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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elon Musk says traffic jams will be eliminated with multi-level tunnel networks for cars. Musk spends only two or three percent of his time to the Boring company. It is a hobby. It is nevertheless making good progress. A snail can currently travel 14 times faster than a tunnel boring machine and a preliminary goal will be for the Boring Company tunneling machine to catch up to the snail.

Elon Musk showed a teaser image for Telsa’s forthcoming electric semi truck. Elon will have a full reveal of the electric semi truck in September. The electric tucks is also self-driving. It is powerful enough to tow a regular big rig up a hill and it handles like a sports car.

Morgan Stanley and Michael Pettis differ on what China’s sustainable economic growth rate is over the next ten to fifteen years China. Morgan Stanley, however, proposes that China can manage to grow at an average annual rate above 5 percent for the next ten years, which suggests that they think this sustainable growth rate today is around 6 percent or a little less. Pettis thinks China is unlikely to manage growth rates above 3 percent on average, and probably much lower. Key Metrics for China’s future economic growth * China’s Debt to GDP is about 260% now – China can

Enzinc is working with the US Navy to develop a better and safer battery. Enzinc and the Navy Research lab have a unique three-dimensional (3D) zinc electrode. The research aims to bring a safer, more affordable rechargeable battery to market for electric vehicles, ebikes, and home and grid energy storage.“This breakthrough in rechargeable battery technology means that zinc has the potential to displace lithium because it is a safer, more affordable, and more readily available material,” said President and CEO of EnZinc, Michael Burz. “Large battery-powered electronics from electric vehicles to home energy storage will be able to be powered

Cascading F-35 testing delays could cost the Department of Defense (DOD) over a billion dollars more than currently budgeted to complete development of the F-35 baseline program. Because of problems with the mission systems software, known as Block 3F, program officials optimistically estimate that the program will need an additional 5 months to complete developmental testing. According to best practices, credible estimates are rooted in historical data. The program’s projections are based on anticipated test point achievements and not historical data. GAO’s analysis—based on historical F-35 flight test data—indicates that developmental testing could take an additional 12 months. These delays

Large building structures built could be produced faster and less expensively than traditional construction methods allow using a new MIT 3d printing system. A building could also be completely customized to the needs of a particular site and the desires of its maker. Even the internal structure could be modified in new ways; different materials could be incorporated as the process goes along, and material density could be varied to provide optimum combinations of strength, insulation, or other properties. Ultimately, the researchers say, this approach could enable the design and construction of new kinds of buildings that would not be

The UK’s newest fusion reactor has been turned on for the first time and has officially achieved first plasma. The reactor aims to produce a record-breaking plasma temperature of 100 million degrees for a privately-funded venture. This is seven times hotter than the centre of the Sun and the temperature necessary for controlled fusion. Oxford, England-based Tokamak Energy said today that with its ST40 reactor “up and running”, the next steps are to complete the commissioning and installation of the full set of magnetic coils which are crucial to reaching the temperatures required for fusion. This will allow the ST40

Stephen Helms Tillery wants to make you smarter — by electrically stimulating your brain. The Arizona State University neuroscientist has been awarded funding for a four-year study to develop a method of brain stimulation that may boost learning and retention up to 30 percent. The money comes from the Army’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is the bureau behind technology including GPS, the internet, stealth tech and drones. The brain will be stimulated by a method called Transdermal Electrical Neuromodulation so it learns more quickly, more efficiently and with increased recall. Certain neuromodulators — chemicals that affect transmission between

There are 200 million electric bicycles ridden today and most are in China. China has had annual sales of about 30 million bikes sold for several years but about 25 million are replacements for worn out bikes. Growth exists, but it has slowed greatly. The Electric Bike Worldwide Report predicts that the electric bike industry is poised to grow to 2 billion by 2050. Eventually 84 million e-bikes could be sold each year. China is the world’s largest manufacturer of bicycles and electric vehicles, with sales of up to 80,000,000 units, accounting for 80% of global turnover. Today some 700

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), materials offer several key features not available in graphene and are emerging as next-generation semiconductors. TMDs could realize topological superconductivity and thus provide a platform for quantum computing. “Our proposal is very realistic – that’s why it’s exciting,” Kim said of her group’s research. “We have a theoretical strategy to materialize a topological superconductor … and that will be a step toward building a quantum computer. The Cornell group’s proposal: The TMDs’ unusual properties favor two topological superconducting states, which, if experimentally confirmed, will open up possibilities for manipulating topological superconductors at temperatures near absolute zero.

Researchers have made a seaweed-derived material to help boost the performance of superconductors, lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells. Seaweed is an abundant algae that grows easily in salt water. While Yang was at Griffith University in Australia, he worked with colleagues at Qingdao University and at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the U.S. to make porous carbon nanofibers from seaweed extract. Chelating, or binding, metal ions such as cobalt to the alginate molecules resulted in nanofibers with an “egg-box” structure, with alginate units enveloping the metal ions. This architecture is key to the material’s stability and controllable synthesis, Yang says.

3D printers are interesting and there is some utility for the Maker movement in the USA but they are massively inferior to China’s manufacturing hubs. There is a new $120,000 3D printer furnace for desktop metal parts that are lower cost. It is 100 times faster than laser metal sintering machines. China’s manufacturing hubs are an entire ecosystem of suppliers, repair technicians, jobbers, shipping and delivery services, etc. To illustrate what makes Shenzhen so unique, he shared a story at the 2013 Shanghai Maker Carnival: “I’m in my apartment, in Huaqiangbei, and I get a call early in the morning.

A startup will soon launch game changing 3-D printers that can fabricate metal parts cheaply and quickly enough to make the technology practical for widespread use in product design and manufacturing. The company, Desktop Metal, has raised nearly $100 million from leading venture capital firms and the venture units of such companies as General Electric, BMW, and Alphabet. The founders include four prominent MIT professors, including the head of the school’s department of materials science and Emanuel Sachs, who filed one of the original patents on 3-D printing in 1989. Though it is possible to 3-D-print metals, doing so is

A paper suggests that habitable zone waterworlds like Earth would usually have no land or very little land. This would be another factor that would make technological civilizations more rare. On a purely statistical basis, one naïvely expects to find a highly asymmetric division of land and ocean surface areas. A natural explanation for the Earth’s equitably partitioned surface is an evolutionary selection effect. We have highlighted two mechanisms that could be responsible for driving this selection effect. First of all, planets with highly asymmetric surfaces (desert worlds or waterworlds) are likely to produce intelligent land-based species at a much

Ontario Power Generation plans to fill a predicted supply gap in the 2030s with new nuclear capacity and the utility is collaborating with Saskatchewan on the potential for a Pan-Canadian fleet of Small Modular Reactors, Nicolle Butcher, OPG’s Vice President of Strategy and Acquisitions, said. OPG, the province’s largest power generator, replaced coal-fired generation with renewable energy, backstopped by gas-fired capacity and life extensions of 6.6 GW of large-scale nuclear capacity. The utility plans to close its 3.1 GW Pickering plant in 2024 and new carbon-free power capacity will be needed to ensure Ontario meets its objective of cutting

Sponsored post. There’s a new metal in town, and it’s bigger than lithium—and hotter than any other commodity on the market right now. Supply is fantastically tight and set to get phenomenally tighter. Analysts at Macquarie Research project deficits of 885 tonnes of this resource next year, 3,205 in 2019 and 5,340 in 2020. That’s a deficit increase of 503 percent. More importantly, it’s a massive opportunity for first-in investors. The panic over future supply has already broken out. The metal is cobalt, and hedge funds are already hoarding the physical metal to gain exposure, with Swiss-based Pala Investments and

Russian news agencies have reported a successful firing test of the mach 8 hypersonic Zircon missile. India has recently been test-firing new versions of the medium-range supersonic Brahmos missile, which is a joint venture between India and Russia and is based on the P-800 Onix, one of several supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles in service with the Russian Navy. With Russian help, India is developing a hypersonic Brahmos II version, which could be based on the Zircon. The nuclear powered cruiser Admiral Nakhimov, which is currently being reworked in the shipyard at Severodvinsk, is expected to be the first capital ship

China’s first domestically built aircraft carrier slipped into the sea for the first time on Wednesday. The carrier will have more testing and fitting of equipment before trials in the water. This is China’s second aircraft carrier. The ship is due to go into service in 2020 when it will join existing carrier, the Soviet-era Liaoning, bought secondhand from Ukraine and then refurbished. It is a conventionally powered ski jump carrier with a displacement of around 50,000 tonnes. It is likely to be powered by oil-fired boilers and steam turbines. The second Chinese-designed aircraft carrier, known as Type 002, is

In the United States, extreme prematurity is the leading cause of infant morbidity and mortality, with over one-third of all infant deaths and one-half of cerebral palsy attributed to prematurity. Advances in neonatal intensive care have improved survival and pushed the limits of viability to 22 to 23 weeks of gestation. However, survival has been achieved with high associated rates of chronic lung disease and other complications of organ immaturity, particularly in infants born before 28 weeks. In fact, with earlier limits of viability, there are actually more total patients with severe complications of prematurity than there were a decade

The Navy would have to spend $102 billion annually build, operate and maintain a 355-ship fleet over the next 30 years, according to a new report from the Congressional Budget Office issued on Monday. This would be more than one-third greater than the amount appropriated for fiscal year 2016 for today’s 275-ship fleet. In total it would be about $3 trillion for a 355 ship US Navy instead of the $2 trillion for a 275 ship US Navy. It would be 13 percent more than the $90 billion needed to build and operate the current 308-ship buildup plan. It would

A DARPA program that is developing a field-deployable system for onsite neutralization of bulk stores of chemical warfare agents (CWA) has successfully demonstrated a novel waterless soil-scrubbing technology that safely neutralized toxic chemicals simulating sarin, soman, and mustard agents. Created under the Agency’s Agnostic Compact Demilitarization of Chemical Agents (ACDC) program, the technology demonstrated greater than 99.9999% removal of the simulants, without creating any hazardous waste by-products. The soil-scrubbing technology was tested in conjunction with the Tactical Plasma Arc Chemical Warfare Agents Destruction System (PACWADS), a thermal treatment system already under development for use by U.S. military Services. That system

U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and U.S. Air Force academy teams compete in education-focused experiment to pave the way for future offensive and defensive swarm tactics for warfighters. Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other robots have become increasingly affordable, capable, and available to both the U.S. military and adversaries alike. Enabling UAVs and similar assets to perform useful tasks under human supervision—that is, carrying out swarm tactics in concert with human teammates—holds tremendous promise to extend the advantages U.S. warfighters have in field operations. A persistent challenge in achieving this capability, however, has been scalability: enabling one operator to oversee

The combat laser for the AC-130J gunship is “rapidly moving” from the concept to the practice according to General Brad Webb, commander of Air Force Special Operations Command. Webb recently visited MIT Lincoln Labs to view its advancements, and saw Naval Sea Systems Command Dahlgren’s latest efforts to network all of the various components within the aircraft. A proof of concept for a high-energy laser on a gunship will help pave the path for AFSOC to pursue directed energy weapons on other aircraft. Over the next year, the command plans to make major strides in the development of the technology,

The World Health Organization called today for accelerated scale-up of efforts to prevent malaria and save lives. In sub-Saharan Africa, which shoulders 90% of the global malaria burden, more than 663 million cases have been averted since 2001. Insecticide-treated nets have had the greatest impact, accounting for an estimated 69% of cases prevented through control tools. Together with diagnosis and treatment, WHO recommends a package of proven prevention approaches, including insecticide treated nets, spraying indoor walls with insecticides, and preventive medicines for the most vulnerable groups: pregnant women, under-fives and infants. WHO report: “Malaria prevention works: Let’s close the gap”

There have never been more than a couple hundred electrodes in a human brain at once. When it comes to vision, that equals a super low-res image. The Neuralink team threw out the number “one million simultaneously recorded neurons” when talking about an interface that could really change the world. Wait but Why got weeks of meetings and details from Elon Musk and the Neurlink team. Elon wants to get a human computer interface closer to computer to computer interface speeds. Until the 90s, electrodes for BMIs (Brain Machine Interfaces) were all made by hand. We began to manufacture 100-electrode

Fight aging is a site that is highly focused on radical life extension medicine and science. They have a forecast that within five years the first meaningful life extension treatments will exist. Senescent cell clearing overseas within five years for $5K-25K Five years from now, it will be possible to fly to an overseas clinic and undergo a treatment that will clear out between a quarter and half of the senescent cells in your body. That will to some degree damp down fibrosis, restore tissue elasticity, reduce inflammation, reduce calcification of blood vessels, and in addition improve many other measures

China and Iran have signed the first commercial contract for the reconstruction of Iran’s Arak heavy water reactor. The core of the reactor was removed as part of an international agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program in return for the lifting of economic sanctions. China National Nuclear Corporation will complete the design concept for the renovation of the Arak reactor within the next eight months.

The Google backed startup has a all electric plane that could function like a flying car. The Kitty Hawk Flyer is a new, all-electric aircraft. It is safe, tested and legal to operate in the United States in uncongested areas under the Ultralight category of FAA regulations. They have designed their first version specifically to fly over water. You don’t need a pilot’s license and you’ll learn to fly it in minutes. It is safe, tested and legal to operate in the United States in uncongested areas under the Ultralight category of FAA regulations. They publicly revealed the working prototype

The murder of Franz Ferdinand started World War 1 over a century ago. Will a new act of terrorism in the coming days before the May 7th election lead to the breakup of the EU? It is generally expected that Marine Le Pen (anti-EU candidate for French President) will lose the runoff election for French President. However terrorism and fear in France is the wildcard that could cause her to win. If Le Pen wins she will likely pull France from the EU. On April 22, there was a fatal shooting of a policeman on France’s symbolic main avenue, the

A Long March 7 rocket lifted off Thursday with Tianzhou 1, an unpiloted refueling freighter heading for China’s Tiangong 2 mini-space station to conduct several months of robotic demonstrations, practicing for the assembly and maintenance of a future permanently-staffed orbital research complex. The 174-foot-tall (53-meter) kerosene-fueled launcher blasted off from the Wenchang space center. China’s very first cargo spacecraft on Saturday successfully completed its first docking with the orbiting Tiangong-2 space lab. It’s one of the three dockings planned for Tianzhou-1 to check and prove its versatile dockability with remote human control and without. Less than two days after launching

Right-wing politician Marine Le Pen claimed victory alongside centrist Emmanuel Macron for the French presidential runoff, with the future of the European Union at stake. Centrist Emmanuel Macron placed first and far-right leader Marine Le Pen placed second in initial exit polls in the first round of France’s presidential election, advancing them to a head-to-head showdown in the runoff on May 7. Macron, who was economy minister until August, has never held elected office and has struggled to create as energetic or committed a base as Le Pen’s, even as he has led in many opinion polls. Macron says he

Major power outages caused chaos on mass transit systems in both New York and San Francisco Friday, with parts of both cities’ systems still suffering ongoing outages or delays into the pre-weekend afternoon commute. Los Angeles also had a major power outage shortly after San Francisco and New York. Some have worried that the power outages were a cyberattack, but it is only ongoing incompetence allow infrastructure to become old (over 50 years old and sometimes over 100 years old) and fragile rather than an evil attack. In the movies, disaster requires an evil and smart opponent but reality has

The New York Times reports that members of armed bands who have become key enforcers for President Nicolás Maduro as he attempts to crush a growing protest movement against his rule. The groups, called collectives or colectivos in Spanish, originated as pro-government community organizations that have long been a part of the landscape of leftist Venezuelan politics. Civilians with police training, colectivo members are armed by the government, say experts who have studied them. These groups seem similar to the Nazi era Brown shirts or to the little green men that Russia used in the war with Ukraine. Colectivos control