I remember that ESA was looking into similar things for the Vulcain 2/2+ NE upgrade together with Volvo and other companies. Does anybody know about the status of that program (google does not ;-))?
The telepathic cyborg lives, sort of. University of Washington scientists Rajesh Rao and Andrea Stocco claim that they are the first to demonstrate human brain-to-brain communication. Rao sent a signal into a Stocco's brain via the Internet that caused him to move his right hand.
"Chemists have calculated that chains of double or triple-bonded carbon atoms, known as carbyne, should be stronger and stiffer than any known material."
We discussed this today during coffee. The inventor claims that he claims that a pressure differential can push hydrogen through a proton conductive membrane (thereby stripping off the electrons) which flow through an electric circuit and provide electric power. The type of membrane is fairly similar to that found in a hydrogen fuel cell. If the pressure differential is cause by selective heating this is in essence a heat engine that directly produces electricity. The inventor claims that this could be a high efficiency alternative to thermoelectric devices and could even outperform PV and Sterling engines with an efficiency close to that of fuel cells (e.g., ~60% @ dT=600K).
I could not find any scientific publications as the inventor is not affiliated to any University - he has however an impressive number of patents from a very wide field (e.g., the "Super Soaker" squirt gun) and has worked on several NASA and US military projects. His current research seams to be funded by the latter as well. Here are some more links that I found:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/shooting-for-the-sun/308268/http://www.johnsonems.com/?q=node/13http://scholar.google.nl/scholar?q=%22lonnie+g+johnson%22+&btnG=&hl=nl&as_sdt=0%2C5
High energy gamma rays are shown to be bent slightly by specialized lenses. The effect is likely due to pair-creation close to the atomic nuclei in the material.
It should not be impossible to verify a change in mass(es) over time. For example the electron cyclotron frequency scales ~e/m while the Hydrogen emission frequencies scale with ~m*e^4. Using multiple relationships like that which can be easily and accurately measured an increase in the mass of fundamental particles should - in principle - be detectable (even if the mass of the earth increases at the same time changing the relativistic reference frame).
The Russian government is purchasing typewriters to process sensitive documents to prevent theft of sensitive information. ?: Did they get this idea from Battlestar Galactica?
asm.js: it's really fast, backwards compatible, and now in the release version of Firefox.
"By doing this the result is highly optimized and can be converted directly from this Asm.js syntax directly into ASSEMBLY without having to interpret it, as one would normally have to do with JavaScript"
Here is great introduction to asm.js and C++ to js compilation:
http://ejohn.org/blog/asmjs-javascript-compile-target