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NASA is leading the next steps into deep space near the moon, where astronauts will build and begin testing the systems needed for challenging missions to deep space destinations including Mars. The area of space near the moon offers a true deep space environment to gain experience for human missions that push farther into the solar system, access the lunar surface for robotic missions but with the ability to return to Earth if needed in days rather than weeks or months.

The Robo-Mate exoskeleton can reduce the effort to lift a load by ten times. It is able to reduce the effort needed to lift a load and protects the spine from heavy lifting and sudden movements.

The partially reusable Falcon 9 and fully reusable Skylon are explored in this episode of Stan Draws Spaceships.

China has almost double the CO2 emissions of the United States for the latest figures from 2015.

"Made in China 2025" is an initiative to comprehensively upgrade Chinese industry. The initiative draws direct inspiration from Germany's "Industry 4.0" plan, which was first discussed in 2011 and later adopted in 2013. The heart of the "Industry 4.0" idea is intelligent manufacturing, i.e., applying the tools of information technology to production. In the German context, this primarily means using the Internet of Things to connect small and medium-sized companies more efficiently in global production and innovation networks so that they could not only more efficiently engage in mass production but just as easily and efficiently customize products.

China's outbound Merger and Acquisition activity surged in 2015 and 2016 with a broad universe of acquirers executing transactions with an increase in pace and deal size.

Novartis found that giving low doses of a drug called everolimus to people over 65 increased their response to flu vaccines. It did, by about 20 percent. Yet behind the test was a bigger question about whether any drug can slow or reverse the symptoms of old age. Novartis’s study on everolimus, which looked at whether the immune system of elderly people could be made to act younger, has been called the “first human aging trial.”

The New Yorker magazine looks at silicon valley's anti aging activities. It covers the usual work and ideas of Aubrey de Grey (SENS repairing 7 kinds of aging related damage) and Ray Kurzweil (Singularity and uploading).

India and Russia have failed to make progress on one of their most prestigious defense deals—the co-development and production of the Sukhoi/HAL Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA), known in India as the Perspective Multi-role Fighter (PMF).

The Wall Street Journal reports that Elon Musk has revealed that he started a brain-computer interface company called Neuralink. The company has no public presence. It will creating devices that can be implanted in the human brain for mind computer interfaces.

The largest dinosaur print ever recorded: a 5-foot-9-inch print from a sauropod, or long-necked dinosaur was found in Australia. The tracks provide the first evidence that spiky tailed stegosaurs lived in the land down under.

MIT plans a one-megawatt demonstration molten salt reactor. It would be incapable of sustaining a fission reaction on its own, the researchers believe they could avoid building a standalone experimental prototype, which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission generally requires. That site selection and licensing process can take a decade or longer, so the hope is that this approach could cost hundreds of millions of dollars less and take half as much time to build.

After taking in about 400,000 deposits at $1,000 a piece, Musk ramped up production plans. And then he ramped them up some more. Now, three months from the official start of production, the billionaire Tesla CEO seems to think he can not only match the performance of those top luxury brands (BMW 3 Series and the Mercedes C Class), but outsell them in the U.S., too—in just one year.

Last week, SpaceX announced it has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon in 2018. According to the company, the mission will use SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, a spacecraft designed deliver to large payloads to orbit inside a composite fairing.

SpaceX is now targeting 6 p.m. Thursday for its first re-launch of a used Falcon 9 rocket booster, a mission that aims to loft a commercial communications satellite to orbit from Kennedy Space Center.

The Carnival of Space 502 is up at Urban Astronomer.

Four ASEAN Countries will become trillion dollar economies by 2030 Southeast Asia is expected to be one of the world’s fastest growing regions, with four ASEAN nations – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand – expected to join the ranks of Asia’s group of nations that have a GDP exceeding $1 trillion by 2030. “This will help to increase the geopolitical and economic importance of ASEAN as a political and economic grouping in international diplomacy and the global dialogue on trade, investment and international standards-setting,” Biswas said.

The DC movies have been underwhelming other than the Dark Knight Series and a few of the Batman movies before them and the first Superman movie.

Patients in Norfolk with severe Sepsis were treated with intravenous vitamin C, hydrocortisone and thiamine. In 47 patients with sepsis treated in Norfolk General’s ICU, four died in 2016, an 8 percent mortality rate. Of those four, none died of sepsis but rather the conditions that led to sepsis in the first place. The previous year, 19 of 47 septic patients died, a 40 percent mortality rate. They have written up the study in the Journal Chest.

Uber has taken $12 billion over 15 rounds of investment, and has a reported valuation of nearly $70 billion. There have been several different leaks of Uber's financial data over the years, covering income from 2012 through Q4 2016.

Uber is suspending its self-driving car program after one of its autonomous vehicles was involved in a high-impact crash in Tempe, Arizona, the latest incident for a company reeling from multiple crises.

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have demonstrated efficient solar energy storage in a chemical liquid. The stored energy can be transported and then released as heat whenever needed. The research is now presented on the cover of the scientific journal Energy and Environmental Science.

Kaneka Corporation has achieved in a NEDO project the world’s highest solar power conversion efficiency of 26.33% in a practical size (180 cm2 ) crystalline silicon solar cell.

Russia will start building multi-purpose nuclear-powered submarines of the fifth generation in 2020. Companies of the United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) are ready to start the work in 2020, when 885 Yasen project is completed. The Russian Husky submarine will be the follow up to the Yasen submarine.

Tesla revealed the first model 3 release candidate.

Automotive, aerospace, energy, electronics, and communications (smartphones) materials processing applications continued to drive strong industrial laser sales. Of the three major industrial laser categories, the Micro category, which includes all applications using lasers with less than 500 Watts of power, climbed to 35% of the total laser market thanks to 105% growth in the sector that included display applications requiring excimer lasersCoherent alone said in its third fiscal quarter 38 ended July 2, 2016, "As expected, we received significant orders for flat panel annealing lasers including a single order in excess of $100 million." The Macro category, including laser processes requiring over 500 Watts of power, is the largest (at 47%) of all laser revenues, thanks to fiber lasers that comprise 44% of all Macro revenues. And finally, Marking (including engraving) contributed about 18% of all laser revenues, with solid growth continuing at 3.9% dominated by fiber lasers representing 49% of total sales.

BAE Systems have lifted the lid on some futuristic technologies that could be incorporated in military and civil aircraft of 2040 or even earlier.

Norwegian government has stated that they wish to proceed with a pilot project for a ship tunnel. They are working on the basis of the "large" tunnel alternative. This is considered to have greater potential utility value.

UNSW researchers have identified a critical step in the molecular process that allows cells to repair damaged DNA – and it could mean big things for the future of anti-ageing drugs, childhood cancer survivors and even astronauts. It could lead to a revolutionary drug that actually reverses ageing, improves DNA repair and could even help NASA get its astronauts to Mars.

When Magic Carpet software and systems are switched on, the USNavy pilot no longer directly controls the flaps, throttle, and so on. Instead, he or she chooses a path and the computer makes the fine adjustments to get and stay on it. Affecting one aspect of flight — angle, speed, alignment, and so on — still affects the others, but the pilot can focus on one at a time while the computer keeps the others under control. The pilot remains a crucial part of the system.

India has parts which are very advanced and parts that are completely undeveloped.

One of the main factors driving the OBOR (One Belt One Road) effort is the slowdown in China’s own economy. The Communist Party is striving to transition away from growth led by investment and exports to development led by domestic consumer demand and services, and to keep growth at more sustainable levels than in the past. The government set a growth target of 6.5% in 2017 at the National People Congress in March, down from a 2016 target of 6.5% to 7%. In a sense, China is seeking to export the investment-led part of its economy, to help its own overbuilt heavy industries and provinces.

The proportion of Africans living in urban areas soared from 15 percent in 1960 to 40 percent in 2010. It's projected to hit 60 percent in 2050. Against that backdrop, the big challenge for government policymakers is how to harness urbanization for sustainable and inclusive growth.

The Office of Naval Research and Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division, conduct the first shot of the Railgun at the terminal range November 17, 2016.

Two separate breakthroughs will combine for unlimited youthful blood for antiaging and immune system boosting transfusions

Traditional semiconductor scaling is expected to reach an end by about 2024, according to a white paper from engineers working on a new version of the semiconductor roadmap. The good news is a wide variety of new kinds of devices, chip stacks and systems innovations promise to continue benefits in computing performance, power and cost.

Marcela V. Maus, M.D., Ph.D., of Harvard Medical School identified three important improvements that CRISPR gene editing could potentially bring to T-cell-based therapies.

Hardric Labs in Massachusetts has reported to LPPFusion that its work on machining the new beryllium cathode is nearing completion and they expect to ship the finished piece in early March, only a few weeks behind their initial schedule. Since the beryllium anodes have already been received at the Middlesex NJ lab, we will soon have a complete set of beryllium electrodes ready for our next set of experiments. This will be an important milestone for the project, as our effort to obtain the beryllium electrodes began in mid-2014, as soon as our crowdfunding effort had raised the money needed for the new set. Beryllium is crucial to the next step in the experiment for two reasons. First, as a light element with an atomic charge, or “z”, of only 4, it will eliminate any high-z impurities in the plasma, optimizing FF-1’s performance. Second, beryllium is highly transparent to x-rays, so will be much better able to withstand the heavy x-ray flux from the plasmoid as we increase fusion yields.

Positive outcome of trials in Niger fuels hope that vaccine can protect children in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond from infection that causes often fatal diarrhoea.

Driver-assist hardware and software included in the Model 3 will make the $35,000 car 10 times safer than the average car.

Researchers have rejuvenated old mice to restore their stamina, coat of fur and even some organ function. The team at Erasmus University Medical Center, in the Netherlands, are planning human trials for what they hope is a treatment for old age. A UK scientist said the findings were "impossible to dismiss", but that unanswered questions remained. The approach works by flushing out retired or "senescent" cells in the body that have stopped dividing.

China is developing a rocket stage and engine recovery system at the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology in Beijing.

New research, led by nanoengineering professor Shaochen Chen, addresses one of the biggest challenges in tissue engineering: creating lifelike tissues and organs with functioning vasculature —networks of blood vessels that can transport blood, nutrients, waste and other biological materials — and do so safely when implanted inside the body.

Currently the US Navy refuels its carrier aircraft with its Super Hornet fleet. The tanking mission accounts from anywhere from 25 to 30 percent of Super Hornet sorties, further exacerbating the ongoing tactical aviation shortfalls in the service.

Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology have come up with a solution to slow wifi. Use a wireless network based on harmless infrared rays. The capacity is not only huge (more than 40Gbit/s per ray) but also there is no need to share since every device gets its own ray of light. This was the subject for which TU/e researcher Joanne Oh received her PhD degree with the ‘cum laude’ distinction last week.

Broadband Conduit Deployment Act of 2017 is being discussed at the The House Communications Subcommittee. President Donald Trump plans a trillion dollar infrastructure package that will almost certainly include broadband.