NextBigFuture.com

Boston Dynamics has a new robot called Handle. It is a research robot that stands 6.5 ft tall, travels at 9 mph and jumps 4​ ​feet vertically. ​It uses electric power to operate both electric and hydraulic actuators, with a range of about 15 miles on one battery charge. ​​​Handle uses many of the same dynamics, balance and mobile manipulation principles​ found in the quadruped and biped robots we build, but with only about 10 actuated joints, it is significantly less complex. Wheels are efficient on flat surfaces while legs can go almost anywhere: by combining wheels and legs Handle can have the best of both worlds.

Space Adventures has sent seven people to the international space station

The US Army was twice burned (at least) since 2009 by cancellations of ambitious and innovative, but ultimately impracticable programs.

China is considering introducing birth rewards and subsidies to encourage people to have a second child, after surveys showed that economic constraints were making many reluctant to expand families, the state-owned China Daily newspaper reported.

SoftBank is closing the first round of investment in its $100 billion Technology Vision Fund by the end of this month, people familiar with the matter have said. The initial investments will likely include $45 billion from Saudi Arabia and $25 billion from SoftBank, as well as $1 billion each from Apple Inc., Qualcomm Inc. and Oracle Corp. Chairman Larry Ellison, they said. The initial round is likely to exceed $80 billion and the timing of the closing may still change, said one of the people. One of the leading marketing and investment spins on the fund is that it will lead to the vision of the Technological Singularity. Saudi Arabia wants to diversify from oil for a long term sustainable economy. However, investments now will have little to do with whether there is the possibility of far greater than human level artificial intelligence around 2047.

Arxiv - Semihierarchical quantum repeaters based on moderate lifetime quantum memories

BYU mechanical engineers have created an origami-inspired, lightweight bulletproof shield that can protect law enforcement from gunfire. The new ballistic barrier can be folded compactly when not in use, making it easier to transport and deploy. When expanded — which takes only five seconds — it can provide cover for officers and stop bullets from several types of handguns.

SpaceX has been approached to fly two private citizens on a trip around the moon late next year. They have already paid a significant deposit to do a moon mission. Like the Apollo astronauts before them, these individuals will travel into space carrying the hopes and dreams of all humankind, driven by the universal human spirit of exploration. Spacex expects to conduct health and fitness tests, as well as begin initial training later this year. Other flight teams have also expressed strong interest and Spacex expects more to follow. Additional information will be released about the flight teams, contingent upon their approval and confirmation of the health and fitness test results.

SoftBank Group Corp.’s Masayoshi Son his belief that computers will exceed humans in intelligence in three decades, and that within this period he expects one computer chip to have the equivalent of a 10,000 IQ. “I really believe this,” he said at a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Monday. The growth in computer ability was “why I acquired ARM,” he said.

Howard Bloom makes the obvious case that if NASA wants to return to the moon they need to ditch the Space Launch System and go with Spacex and the Falcon Heavy and Falcon 9 launchers.

The number of unique mobile subscribers around the world will surpass 5 billion later this year, according to a new GSMA study. The 2017 global edition of the GSMA’s ‘Mobile Economy’ report reveals that the 5 billion-subscriber milestone will be achieved by mid-year 2017 and will increase to 5.7 billion by the end of the decade. By that point, almost three-quarters of the world’s population will be subscribed to a mobile service. Subscriber growth over this period will be driven primarily by large Asia markets such as India, which alone is forecast to add 310 million new unique subscribers by 2020.

The South Korean K2 Black Panther tank development started in 1995 and cost $260 million. South Korea designed a tank that on paper appears to be at equal or better than the specifications of current NATO tanks.

A super-material that bends, shapes and focuses sound waves that pass through it has been invented by scientists.

Scientists have found that a superconducting current flows in only one direction through a chiral nanotube, marking the first observation of the effects of chirality on superconductivity. Until now, superconductivity has only been demonstrated in achiral materials, in which the current flows in both directions equally.

The Carnival of Nuclear Energy blogs has changed its name to Nuclear Energy News Weekly.

Michael Shellenberger explains how less nuclear energy has meant higher costs and less clean energy overall.

Preliminary budget outlines are usually little-noticed administrative exercises, the first step in negotiations between the White House and federal agencies that usually shave the sharpest edges off the initial request.

Elon Musk said the Model 3 Design Studio will go online shortly before the car officially goes on sale, and first deliveries will be “Founders Series” Model 3 that go to company employees.

The Carnival of Space 498 is up at Urban Astronomer

Scientists from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), CIEMAT (Center for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research), Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón, in collaboration with the firm BioDan Group, have presented a prototype for a 3D bioprinter that can create totally functional human skin. This skin is adequate for transplanting to patients or for use in research or the testing of cosmetic, chemical, and pharmaceutical products.

Hans Rosling (1948–2017), physician and epidemiologist, famously upturned assumptions widely held by the public and by the development community — assumptions that, thanks to US President Donald Trump, are back in the spotlight. A recurring theme of Rosling's was that family sizes have been shrinking even though child survival rates have improved.

Actor Bill Paxton, age 61, has died due to complications from surgery.

China's J-20 stealth fighter has been seen with four auxiliary fuel tanks (aka, drop tanks or "bags") under its wings.

Audio recordings of a UK Reaction engines presentation are in the NASA Spaceflight forum. Reaction Engines is making hypersonic planes and spaceplanes. Their key technology is a precooler.

In a white paper published in March 2014, Transatomic Power proclaimed its molten salt reactor "can generate up to 75 times more electricity per ton of mined uranium than a light-water reactor."

DARPA is creating a GPS-like technology that works in the deep ocean called Positioning System for Deep Ocean Navigation, or POSYDON.

In World War II, the U.S. Navy made extensive use of small aircraft carriers, ranging from very small carriers escorting convoys (CVEs) to light aircraft carriers (CVLs) that were essentially downsized models of the iconic big carriers (CVs).

A Chinese company has built a machine that has a creative way of setting girders into place for high speed rail bridges.

On 10 February 2017, the London-based charity Cancer Research UK announced that a team of molecular biologists, astronomers and game designers would receive up to £20 million (US$25 million) over the next five years to develop its interactive virtual-reality map of breast cancers. Currently there are animations for tumor that allow virtual flew throughs. However, they are mock-up. The real models will include data on the expression of thousands of genes and dozens of proteins in each cell of a tumor. The hope is that this spatial and functional detail could reveal more about the factors that influence a tumor’s response to treatment.

China is close to completing and launching its second aircraft carrier. It will begin service by 2020.

Researchers developed an alteration to the lithium-sulfur battery that could make it more than competitive with the industry standard lithium-ion battery.

A randomized trial shows cycles of a five-day fasting diet designed by a USC researcher safely reduces the risk factors for age-related diseases.

The epigenome is the broad array of chemical marks that decorate DNA and its protein scaffold. These marks act like a chemical notation, telling the cell which genes to express and which to keep silent. As such, the epigenome helps to explain how cells with identical DNA can develop into the multitude of specialized types that make up different tissues. The marks help cells in the heart, for example, maintain their identity and not turn into neurons or fat cells. Misplaced epigenetic marks are often found in cancerous cells.

China has made drones with flamethrowers to clear garbage from power lines.

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Engineering and Applied Science are using artificial intelligence, called fuzzy logic, to get drones to navigate and land themselves on moving platforms. This holds promise for commercial uses such as delivering packages.

Under mild static compression (15 GPa), graphite preferentially turns into hexagonal diamond, not cubic diamond, the selectivity of which is against thermodynamics. Here researchers via novel potential energy surface global exploration, report seven types low energy intermediate structures at the atomic level that are key to the kinetics of graphite to diamond solid phase transition. On the basis of quantitative kinetics data, they show that hexagonal diamond has a facile initial nucleation mechanism inside graphite matrix and faster propagation kinetics owing to the presence of three coherent graphite/hexagonal diamond interfaces, forming coherent nuclei in graphite matrix. By contrast, for the lack of coherent nucleus core, the growth of cubic diamond is at least 40 times slower and its growth is inevitably mixing with that of hexagonal diamond.

NASA NEXTSTep program awarded Ad Astra Vasimr plasma propulsion a three-year, $9 million contract in 2015. Ad Astra must fire its plasma rocket for 100 hours, at a power level of 100 kilowatts in 2018.

In a Stanford-led research report, three participants with movement impairment controlled an onscreen cursor simply by imagining their own hand movements.

A new organic artificial synapse made by Stanford researchers could support computers that better recreate the way the human brain processes information. It could also lead to improvements in brain-machine technologies.

A proposed planet definition - a planet is a sub-stellar mass body that has never undergone nuclear fusion and that has sufficient self-gravitation to assume a spheroidal shape adequately described by a triaxial ellipsoid regardless of its orbital parameters.

Tesla was aiming for at least a 30% reduction from its battery cost for Gigafactory and it now claims a “35% cost reduction” in a new promotional video.

Here is the list of top ten breakthrough technologies for 2017

Seven Earth-sized planets have been observed by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope around a tiny, nearby, ultra-cool dwarf star called TRAPPIST-1. Three of these planets are firmly in the habitable zone. Over 21 days, NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope measured the drop in light as each planet passed in front of the star. Spitzer was able to identify a total of seven rocky worlds, including three in the habitable zone, where liquid water might be found. The video features interviews with Sean Carey, manager of the Spitzer Science Center, Caltech/IPAC; Nikole Lewis, James Webb Space Telescope project scientist, Space Telescope Science Institute; and Michaël Gillon, principal investigator, TRAPPIST, University of Liege, Belgium. The system has been revealed through observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope and the ground-based TRAPPIST (TRAnsiting Planets and PlanetesImals Small Telescope) telescope, as well as other ground-based observatories. The system was named for the TRAPPIST telescope. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages the Spitzer Space Telescope mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

The Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency has launched a study of innovative ways to counter advanced missile threats such as ultra-high-speed maneuvering hypersonic missiles.

Our #1 Best-Selling Drone--Meet the Dark Night of the Sky!

The University of Pennsylvania has a life expectancy calculator based upon on a statistical regression of more than 400,000 data samples. The data was collected by the National Institute of Health and AARP.