• Slowing climate warming may require geoengineering

    Scientists warn that to avoid excessive warming, sea level rise, and extreme weather, CO2 in the atmosphere needs to be reduced to 350 parts-per-million (ppm) by the end of this century from the current level of around 390 ppm; one way to reduce atmospheric CO2 by the end of the century is by setting up fields of air-capture devices that absorb CO2, very similar to the carbon capture and storage technology being developed for coal plants

  • Rocket-propelled life preserver saves victims from drowning

    A new rescue device ingeniously buys more time for a rescuer to ready a response and reach a drowning victim; borrowing the design of a rocket-propelled grenade, the new rescue system fires an expanding foam bullet up to 500 feet; once the bullet hits the water, it expands forty-times its original size into a life preserver; because the bullet is made of foam, even if it strikes the victim, it would do as much damage as a tennis ball

  • Portable 3d map-maker developed

    UC Berkeley researchers develop a backpack system containing cameras, lasers, and inertial sensors which can be carried around indoors and generate a detailed, accurate 3D map of the spaces it moves through

  • The world is running out of helium

    It has taken 4.7 billion years for the Earth to accumulate our helium reserves, which we will have exhausted within about a hundred years of the U.S.’s National Helium Reserve having been established in 1925; there is no chemical way of manufacturing helium, and the supplies we have originated in the very slow radioactive alpha decay that occurs in rocks

  • The five fantastic flying machines from the Pentagon

    DARPA has given a Maryland-based company $3 million to develop a flying Humvee; the Pentagon’s restless research arm has an impressive track record when it comes to audacious flying machine ideas — some of which have never made it off the drawing board, while others are still being pursued

  • Daytime shotgun tracer ammunition developed

    Two companies collaborate to produce the world’s first non-pyrotechnic shotgun tracer; ChemiTracer creates a daytime visible trace that travels with the cloud of the shot allowing shooters instantly to determine how to correct their aim

  • Nuclear power making a come back

    If Germany, where most of the public is suspicious of nuclear power, plans to extend the life of its nuclear reactors, the world must have entered a new atomic age; indeed: around the world, more than 150 reactors with a total net capacity of almost 170,000 megawatts are planned and more than 340 more are proposed, according to the World Nuclear Association

  • India's ambitious thorium-based nuclear energy plans

    With 40 percent of its population not yet connected to the electricity grid and an economy growing by about 8 percent each year, India’s ambitious 3-stage energy security plan includes exploiting the country’s vast reserves of thorium; India could thus find itself a leading global exporter of an alternative nuclear technology that is more efficient than today’s uranium-plutonium fuel cycle

  • Cold water-pumping submarines to reduce ferocity of typhoons

    Typhoon intensity tends to remain level when ocean surface temperatures are high; reduction in the surface-water temperature would reduce the ferocity of the typhoon; Japanese company receives a patent for a typhoon-intensity-reduction system based on submarines pumping cold water from the depth of the sea to the surface in the typhoon’s path

  • DARPA to put manufacturing equipment in 1,000 high schools

    DARPA launches a $10 million program aiming to put manufacturing equipment in 1,000 high schools around the world; the program will challenge students to design and build things like go-carts, mobile robots, and small unmanned aircraft; while the program is aimed at bolstering the U.S. manufacturing industry, DARPA wants international students to participate as well

  • Japan develops vehicle motor free of rare Earth elements

    More than 90 percent of rare earths worldwide are produced in China; China had restricted exports of crucial rare Earth elements in order to cripple certain segments of the economies of other industrial countries; in response, Japanese automakers develop new engines

  • U.K. aerospace students to build human-powered aircraft

    Final year aerospace engineering students at the University of Bath, too, will be following in the footsteps of Leonardo da Vinci, designing and building a human-powered aircraft as part of their degree

  • Is rare Earth elements war in the offing?

    China has just 37 percent of the world’s estimated reserves of rare Earth elements (REEs), but a whopping 97 per cent of world production of REEs now comes from China; only a few other countries have REEs on their territory, but environmental and cost issues have so far made mining REES unattractive; the biggest threat may come from the availability of elements needed in agriculture, most particularly phosphorus

  • Livermore scientists to begin fusion quest before end of month

    Before the end of the month, scientists at Livermore’s National Ignition Facility will conduct an experiment backed by billions of dollars — and which promises to change the world’s energy supply; the scientists are preparing to meet an end-of-month deadline for the first set of experiments in the final stretch of a national effort to achieve the long-sought goal of fusion — a reaction in which more energy is released than put into it

  • Space plane that takes off from runway ready in 10 years

    An unpiloted, air-breathing space plane that takes off from an airport runway and carries up to thirty passengers could be ready to fly in ten years; it will cost an estimated $12 billion to develop the space plane, and an additional $10 million per launch, compared to the approximately $150 million cost of a rocket launch; the company predicts that a trip to orbit for two weeks would cost tourists about $500,000 per seat