Silk Road Fund, while the China Development Bank and Export-Import Bank will set up new lending schemes of 250 billion ($36.2 billion) and RMB 130 billion ($18.8 billion), respectively, for Belt and Road

Transatomic Power Corporation has been awarded a second voucher to complete work with the Argonne National Laboratory, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced last month. The voucher, awarded through the DOE’s Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear (GAIN) initiative, will experimentally verify the physical properties of the fuel salt for Transatomic’s molten salt reactor technology, and will be conducted at the Argonne National Laboratory. This is the second year that GAIN has awarded vouchers to support advanced nuclear technology, and builds on successful outcomes from the program’s inaugural round. Last year, Transatomic was awarded a voucher for work at

Productivity slowdowns are not unusual in the United States; its economy has long featured alternating periods of faster and slower productivity growth. Labor productivity growth in the business sector since 1889 fluctuated between periods of more and less rapid growth. This article discusses how economic growth will be improving over the next decade or two and how less stupid policy could make it even better. Throughout these periods of faster and slower growth, expectations for the economy’s long-run prospects often turned pessimistic not long before a resurgence. Harvard professor Alvin Hansen famously predicted in 1938 that the US economy was

Today’s 276 ship US Navy could defeat the Reagan era Navy of twice its size in naval battle. The Reagan era Navywas twice the size of the current navy and had 594 ships. Trends in US military spending that show that the large Reagan army, navy and airforce was more affordable even when adjusted to constant dollars. Bryan McGrath is a retired naval officer and he makes the case thinking about the size and shape of the Navy through the primary lens of capability virtually ignores what the Navy spends the overwhelming amount of its time doing, which is acting

Currently Picoprojectors like Moto Insta-Share Projector cost about $200-300 but a new Texas Instrument DLP solution released today offers a $19.99 DMD chip plus matching controller, power management, and driver chips. The evaluation module, priced at $99, is the most affordable projection display EVM released to date, Alvarez said. The DMD chip, with support chips and LED engine, targets applications in the 20- to 30-lumen range. The chip undercuts the price of the previous TI generation’s least expensive model by three times and should enable consumer applications to break the $100 price barrier by Christmas 2017. This opens the door

A total of ten Japanese nuclear power reactors are likely to have been restarted by the end of March 2019, according to the latest estimate by the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan (IEEJ). These restarts will help improve the country’s economy, energy security and environment. So far five Japanese reactors – Sendai units 1 and 2; Takahama units 3 and 4; and Ikata unit 3 – have been restarted under new safety regulations. The IEEJ notes another seven units have already met these standards and are being prepared for restart. The organization estimates that if restarts take place according to

A brand-new ICBM may cost the nation more than $85 billion, but keeping the geriatric Minuteman will cost even more. Boeing would rather build you an all-new missile. That’s what the Air Force calls the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent. Lockheed and Northrop are also competing. GBSD would get you better performance, he said, including against modern, precision-guided missile defenses, which didn’t exist when the Minuteman was designed. Even sticking with low-risk, proven technology, it would be decades more advanced than Minuteman. The new missile would also feature a modular, plug-and-plug design – known as open architecture – that would make replacing

Synthetic Genomics Inc. (SGI) has a cartful of equipment which they call a biological teleporter. The equipment can print out the entire DNA for a virus or a bacteria in a completely automated process. SGI’s BioXP 3200, a commercial DNA printer, forms the heart of the digital-to-biological converter. When Gibson, sitting in his office, sends a message to the converter, it begins its work using pre-loaded chemicals. He could just as easily send such a message from anywhere. In late May, Gibson’s team disclosed how they’d used the device to create DNA, RNA, proteins, and viruses “in an automated fashion

Scientists report for the first time the ability to both deep freeze and reanimate zebrafish embryos. The method, appearing in the journal ACS Nano, could potentially be used to bank larger aquatic and other vertebrate oocytes and embryos, too, for a life in the future. In the trials, only about 10 percent of the embryos survived to 24 hours. At this point, survivors started squirming and wiggling as their hearts, eyes, and nervous systems developed, proving their viability, yet none survived to day five, the final time point the team used. The advance is important for the field of genetics,

In 1928, physicist Paul Dirac made the stunning prediction that every fundamental particle in the universe has an antiparticle – its identical twin but with opposite charge. In 1937, another brilliant physicist, Ettore Majorana, introduced a new twist: He predicted that in the class of particles known as fermions, which includes the proton, neutron, electron, neutrino and quark, there should be particles that are their own antiparticles. Stanford scientists have found the first firm evidence of such a Majorana fermion. It was discovered in a series of lab experiments on exotic materials at the University of California in collaboration with

IBM Research scientists have achieved a new world record in tape storage – their fifth since 2006. The new record of 201 Gb/in2 (gigabits per square inch) in areal density was achieved on a prototype sputtered magnetic tape developed by Sony Storage Media Solutions. This new record areal recording density is more than 20 times the areal density used in current state of the art commercial tape drives such as the IBM TS1155 enterprise tape drive, and it enables the potential to record up to about 330 terabytes (TB) of uncompressed data* on a single tape cartridge that would fit

On Saturday, July 29 an exhausted and adrenaline-fueled team from Hyperloop One celebrated another significant milestone, completing the second phase of testing our high-speed Hyperloop pod inside our DevLoop tube north of Las Vegas. By the last run, after almost a week of trials, we had logged more time working with full-scale Hyperloop technology than anyone on the planet. Farther and faster was our mantra for this phase, and our XP-1 test pod went 4.5 times farther and three times faster than our initial runs in May. The XP-1 went as fast as 310 km per hour (190 mph) and

Researchers have achieved a leap forward in graphene production, from a technique that synthesizes a few square centimeters of single-crystal graphene in a couple of hours, to an optimized method that allows the creation of an almost-perfect (over 99.9 percent aligned) 5 × 50 cm2 single-crystal graphene in just 20 minutes. The low production costs, comparable to commercially available lower quality polycrystalline graphene films, could expand its usability. The method is expected to stimulate further fundamental work on graphene and related materials, including large scale folding of graphene sheets, similar to paper, creating origami-like or kirigami-like shapes, which could be

Boeing modernized its 1980s-era Avenger air defense system to answer the Army’s call to fill its Short-range Air Defense gap within the maneuver force. The Avenger first came off the production line at Boeing in 1987 and is known for defending the National Capitol Region. The old systems used Stinger missiles, which are passive infrared munitions. Boeing has fielded 1,100 systems to the U.S. and other nations. There are only four Avenger batteries in the active component – the rest resident in the reserve forces. The Army is expecting to fight in the future in highly contested and congested environments

NASA is currently looking for a Planetary Protection Officer. This person will have secret security clearance to ensure alien life, or “organic-constituent and biological contamination” does npt make it’s way back in a space ship. This person will be responsible for the leadership of NASA’s planetary protection capability, maintenance of planetary protection policies, and oversight of their implementation by NASAs space flight missions. There will be increased public and private sample return missions from the moon, Mars, asteroids and eventually deep space mission like Europa.

NASA scientists are excited about the upcoming close flyby of a small asteroid and plan to use its upcoming October close approach to Earth as an opportunity not only for science, but to test NASA’s network of observatories and scientists who work with planetary defense. The target of all this attention is asteroid 2012 TC4 — a small asteroid estimated to be between 30 and 100 feet (10 and 30 meters) in size. On Oct. 12, TC4 will safely fly past Earth. Even though scientists cannot yet predict exactly how close it will approach, they are certain it will come

The World Economic Forum reported that China had 4.7 million recent STEM ( science, technology, engineering, and math) graduates in 2016. India, another academic powerhouse, had 2.6 million new STEM graduates last year while the U.S. had 568,000. Chinese STEM graduates outnumber US STEM grads 8.2 to 1. The gap is going to become even wider. Even modest predictions see the number of 25 to 34-year-old graduates in China rising by a further 300% by 2030, compared with an increase of around 30% expected in Europe and the United States. By 2030, China and India could account for more than

The House Energy and Commerce committee Thursday advanced legislation on a 54-0 vote that would begin the process of changing regulations to allow cars and trucks that operate without human drivers. Similar legislation is being developed in the Senate with rare bipartisan support, an effort supported by automakers such as Ford Motor Co. and Tesla Inc. as well as technology firms Alphabet Inc., Lyft Inc. and others that are developing the vehicles. Labor unions are urging a slowdown as lawmakers fast track legislation to allow self-driving vehicles on the road, a potential boon to some union jobs and an existential

Proposals using large light sails like the Starshot Breakthrough, require mirrors with lateral sizes of 4 × 4 m2, thicknesses of 0.05 lambda, reflectivities of 90 %, ppm level optical absorption and a total mass of only 1 gram. Photonics Crystal are designed with a lattice of holes which remove about 30 % of the mass of the membrane. Additionally, they are made of LPCVD SiN which has an imaginary refractive index of about 1.0E-6 at 1064 nm and has been shown to withstand high laser powers of around 250 gigaWatt per square meter – nearly 2 orders of magnitude

La Machine created a giant robot spider and a giant robot dragon and they battled on the streets of Ottawa, Canada Long Ma, the half-dragon / half-horse creature, stands at 36 feet high, weighs 45 tons, breathes smoke and fire, and can trot, gallop, rear up, and lie down. Kumo, the spider, weighs 40 tons, sprays water, and takes 16 people to control all its intricate movements. The Ottawa performance was La Machine’s debut in North America. LA MACHINE is a street theatre company founded in 1999 and leaded by François Delarozière. Its conception is thanks to artists, technicians and

Yesterday, AMD revealed the Project 47 supercomputer was powered by 20 AMD EPYC 7601 processors and 80 Radeon Instinct GPUs. It is a petaFLOP supercomputer in a rack. Other hardware included 10TB of Samsung memory and 20 Mellanox 100G cards (and 1 switch). Project 47 is capable of 1 PetaFLOP of single-precision compute performance or 2 PetaFLOPS of half-precision. Project 47 is built around the Inventec P47. The P47 is a 2U parallel computing platform designed for graphics virtualization and machine intelligence applications. A single rack of Inventec P47 systems is all that was necessary to achieve 1 PetaFLOP, and

Russia’s Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA fifth-generation stealth fighter has been given the designation Su-57 as it nears production. Moscow will only buy 12 Su-57 aircraft, which are expected to be delivered in 2019. The Russian air force will buy few than 60 of the initial version of the Su-57 and will wait to buy about 160 upgraded stealth fighters around 2025. The upgraded version will have a far better engine and improved stealth. The new engine will be about 20-30% more powerful. The new engine is expected to make its first flight installed onboard the PAK-FA in the fourth quarter of

General Mark Milley made clear he was looking for a “breakthrough,” not incremental evolution for the US Army’s next tank. This means the new tank will take a long time and have a lot of development costs. * Active Protection Systems” – electronic jammers and mini-missiles to stop incoming anti-tank weapons *– reduced crews with automated turrets found on Russia’s new Russian T-14 Armata * the real sort of holy grail of technologies is new material for armor itself. A lot lighter in weight but gives you the same armor protection, that would be a real significant breakthrough. He also

Russia’s most advanced Armata T14 main battle tank may become operational in the Russian Army in 2019, according to Deputy Defense Minister Yuri Borisov. The Armata is the heavy tank like battle chasis which will be used as the basis for the T14 tank, heavy flame throwers and missile systems. After Uralvagonzavod defense manufacturer delivers the tank, the Defense Ministry will check it for compliance with its requirements and make a decision. The Armata is a heavyweight tracked standardized combat platform, which serves as the basis for developing the main battle tank, an infantry fighting vehicle, an armored personnel carrier

China revealed new military equipment at the PLA’s (army’s) 90th birthday parade on Sunday and half was shown for the first time. All of it was indigenously made, according to the Ministry of Defense. Chengdu J-20 fighterB China’s most advanced stealth fighter into service in March, and three of the aircraft made a flyover at the parade. The twin-engine fighter, designed by Chengdu Aerospace Corporation, has a longer range and can carry more fuel and weapons than the US F-22 or F-35. However, its made-in-China WS-15 engines are are thought to Be inferior to Western ones. DF-31AG missile The road-mobile

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