NextBigFuture.com

The 750-horsepower, optionally manned EV2 is capable of reaching speeds of almost 100 miles per hour and costs roughly $250,000.

Statistics released by the China Population Association (CPA) in 2013 revealed that the infertile population of the country has surpassed 40 million, making up 12.5 percent of the total population of childbearing age.

The Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and CoalSwarm have released their third annual survey of the global coal plant pipeline, Boom and Bust 2017: Tracking The Global Coal Plant Pipeline. The report’s findings include a 62 percent drop in new coal plant construction starts globally, a 48 percent reduction in worldwide pre-construction activity, and an 85 percent decline in new Chinese coal plant permits.

The EU Horizon 2020 has launched Bio4Comp, a five-year €6.1M project to build more powerful and safer biocomputers that could outperform quantum computing.

The World Will Pass $150 trillion GDP on a purchase power parity basis in 2021 and pass a $100 trillion in current price GDP dollars in 2022.

Campaigning for Clean Air is a new book written by Meredith Angwin.

What would be a possible technological path to genome modified adult brains and to genetically enhanced longevity for adults ?

Adam Crowl revisits the 1987 Robert Burruss conceptual design for an intergalactic transport.

Nerf version of John Wick 2.

The United States, had carbon dioxide emissions drop 3%, or 160 million tonnes from 2015 to 2016. The economy grew by 1.6%. The decline was driven by a surge in shale gas supplies and more attractive renewable power that displaced coal. Emissions in the United States last year were at their lowest level since 1992, a period during which the economy grew by 80%. This was a major part of emission stabilization for the world the last three years.

China has a program of bonuses and funding to recruit top scientific talent

For the DREaM program, the Microsystems Technology Office (MTO) at DARPA seeks innovative proposals aimed at creating the next generation of electronic devices. Specifically, DARPA is interested in new material options and transistor architectures to enable breakthrough dynamic range in millimeter wave systems. Metrics targeted for improvement at the device level include RF power density, efficiency, and linearity. By opening the way to such advances with the DREaM program, DARPA hopes to create new RF/mm-wave transistors that provide the foundational capability to address challenges associated with the increasing need to access, make use of, and manage the electromagnetic spectrum.

By boosting the ability to detect superweak magnetic fields, a new DARPA program could open pathways to sensors with uses ranging from biological imaging to magnetically based navigation.

Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense plans to acquire new-generation stealth fighter jets with short or vertical takeoff and landing capabilities to deter Chinese military action against Taiwan, it said in its Quadrennial Defense Review released yesterday.

Additive manufacturing (AM) and 3D-printing (3DP) approaches have recently been considered as promising means to enable prolonged off-world activities through utilization of native planetary regoliths for manufacturing.

Scientists have for the first time developed a transparent sample of a popular industrial ceramic that is the second hardest material after diamond and can withstand substantially higher temperatures.

Modern electronic biomedical devices are enabling a wide range of sophisticated health interventions, from seizure detection and Parkinson’s disease therapy to functional artificial limbs, cochlear implants and smart contact lenses.

SpaceX's Dragon cargo spacecraft is scheduled to splash down in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday, March 19, with more than 5,400 pounds of NASA cargo, and science and technology demonstration samples from the International Space Station.

Singapores healthcare system has excellent health outcomes while spending, as of 2014, is just 5 percent of G.D.P. on health care. By comparison, a typical Western European country that year spent around 10 percent; the United States spent 17 percent.

There is a lot of research that the world's climate is less sensitive to CO2 than the main current models of climate change.

On the low estimate for 1.5C degree change, the world is about 14 months away from using up the permitted CO2 emissions. On the low estimate for 2C degree change, the world is less than ten years away from using up the permitted CO2 emissions.

Coal is undergoing a renaissance in emerging and developed countries in Asia, buoyed by technical breakthroughs and looming questions about squaring development with energy security. Japan, India and China will try to blunt the air pollution effects from the use of coal which cause millions of premature deaths in India and China and tens of thousands in Japan. However the "low emissions" coal technology is still 30% worse than natural gas for CO2 emissions even though "low emissions" is improved over several decades old coal plants.

The Israeli strike on Syria was probably with conventional fighters and missiles. There had been reports and speculation that Israel used new F35 stealth fighters for the attack.

IBM and Google both aim to commercialize quantum computers within the next few years (Google specified five years.)

Wellhead breakeven prices have dropped significantly among all shale plays over recent years and since 2014, the average decrease has been around 46% within the main shale oil plays. The main cause has been a reduction in unit prices, which represented approximately 57% of the total decrease. However, acreage high grading and efficiency improvements have also played their part, contributing approximately 19% and 26% respectively.

Global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions were flat for a third straight year in 2016 even as the global economy grew, according to the International Energy Agency, signaling a continuing decoupling of emissions and economic activity. This was the result of growing renewable power generation, switches from coal to natural gas, improvements in energy efficiency, as well as structural changes in the global economy.

X-energy yesterday announced the start of work on the conceptual design of its Xe-100 high temperature gas-cooled pebble bed modular reactor, following a review of the company's readiness by an external panel of industry experts.

Lockheed Martin has completed the design, development and demonstration of a 60 kW-class beam combined fiber laser for the U.S. Army.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the U.S. is considering “all options” to counter North Korea’s nuclear threat while criticizing China over moves to block a missile-defense system on the peninsula.

Advances in production technology and materials science, particularly for new types of high-tech steel, mean that an old concept called “twin-roll” is being taken up successfully. An alternative system that casts liquid steel directly onto a single horizontally moving belt is also being tried. Both techniques could cut energy consumption—one of the biggest costs in steelmaking—by around 80%. Other savings in operating and capital costs are also possible. If these new processes prove themselves, steelmaking could once again be transformed.

A researcher with JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), Matsumoto is deeply involved in the design of the space sail that will pick up where Japan’s IKAROS left off. Launched in 2010, the latter was a square sail 14 meters to the side that demonstrated the feasibility of maneuvering a sail on interplanetary trajectories. JAXA has talked ever since about going to Jupiter, but the challenges are formidable, not the least of which is the question of generating enough power to operate over 5 AU from the Sun.

Russia and the United Arab Emirates will fund efforts to develop a light fifth generation jet, Russian Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov said on Monday.

Last year Bryan Johnson, founder of the online payments company Braintree, starting making news when he threw $100 million behind Kernel, a startup he founded to enhance human intelligence by developing brain implants capable of linking people’s thoughts to computers.

Figures released by the Russian Federal Treasury have confirmed that Russia's defence budget has been cut by 25.5% for 2017, falling from RUB3.8 trillion (USD65.4 billion) to RUB2.8 trillion.

European researchers have created a cheaper and more efficient superconducting tape which could one day be used to double the potency of wind turbines.

Kalashnikov, famous small arms weapon maker, will create a tank-like robot weighing 20 tons. Kalashnikov’s BAS-01G Soratnik is a seven ton unmanned vehicle that can carry a machine gun and quartet of antitank missiles, but they want one three times bigger. It would be about the same size as a U.S. Army M1126 Stryker ICV.

Semiconductor chip makers TSMC and Global Foundries are finally committed to dates for the commercialization of EUV lithography. Global foundries will use Free electron lasers to boost EUV volume production and lower costs.

TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor) disclosed plans for an enhanced 7nm FinFET node using extreme ultraviolet lithography, a 12nm upgrade of its 16nm process and a 22nm planar technology — its answer to fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FD-SOI).

Valleytronics is exciting as a potential avenue to quantum computing. Like spintronics, valleytronics offers a tremendous advantage in data processing speeds over the electrical charge used in classical electronics.

Massive and complete automation could enable industrializtion of the moon and space. By using some larger human colonies along with the robots then it would be more robust and less dependent on perfect automation.

If all the solar incident on Mars were to be captured with 100% efficiency, then Mars would warm to Earth-like temperatures in about 10 years. However, the efficiency of the greenhouse effect is plausibly about 10%, thus the time it would take to warm Mars would be ~100 years. This assumes, of course, adequate production of super greenhouse gases over that entire time. The super greenhouse gases desired for use on Mars would be per fluorinated compounds (PFCs) as these are not toxic, do not destroy ozone, will resist degradation by ultraviolet life, and are composed of elements (C, S, and F) that are present on Mars. Fluorine has been detected on Mars by Curiosity.

Construction and installation work formally started yesterday at the site of unit 2 of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran, Atomproekt, the reactor design subsidiary of Russian state nuclear corporation Rosatom, announced today. The first foundation stone for units 2 and 3 of the plant was laid in a ceremony held at the construction site in southern Iran in September last year.

A Tesla Model 3 prototype was spotted and capture on video. In the background you'll also see the SpaceX Hyperloop test track.

Israel is working on two large procurement deals with the United States for jet fighters and helicopters to upgrade two IAF squadrons.

In the TV show Game of Thrones, there is a common warning - Winter is Coming. It refers to an impending war and attack of Zombies.

According to French newspaper Le Figaro, Israel has already put its tiny F-35 Lightning II fleet to use as early as mid-January of this year, having only taken full delivery of the first F-35s in their 75-strong order in mid-December of last year. Reporter Georges Malbrunot, Le Figaro‘s Middle East correspondent, the F-35’s supposed initial foray into combat occurred in the late night/early morning hours of January 12-13 in an airstrike on Mezzeh Military Airport, Syria, where facilities housing surface-to-air missiles destined for use with Hezbollah, an Islamist terror organization based in Lebanon.