NextBigFuture.com

In a world-leading study researchers at Macquarie University have proven a method for multiplying laser power using diamond, demonstrating that a laser similar to the Star Wars ‘superlaser’ may no longer remain in science fiction.

Graphene-oxide membranes have attracted considerable attention as promising candidates for new filtration technologies. Now the much sought-after development of making membranes capable of sieving common salts has been achieved.

Amazon, which currently charges a $99 annual fee for two-day deliveries under its "Prime" service, will eventually offer two-tier pricing for delivery services, Jindel said. One will be a "Gold Prime" membership costing $199 to $249 a year that covers next-day deliveries, the other a platinum membership for $399 a year that includes same-day deliveries. Jindel said the pricing scheme will take effect only after Amazon builds out its distribution infrastructure.

General Fusion has revealed that one of the most critical and complex areas of its research and development – plasma injector technology - has now reached the minimum performance levels required for a larger scale, integrated prototype.

Telsa passed Ford for overall stock valuation with both valuing around $50 billion. Tesla passed Ford even though it delivered fewer than 80,000 vehicles globally last year, compared with 6.7 million from Ford.

A team of engineering researchers has made a fundamental advance in controlling so-called soft robots, using magnetic fields to remotely manipulate microparticle chains embedded in soft robotic devices. The researchers have already created several devices that make use of the new technique.

China is breaking the administrative barriers between Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei. This will enable coordinated development.

DARPA earlier this month hosted the Battle of the ModRecs—a low-key competitive opportunity for engineers with a penchant for antennas and algorithms to test their skills in modulation recognition.

DARPA has announced its Molecular Informatics program, which seeks a new paradigm for data storage, retrieval, and processing. Instead of relying on the binary digital logic of computers based on the Von Neumann architecture, Molecular Informatics aims to investigate and exploit the wide range of structural characteristics and properties of molecules to encode and manipulate data.

The parting messages of Michael Gilmore, the now-retired Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, from his final 62 page F35 report.

Other than Ang Lee’s Oscar-winning 2000 action drama “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” — which hauled in $128 million at the U.S. box office but didn’t do nearly as much business in China (although the country’s box office was significantly smaller then) — the country’s homegrown movies haven’t been able to travel well. American entertainment lawyer Sky Moore, who works closely with Chinese studios, called a crossover hit the “holy grail” for them.

According to a strategy detailed in a recently released report, the Jing-jin-ji megalopolis is one of three key projects aimed at boosting China's economy over the next 100 years along with the Yangtze River Delta Economic Region, led by Shanghai in the south, and the "One Belt, One Road" program in the west, which was created to promote China's trading links with Asia, Europe and Africa.

The Planetary Society LightSail is a CubeSat. These tiny spacecraft often hitch rides to orbit aboard rockets carrying bigger payloads. CubeSats have standard unit sizes of 10 centimeters per side. They can be stacked together—LightSail is a three-unit CubeSat about the size of a loaf of bread.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Thursday salvaged half of the $6 million nosecone of its rocket, in what the space entrepreneur deemed an important feat in the drive to recover more of its launch hardware and cut the cost of space flights. This was part of the successful relaunch and landing of the first stage.

Two billionaires, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, are leading companies that are creating new space flight capability. However, adventurous billionaires could be very important to the first manned flights to Mars.

“At this point I’m highly confident that it’s possible to achieve at least 100-fold reduction in the cost of space access,” Musk said after yesterdays demonstration of a reusable first stage booster.

A new company, Gravity has unveiled of its first product, the Daedulus flight suit. The company claims Daedulus should be able to fly at speeds up to several hundreds of miles per hour, although Browning hasn't been able to find a large enough test flight area to get it going that fast just yet.

After 14 years of development, Lockheed Martin Corp.’s Autonomous Mobility Applique System, a kit that allows vehicles and convoys to operate with little or no human input, is a strong candidate for rapid fielding.

Dragonfly Pictures' DP14 Hawk, a dual-rotor unmanned aerial system, could one day evacuate wounded soldiers from the battlefield. It resembles a miniature CH-47 Chinook helicopter, can carry 430 pounds in its six-foot by 20-inch cargo space for about 2.4 hours. It has a cruising speed of about 82 miles per hour and is capable of flying in crosswinds up to 46 mph.

In collaboration with OpenAI, DeepMind, YC Research, and others, Google has announced the launch of Distill, a new open science journal and ecosystem supporting human understanding of machine learning. Distill is an independent organization, dedicated to fostering a new segment of the research community.

Today Spacex has started the age of reusable rockets. They reused a first stage rocket and then successfully landed it. This was a lower cost rocket. They charged 10% less than an unused rocket.

SpaceX has successfully re-flown a first stage booster from one of its Falcon 9 rockets and they successfully landed it again.

At the moment, EU industry provides about 5% of HPC resources worldwide, but consumes one third of them. In April 2016 in the European Cloud Initiative – part of the EU's strategy to digitise European industry – the Commission urged Member States to step up cooperation in HPC to boost Europe's scientific capabilities and industrial competitiveness. It also committed to develop a high-performance computing ecosystem based on European technology, including low power chips. The goal is to have exascale supercomputers based on European technology in the global top 3 by 2022.

Rice University laboratory of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan, in collaboration with NASA, has developed “fuzzy fibers” of silicon carbide that act like Velcro and stand up to the punishment that materials experience in aerospace applications.

The Navy and Missile Defense Agency are leveraging prototyping programs to incrementally pursue complex ideas such as a laser weapon integrated into the Aegis Combat System and a high-power laser for boost-phase kill in missile defense, officials said today at the 2017 Directed Energy Summit.

Intel remains confident about scaling CMOS and extending Moore's law beyond 2024

The autopilot function on newer Tesla cars will function at speeds up to 80 mph. New software to enable the improvement started streaming into its vehicles on Wednesday.

Architects have a system is referred to as the Universal Orbital Support System (UOSS). It calls for placing a large asteroid into orbit over earth, a high strength cable can be lowered towards the surface of earth from which a super tall tower can be suspended.

New technologies, including better land mapping, prefabricated construction and cheaper solar power, have begun bringing the costs of housing down 20 percent to 30 percent, say experts.

Though the exact value of China's spending on its space programs remains shrouded in secrecy, many analysts peg its civilian space budget at around $3 billion annually in recent years, a fraction of the $19.3 billion the United States allocated to NASA in 2016. There a push within China's government to triple spending on space science (from $700 million to $2.1 billion) as well as the emergence of a small but growing group of privately backed space start-ups suggest that both Chinese industry and government see long-term economic benefits in their investments in space technologies.

There is evidence for subsurface oceans within nearly a dozen bodies (planets, asteroids and moons) in the solar system.

Research publish in the Journal Nature indicates the subsurface ocean on Pluto under Sputnik Planitia region could be filled with ammonia, similar to what scientists have detected to one of Pluto's moon, Charon.

Crime does pay — and don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise. According to a new report from Global Financial Integrity, transnational crime groups currently rake in an estimated $1.6 trillion to $2.2 trillion in annual revenue.

Jeff Bezos has leapt past Amancio Ortega and Warren Buffett to become the world’s second-richest person.

Basic development of the level that has been mostly achieved in Europe today will be norm throughout the world by about 2080.

Russia is expected to begin serial production of hypersonic missile Tsirkon or Zircon soon. The missile boasts of speed five times than that of speed of sound. Reports say the missile can travel with a speed of upto 4,600 mph or 7,400 km/h, which makes it almost impossible to be stopped.

Measuring brain activity with precision is essential to developing further understanding of diseases such as epilepsy and disorders that affect brain function and motor control. Neural probes with high spatial resolution are needed for both recording and stimulating specific functional areas of the brain. Now, researchers from the Graphene Flagship have developed a new device for recording brain activity in high resolution while maintaining excellent signal to noise ratio (SNR). Based on graphene field-effect transistors, the flexible devices open up new possibilities for the development of functional implants and interfaces.

Researchers are currently developing the environment-friendly solar cells of the future, which will capture twice as much energy as the cells of today. The trick is to combine two different types of solar cells in order to utilize a much greater portion of the sunlight.

A future when solar cells can be sprayed or printed onto the windows of skyscrapers or atop sports utility vehicles -- and at prices potentially far cheaper than today’s silicon-based panels could begin in 2018.

Rigetti Computing, a leading quantum computing start-up, announced it has raised $64 million in Series A and B funding.

Blue Origin has its first BE-4 rocket engine fully assembled and ready for testing -- and they pushed two more out the door recently.

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).