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The odds of China and the USA fighting a major war are very remote. There is the possibility over the next few decades of some small skirmish results from massive incompetence and miscalculation. There would be no benefit for a war for either side. The US decided not to fight Russia and China during the Korean War. Historical records from the Senate hearings on the Korean war show that the US decided against a wider Korean war because of 500,000 Russian troops, 85 Russian Submarines and Chinese military of that time. Omar Bradley, the chairman of the joint chiefs, flatly

The world’s best human Go player said playing Alphago felt like playing a Go God. Google Deepmin AlphaGo became famous last year by defeatinghigh-profile Go player Lee Sedol 4-1, but now it has won three out of three games agianst the best player of Go world champion Ke Jie. AlphaGo has become its own teacher, playing millions of high level training games against itself to continually improve. Deep mind is now publishing a special set of 50 AlphaGo vs AlphaGo games, played at full length time controls, which they believe contain many new and interesting ideas and strategies. Shi Yue,

The World Economic Forum said that employees should continue working until 70 in nations such as the UK, US, Japan and Canada. Since the 1950s, life expectancy has been increasing rapidly. On average, it has been increasing by one year, every five years. Babies born today in 2017 can expect to live to over 100, or in other words, they will live to see the year 2117. The normally quoted life expectancy numbers are based upon the ages of people who are dying now aka people who were born 75-85 years ago. This is used as an estimate for the

The US Air force 2018 budget request released Tuesday includes $25.4 billion for research, development, test and evaluation programs — an increase of $5 billion, or 26 percent, from the amount enacted for the current year, according to budget documents. While some of the funding would go toward top acquisition programs such as the KC-46A Pegasus tanker, F-35A Lightning II and B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber, some would also support advanced technology initiatives. For example, the “Next Gen Air Dominance” program aims to secure $295 million for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, up from just $21 million under the

A new technology called “Tactical Augmented Reality,” or TAR, is now helping Soldiers precisely locate their positions, as well as the locations of friends and foes, said Richard Nabors. It even enables them to see in the dark, all with a heads-up display device that looks like night-vision goggles, or NGV, he added. So in essence, TAR replaces NVG, GPS, plus it does much more. the eyepiece is connected wirelessly to a tablet the Soldiers wear on their waist and it’s wirelessly connected to a thermal site mounted on their rifle or carbine. If a Soldier is pointing his or

The Navy plans to buy a second Virginia-class attack submarine in Fiscal Year 2021 to keep the industrial base building two SSNs a year even during Columbia-class ballistic-missile submarine procurement, several Navy officials confirmed today. Due to concerns about overwhelming the two sub construction yards – Huntington Ingalls Industries’ Newport News Shipbuilding and General Dynamics Electric Boat – with too much new work, as the Block V boats are set to include a new Virginia Payload Module section around the same time SSBN construction will begin, the Navy previously planned to buy just one SSN in years it also bought

Scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a holographic imaging process that depicts the radiation of a Wi-Fi transmitter to generate three-dimensional images of the surrounding environment. Industrial facility operators could use this to track objects as they move through the production hall. Just like peering through a window, holograms project a seemingly three-dimensional image. While optical holograms require elaborate laser technology, generating holograms with the microwave radiation of a Wi-Fi transmitter requires merely one fixed and one movable antenna, as Dr. Friedenmann Reinhard and Philipp Holl report in the current issue of the renowned scientific journal

short of total genocide, no country regardless of its war-withal can hope to achieve a decisive victory with a “short war” in today’s world. As the US is discovering eight years, trillion dollars, and over 25,000 casualties later—in Afghanistan. That era of “decisive” short wars, especially in the Indo-Pak context, is largely over because of several reasons. The US could quickly and decisively beat up Panama. The US could take two weeks and utterly stomp on national militaries from any non-nuclear country below Iran, but it would leave a Syria or Libya situation. Decisive wars would need 10 to 20%

The U.S. Army´s 2nd Cavalry Regiment, stationed in Vilsek, Germany, is now evaluating Saab’s Barracuda Mobile Camouflage System (MCS) on their Stryker fighting vehicles. This is the first field evaluation of the MCS conducted by the U.S. Army. The MCS, from Saab’s business unit Barracuda, provides constant protection to vehicles when stationary, while on the move, and during combat operations. MCS is now being evaluated by the U.S. Army’s 2nd Cavalry Regiment during its operational training in Hohenfels, Germany. This training and evaluation, conducted alongside other NATO Allies is in support of Operation Atlantic Resolve and the Enhanced Forward Presence

Stock analyst believe Tesla will have an easier time selling the Model 3, the rumored Model Y and other future products than the Model X. Tesla could reach an 80% price increase and a stock price of $566 if they can sell 1 million vehicles in 2020, including the Model 3, Model S, Model X and Model Y, at an average selling price of about $52,000. $566 price also assumes 15 GWh of battery production sold at an average selling price of $500 per kWh and 800 MW of solar modules sold at a gross margin of 20%. All of

Boeing Company has been chosen by DARPA to build the XS-1 Spaceplane. DARPAh aims to build and fly the first of an entirely new class of hypersonic aircraft that would bolster national security by providing short-notice, low-cost access to space. The program aims to achieve a capability well out of reach today—launches to low Earth orbit in days, as compared to the months or years of preparation currently needed to get a single satellite on orbit. Success will depend upon significant advances in both technical capabilities and ground operations, but would revolutionize the Nation’s ability to recover from a catastrophic

The Airlander 10 combines technology from airplanes, helicopters and airships. It is designed to fly at altitudes of 6,100 meters for up to five days when manned. It is the largest aircraft currently flying. It is 92 meters (310 feet) long. It first successfully flew in 2012 as part of the US Army’s Long Endurance Multi-intelligence Vehicle program.

Moody’s Investors Service downgraded China’s credit ratings on Wednesday for the first time in nearly 30 years, saying it expects the financial strength of the economy will erode in coming years as growth slows and debt continues to rise. The one-notch downgrade in long-term local and foreign currency issuer ratings, to A1 from Aa3, comes as the Chinese government grapples with the challenges of rising financial risks stemming from years of credit-fueled stimulus. have stepped up efforts over the last several months to curb debt and housing risks, and a raft of recent data has signaled a cooling in the

To speed up infrastructure projects, officials are preparing to overhaul the federal environmental review and permitting system, which they blame for costly delays. Trump asked advisers whether they could collapse that process, which he said takes at least 10 years, down to four months. “But we’ll be satisfied with a year,” Trump said. “It won’t be more than a year.” The Trump administration, determined to overhaul and modernize the nation’s infrastructure, is drafting plans to privatize some public assets such as airports, bridges, highway rest stops and other facilities, according to top officials and advisers. In his proposed budget released

Elon Musk will likely reveal more details about the Interplanetary Transport system on the one year anniversary of the first announcement at the 2016 International Astronautical conference. IAC2017, hosted by the Space Industry Association of Australia (SIAA) will take place in Adelaide, Australia from 25 – 29 September 2017. @elonmusk Eta on the ITS/BFR/MCT architecture changes? — RITSpaceExploration (@RITSPEX) May 22, 2017 Robert Zubrin, Longtime Mars Colonization advocate, gave a Critique of the SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System. Zubrin was struck by many good and powerful ideas in the Musk plan. However, Musk’s plan assembled some of those good ideas in

The US Special Forces is building the TALOS (tactical assault light operator suit) exoskeleton. The suit has : * physiological and biological sensors * actuators that serve as the muscles to power the suit * processors and computers, * and a durable exoskeleton that offers support to the operator. * the helmet has thin, transparent glass with ballistic protection and a heads-up display It will provide protection against shrapnel and small arms fire, but could be targeted by an electromagnetic pulse weapon. Special force exoskeletons have need to operate under for shorter times than Army exoskeletons would. Powered knee joints

Researchers have shown that lymphatic vessels extend into the brain. It has major implications for a wide variety of brain diseases, including Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, stroke and traumatic brain injury. Researchers have identified two networks: the vessels that lead into and surround the brain, and those within the brain itself. The first is known as the lymphatic system for the brain, while the latter is called the glymphatic system. The “g” added to “lymphatic” refers to glia, the kind of neuron that makes up the lymphatic vessels in the brain. The glymphatic vessels carry cerebrospinal fluid and immune cells into

Deeplearning AI Alphago has defeated Ke Jie, the world’s number one human Go player, in the first game of a three-part match. Despite defeat, Ke’s strategy suggested that the 19-year-old Chinese prodigy has actually learned from AlphaGo’s often unorthodox approach. AlphaGo won by just half a point, the closest margin possible, but that’s characteristic of its playing style. The AI doesn’t appear to care about the margin of victory, instead choosing moves that it has determined are the most likely to lead to a win. The result was technically close, but AlphaGo looked like winning from a relatively early stage

By sifting through the genetics of nearly 80,000 people, researchers have uncovered 40 genes that may make certain people smarter. That brings the total number of suspected “intelligence genes” to 52. , The genetic variants identified account for about 5 percent of individual differences in intelligence. Their calculations show that the current results explain up to 4.8% of the variance in intelligence and that on average across the four samples there is a 1.9-fold increase in explained variance in comparison to the most recent GWAS on intelligence. Intelligence is associated with important economic and health-related life outcomes. Despite intelligence having

DARPA will soon select a company to build its robotic XS-1 space plane. After downselect, a critical design review shuold take place in 2018, and a series of flights could be made as early as 2020. The XS-1 space plane will consist of a reusable booster vehicle and an expendable upper stage. According to the DARPA website, the XS-1 program has four primary technical goals: 1. Fly 10 times in a 10-day period, to demonstrate efficient, aircraft-like access to space. 2. Fly fast enough to allow the use of a small (and therefore cheap) expendable upper stage. 3. Launch a

By 2027 to 2037 scientists will likely be able to create a baby from human skin cells that have been coaxed to grow into eggs and sperm and used to create embryos to implant in a womb. The process, in vitro gametogenesis, or I.V.G., so far has been used only in mice. But stem cell biologists say it is only a matter of time before it could be used in human reproduction — opening up mind-boggling possibilities. With I.V.G., two men could have a baby that was biologically related to both of them, by using skin cells from one to

The next human versus Artificial intelligence battle will be in the Starcraft video game. Starcraft is a space-war computer game. It is widely regarded as the ultimate challenge for AI programs due to its complexity and rapid pace. Expectations for a match-up between a professional StarCraft player and sophisticated AI ratcheted up last year after an AI program beat a highly ranked human player at Go, one of the world’s most difficult board games. At the time, a number of AI experts pointed to StarCraft as the next target for an AI-versus-man showdown. Among them: Demis Hassabis, the founder and

China Railway began construction on the 78.2km Beijing – Bazhou high-speed line, which will serve the city’s new international airport at Daxing, 46km south of the capital. The line will include four new stations, including an underground station at the airport, and is expected to cost Yuan 27.4bn ($US 4billion), including Yuan 800m for rolling stock. The Beijing – Daxing International Airport section will have a design speed of 250km/h, with the remainder of the line south to Bazhou being constructed for 350km/h operation. Construction began on the new airport in December 2014 and the project is due to be

Methane hydrates, also called “flammable ice”, hold vast reserves of natural gas. China has for the first time extracted gas from the ice-like methane hydrate from under the South China Sea considered key to future global energy supply. Many countries including the US and Japan are working on how to tap those reserves, but mining and extracting are extremely difficult. It is believed that there is as much as 10 times the amount of gas in methane hydrates than in shale for instance. The size of the oceanic methane clathrate reservoir is poorly known, and estimates of its size decreased

The U.S. has reached a $6 billion deal for Saudi Arabia to buy four Littoral Combat Ships made by Lockheed Martin in a package of major arms purchases as President Donald Trump travels to the kingdom, people familiar with the transaction said. Defense stocks took off on Monday after President Donald Trump signed a nearly $110 billion weapons deal with Saudi Arabia. The deal will be worth $350 billion over 10 years.

Professor Zaza, University of Georgia, hase extended the idea of Freeman Dyson and has shown that a supercivilization has to use ring-like megastructures around pulsars instead of a spherical shell. He reexamined the same problem in the observational context and he shows that facilities of modern IR telescopes (VLTI and WISE) might efficiently monitor the nearby zone of the solar system and search for the IR Dyson-rings up to distances of the order of 0.2kpc, corresponding to the current highest achievable angular resolution, 0.001mas. In this case the total number of pulsars in the observationally reachable area is about 64

UBS analysts tore down the Chevy Bolt, the world’s first mass-market electric vehicle (EV) with a range well above 200 miles. They gained key insights to understanding the content and profitability of EVs, especially Tesla’s upcoming Model 3. Their findings expand beyond the autos industry to include technology, capital goods, chemicals and commodities. Tesla to lose $2,800 on entry-level versions of its soon to be introduced Model 3 but think customers will opt for extra cost options that will raise the average selling price to $41,000 — $6,000 more than the base price. Tesla will be able to break even

Computational models and simulations can be enormously helpful when designing complex military systems such as new aerospace vehicles and engines, reducing development costs and times. However, realistic, high-fidelity models require enormous amounts of computing power in order to be able to accommodate all of the different factors that may affect predictive accuracy. To mitigate this computational cost, researchers often use simplified models, but these models contain assumptions, ambiguities, incomplete information, and inputs that vary unpredictably. This problem is exacerbated when these uncertainties interact with each other in a complex system. As a result, engineers typically rely on extensive testing to

Stanford University researchers funded by DARPA’s Neuro Function, Activity, Structure, and Technology (Neuro-FAST) program have developed new optical imaging and analysis techniques that allowed them to decode the neural activity of awake mice engaged in an adaptive, decision-making task. The findings of the Stanford team, made in collaboration with researchers at the California Institute of Technology and detailed this week in the journal Neuron, give researchers new insight into how the mammalian brain coordinates neural activity to complete voluntary behaviors. The team’s overall results advance DARPA’s goal of building a knowledge base and toolkit with which the neurotechnology community can

Brillouin Energy has been working on low energy nuclear reactions aka cold fusion aka Controlled Electron Capture Reaction (CECR) process for many years. Nextbigfuture has covered them for many years. In 2015, Nextbigfuture covered what a 35 page third party analysis of Brillouin energy systems. There has been some work with Brillouin and SRI. I have not seen a final report from SRI where there was any definitive confirmation. There has been no commercial product yet. There has been many papers from what appears to be sober researchers trying to determine what is happening and if beyond-chemical energy is being

For years, astronomer Tabetha Boyajian and her colleagues have been waiting for the mysterious light dips to happen at Tabby’s star so that they could collect more data and try to get to the bottom of the mystery. The star is finally dimming by about 1% per day for the last two days. It has dimmed 2% so far and could continue to dim. One of the proposed possibilities for the dimming had been an alien Dyson swarm. ALERT:@tsboyajian's star is dipping This is not a drill. Astro tweeps on telescopes in the next 48 hours: spectra please! — Jason

. But less than four months after Trump took office, Mattis said the operational and tactical difference has been clear.Two significant changes resulted from President Trump’s review of our findings.

Supply chain optimization software vendor ServicePower can handle optimizations problems that need to analyze up to 1 million variables. Each variable is represented by a virtual Qubit. They simulate their quantum annealing using parallelization on standard server farms using normal computer hardward to make up for the slower speed compared to D-Wave’s specialized quantum hardware. DWave’s quantum hardware currently has 2048 qubits which is unable to handle the larger simultaneous optimizations. Dwave has been doubling the qubits every year. ServicePower is also adapting the algorithm to other NP-Hard problems in the financial sector, machine learning, simulations of molecular interactions, protein

The Google IO keynote discussed on device AI. It is at about 1:22 in the video of the Keynote. – Google is making tensorflow lite (open source machine learning) to put AI onto devices – It will have new hardware acceleration of AI for android smartphones and tablets. DSPs designed for neural network inference and training – On device next generation speech processing, visual search and augmented reality.

The Air Force Research Lab are working on a lighter Mother of All bombs which still has similar explosive power. The Advanced Ordnance Technologies program will make bombs structured to be lighter by using 3D-printed reconstructed loads within the bomb instead of in the casing — plus distributed blast yields, said Dr. John Corley, the core technical competency lead for ordnance sciences at AFRL. They will also use 3D printing for distributed fusing for more survivable bombs and greater options and control for the explosions. Separating the fuse from the case could make the bomb more flexible of when it

The US Navy railgun program is making great technical progress according to the Office of Naval Research program manager Tom Boucher. The Navy is now working towards installing railguns at permanent land-based test sites which would provide more and better data for fewer dollars than an ad hoc installation aboard a repurposed fast transport. New 32-megajoule railguns have been installed and fired in Virginia and New Mexico. White Sands (New Mexico) tests the long-range performance of the projectile, Dahlgren (Virginia) will work on the weapon itself. Previous test weapons were only firing a few times per day. The Dahlgren team

Nextbigfuture talked to an attendee of 2017 Google IO and he reported that Google will be putting mini versions of the second generation TPU (tensor processing unit) into all new google cellphones. The TPU is optimized for artificial intelligence and deep learning. The new TPU has 180 teraflops of processing power. It was not revealed how powerful the mini versions would be but they would need to use less power and no cooling. The server versions use about 80 watts of power and have cooling units that were very tall.

China’s Navy will have a larger number of ships and submarines than the US Navy in 2030. China’s navy will be approaching 500 ships by 2030 and the US Navy will have between 300 and 350 depending upon which budgets get adopted. China’s navy will be a Blue-Water Naval Power by 2030: China is rapidly transforming itself from a continental power with a focus on its near seas to a great maritime power with a two-ocean focus. The PLAN is looking beyond the san hai – the Yellow Sea, South China Sea, and East China Sea – and out toward

1. India has approved the construction of ten indigenously designed pressurised heavy water reactors (PHWR). India approved the construction of ten 700 MWe units in a “significant decision to fast-track India’s domestic nuclear power program”. The Cabinet’s announcement did not give any timeline or locations for the new plants, but said the project would result in a “significant augmentation” of the country’s nuclear generation capacity. India has 6780 MWe of installed nuclear capacity from 22 operational reactors with another 6700 MWe expected to come on stream over the next five years, the cabinet noted. It said the ten new units

1. Chandra X-ray space telescope blog – Observatories Combine to Crack Open the Crab Nebula Astronomers have produced a highly detailed image of the Crab Nebula, by combining data from telescopes spanning nearly the entire breadth of the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio waves seen by the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) to the powerful X-ray glow as seen by the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory. And, in between, the Hubble Space Telescope’s crisp visible-light view and the infrared perspective of the Spitzer Space Telescope. The Crab Nebula, the result of a bright supernova explosion seen by Chinese and other

US Special Ops is looking to put Captain America Supersoldiers into HALO exoskeleton Armor. Amendment 15 of their BAA for Advancement of Technologies for Use by Special Operations Forces talks about wanting to enhance soldier performance with drugs and more. Innovative solutions that will optimize human performance, reduce recovery time, and increase peak performance sustainability, including increased endurance, strength, energy, agility, enhanced senses, provide restorative effects of sleep, and enhance tolerance to environmental extremes. The technologies can be demonstrated through studies that provide proof of concepts or through solutions demonstrated in humans that quantify operational performance improvements. Technologies should not

Star Trek Discovery is set ten years before the first Kirk and Spock space mission. The CBS All Access Original Series arrives this Fall. Set roughly ten years before the events of the original Star Trek, the series follows the crew of the USS Discovery as they discover new worlds and civilizations, while exploring the franchise’s signature contemporary themes. The season-long storyline revolves around “an incident and an event in Star Trek history that’s been talked about but never been explored From Emmy Award-winning executive producer and creator Seth MacFarlane (FAMILY GUY, “Ted”) and directed by Jon Favreau (“The Jungle

The cheapest advertised price to launch people to LEO is a bit over $26 million/seat on a Falcon 9/Dragon which includes a stay at a Bigelow space station , also in development. Current estimates are that space colonists would need about 17 tons per person for their share of space station habitat. The cheapest advertised price today for delivering mass to orbit is the Falcon Heavy, in development, at $90 million for 53 tons to LEO , or $1.7 million per ton. For 17 tons that is about $29 million. Combining these two costs gives us (rounding up)

Dong Energy has built over 1000 large offshore wind turbines. They will be building new taller and bigger wind turbines. They will go to 195 meters tall and 8 Megawatts and larger. In the United States today, a loose convention draws the lower limit for a skyscraper building at 150 meters. An extremely tall skyscraper, particularly one that is taller than 300 meters (1,000 ft), is sometimes colloquially referred to as a supertall. Hotels tend to have one floor every 3.1 meters and office buildings one floor every 3.9 meters. A 195 meter hotel would have about 63 floors. Dong

Japan is restarting unit 4 of its Takahama nuclear power plant in Fukui prefecture. The reactor – which together with unit 3 has been offline since March 2016 – is expected to re-enter commercial operation next month. The company said the 830 MWe (net) pressurised water reactor (PWR) was restarted at 3.00pm today and is expected to achieve criticality tomorrow. Kansai plans to resume electricity generation at Takahama 4 and reconnect it to the grid on 22 May “as the final stage of the periodic outage inspection following various types of tests”. It added that “full-scale operation” of the unit