IAI’s Taxibot is a a tow-bar-less robotic tractor that would allow both wide and narrow body commercial airplanes to taxi to and from the gate and the runway without using their jet engines, while remaining under full pilot control at all times and removing all hazards to ground vehicle drivers. Unlike systems like Wheeltug, the system requires no modifications to airliner fleets. It does share the advantage of letting the pilot move and steer the aircraft on the ground, using the same controls and motions they’ve been trained to use during full engine maneuvers.

The Taxibot demonstrator is currently powered by 2 diesel engines, which drives 6 hydraulic motors in a typical “one in each wheel” hydrostatic drive architecture. For the prototype and serial production, IAI says that other hybrid electric solutions will be considered.

EADS and IAI report that an initial evaluation of this concept has shown promising results. IAI believes “Taxibot” could reduce annual fuel costs from $8 billion to less than $2 billion, CO2 emissions from 18 million tons to less than 2 million tons per year, and noise emissions by a significant margin. That last component is a less attention getting environmental component, but its significance will rise. The US Department of Transportation-led study “Trends in Global Aviation Noise and Emissions from Commercial Aviation for 2000 to 2025″ predicted that despite noise level improvements in next-generation airplanes, the number of people forced to deal with serious aircraft noise will rise from 24 million in 2000 to 30.3 million by 2025.

A June 2009 Memorandum of Understanding between IAI and EADS aims to take the next steps, and validate Taxibot’s potential. Airbus will participate in the feasibility studies, using an Airbus-owned A340-600 long haul airliner as the test subject. In addition to the ground tests in Toulouse, France, the MoU assessment phase will also cover regulatory, legal/product liability, environmental, and financial evaluations.

If all goes well during those 2009 assessments and subsequent operational demonstrations, IAI and EADS would look to a 3-way partnership with a vehicle manufacturer, in order to certify, produce, and sell Taxibot tractors to airports. Under current plans, Taxibot would be ready for first deliveries by the Q3 2011.

For a transmitter and receiver of one square meter each, a meter apart, with a power of P = 1 W, the information rate is 1.61 X 10^21 bits per second. Note that the information rate increases as P^3/4, slightly slower than linear. It also increases with the area of the transmitter and receiver, so that the best information rate for a given energy budget is achieved for large antennas and low apparent temperature.

It has been well known since the pioneering work of Claude Shannon in the 1940s that a message transmitted with optimal eciency over a channel of limited bandwidth is indistinguishable from random noise to a receiver who is unfamiliar with the language in which the message is written. We derive some similar results about electromagnetic transmissions. In particular, we show that if electromagnetic radiation is used as a transmission medium, the most information-ecient format for a given message is indistinguishable from black-body radiation. The characteristic temperature of the radiation is set by the amount of energy used to make the transmission. If information is not encoded in the direction of the radiation, but only in its timing, energy, and polarization, then the most ecient format has the form of a one-dimensional black-body spectrum.

Fundamental studies indicate that even quantum computers cannot help, whenever they are used as general-purpose machines, because their Joule/bit energy dissipation limit is about 1000 times greater than that of classical computing. Neither processors built of single electron transistors can be expected to provide better results unless the quantum dot size goes to the sub-nanometer range which would be an extraordinarily heavy toll on reliability and lifetime.

In our system, the noise is used as information carrier and no effort is made to restore the energy dissipated in the communicator devices. Therefore, this communicator is not energy-free communication but it is free of emitted signal energy. Zero (signal) power classical communication can utilize the modulation of background thermal noise in the information channel and zero-quantum quantum communication can utilize the modulation of the zero-point fluctuations in the quantum channel

D-Wave believes it could beat today's best methods for approximating the solution to difficult optimization problems in financial engineering, logistics, machine learning, and bioinformatics, either by getting the same answer faster or getting a more exact solution.

David DiVincenzo, a leading quantum computing expert at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center, in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., says that "there has yet to be an established methodology for how [adiabatic quantum computation] could function fault tolerantly," that is, with effective error correction.

Umesh Vazirani, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, says D-Wave hasn't taken into account the need to control the rate of the adiabatic process. "Running the adiabatic algorithm without this 'tuning' gives no speedup," he says.

"This will never work—if you define ‘never’ as ‘not in 20 years."—Robert W. Lucky

D-Wave's investors are happy with the company's progress. "Quite happy," says Steve Jurvetson, a director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson.

Hartmut Neven, a Google scientist who is using D-Wave's computer to design and test image-recognition algorithms, says the company is taking a "very sensible approach" and has "a very good chance at getting it to work."

Rose says the collaboration with Google shows that the company is tackling real-world problems, even if it's at the proof-of-concept level. "Our ultimate objective is to build systems with spectacular performance on these sorts of problems," he says.

That’s an enormous quantity of land—almost as much as the country now devotes to farming. And even if you covered all that land with switchgrass, it wouldn’t produce enough fuel to supply the country’s diesel trucks and buses, its jet aircraft, or the homes and businesses that use petroleum for heating fuel.

Carpeting the continent with enough switchgrass to displace all that petroleum use is theoretically possible—but it would be an environmental catastrophe on many counts.

Strict U.S. regulations may save forests from being replaced by fields of switchgrass, but elsewhere in the world trees would inevitably be chopped down, either to make way for biofuel feedstock or to grow the crops that switchgrass displaces elsewhere. For this reason alone, DDCE’s project is destined to be a loser, even if it one day proves a commercial success.

Gallium nitride substrates haven't improved substantially, either, nor has the yield of the laser chips grown on those substrates. Clearly, the company that finds a way to make better growth platforms at lower prices will not only cash in for itself but also lift the entire industry.

A lot of big materials suppliers are in the race, but a dark horse called NanoGaN seems likely to win it. The company, a spin-out from the electrical engineering department of the University of Bath, in England, can make gallium nitride substrates of high quality—and what's more, it can recycle them, saving scarce and costly gallium.

The market analysis firms Strategy Analytics, Strategies Unlimited, and Yole Développement differ widely in their estimates of the current size of the market for gallium nitride substrates, from a low of $124 million to a high of $515 million, but all three firms agree that the rate of growth will average in the double digits over the next five years. If so, the market NanoGaN will be tapping into could be worth from $172 million to $800 million by 2013.

NanoGaN's substrate will do far more than provide a more efficient platform for the growth of the 5- to 8-milliwatt, 405-nanometer-wavelength lasers used to read discs in Blu-ray players and game consoles. It should also aid the production of much more powerful 150- to 200-mW violet lasers, which the industry needs for its next challenge: to read the four pairs of layers in a 200-gigabyte high-definition DVD. Future laser printers will use violet lasers instead of today's red ones, allowing them to double the print quality to 1200 dots per inch; a blue version of the lasers will still be used in tiny, portable color projectors.

According to Peter Choi, nanoUV’s president and director of technology, the source has two plasmas—a very hot, tiny one surrounded by a cylindrical one. The farther you move from the center, the cooler the outer plasma becomes, dropping to a positively brisk 10 000 kelvin at the rim. As the density increases, the index of refraction decreases, which means the EUV rays bend more at the edges than in the middle, thus converging on a point. The device requires more input power than the leading light source candidates, Choi says, but because it’s just a few centimeters long, hundreds of sources can be ”multiplexed” in a many-headed ”Hydra” pattern for greater output power and brightness.

”The question is: What are they going to do with the X-ray ’lightbulb’ when they perfect it? The real problem is the X-ray mask. The thin chrome of current masks cannot stop X-rays, and the thick quartz substrates do block them—hence the need for exotic masks. But the dimensional control and temperature coefficients are showstoppers for those masks.”

Beyond the energy savings, there are substantial environmental benefits. According to Drew Hazelton, principal engineer and project lead for SuperPower, “Conventional transformers are filled with toxic and flammable oil for cooling. Approximately one transformer catches fire or explodes each day in the United States. A FCL superconducting transformer mitigates both of these risks because it is cooled with liquid nitrogen, an inexpensive, readily available and benign substance that will result in a safer and ‘green’ device.”

Protecting the electrical grid from faults that result from lightning strikes, downed power lines and other system interruptions is critical to ensure a safe and reliable flow of power for consumers. By incorporating fault current limiting capability, the transformer is better able to handle fault currents that may arise from the Smart Grid goal of accommodating new generation and energy storage options such as renewable energy resources like wind and photovoltaic systems. The fault current limiting feature of the transformer provides critical protection and significantly reduces wear and tear for circuit breakers and other power equipment in existing substations. This reduces capital equipment costs for replacement or upgrade of such equipment and provides flexibility in routing power during emergency situations.

All power transformers are large, heavy, expensive, and generally use a paper/oil–based or hybrid paper/oil/solid insulation system. High-side voltage levels range from 35 to 765 kV. Prices for even the smallest units approach $100K, and several 100–200 MVA units easily sell for $1M. The large (up to 1100 MVA) GSU and HV transmission units are now approaching $3–5M or higher. Medium-power transformers for use in conventional substations have a nominal price of about $600K for a 50-MVA unit, but prices vary according to specifications, such as desired loss level and associated value of losses (A and B factors), impedance requirements, tap changers, cooling requirements, and accessories.

High-side voltages range from 35 to 245 kV with sizes ranging from 5 MVA to 100 MVA. Estimates by transformer manufacturers indicate that there are roughly 500 to 600 mobile transformers in service (slightly greater than 1% of the medium-power transformer inventory). Some of these transformers are quite old but are still serviceable because the number of hours that the mobile transformers are used is much lower than that of fixed installations.

Peak electricity demand in the United States in 2004 was 700 GW (NERC, 2005). Assuming that an average of 2.5 medium- or large-power transformations are required from power plant to distribution system and an average size of 35 MVA per transformer, this suggests that there are roughly 50,000 high- and medium-voltage transformers in the United States.

Given a total installed market of 50,000 transformers, a 2% growth rate in electricity demand would require an additional 1000 transformers each year even without a replacement market.

MTS (mobile transformers and mobile substations) systems can serve a vital role in protecting the Nation’s electrical infrastructure. Their flexibility allows them to switch from one purpose to another relatively easily. When needed, the MTS enables temporary restoration of grid service while circumventing damaged substation equipment, allowing time to procure certain long lead-time grid components.

However, for seamless continuity of operation, it is critical that there is virtually a continuous supply of electricity. This can only occur through uninterruptible power supplies (e.g. batteries), redundant power feeds, and on-site generation. Yet, where disruption is prolonged due to equipment failure or total destruction from a war or act of terrorism, and especially where the problems are isolated to the substation, the MTS can play a critical role in reestablishing grid connections.

Gluthathione Reductase (GOR) from Colwellia psychrerythraea was cloned and overexpressed in E coli and is cold active.
[Times were from a late 2006 timeframe, but even if delayed this type of research looks workable in the timeframes]
They are putting GOR into plants and selecting the transformed plants over the next 10 months.
Develop plants to resist ROS stress under extreme environment of low Oxygen and pressure. This is for the next 3 years
Produce transgenic plants with improved growth and productivity at low temperature and water availability. This is targeted for 5 years time.

Having dealt with computation, now we get to the algorithm side of things. One of the big things influencing me this year has been learning about how much we understand about how the brain works, in particular, how much we know that should be of interest to AGI designers. I won’t get into it all here, but suffice to say that just a brief outline of all this information would be a 20 page journal paper (there is currently a suggestion that I write such a paper next year with some Gatsby Unit neuroscientists, but for the time being I’ve got too many other things to attend to). At a high level what we are seeing in the brain is a fairly sensible looking AGI design. You’ve got hierarchical temporal abstraction formed for perception and action combined with more precise timing motor control, with an underlying system for reinforcement learning. The reinforcement learning system is essentially a type of temporal difference learning though unfortunately at the moment there is evidence in favour of actor-critic, Q-learning and also Sarsa type mechanisms — this picture should clear up in the next year or so. The system contains a long list of features that you might expect to see in a sophisticated reinforcement learner such as pseudo rewards for informative queues, inverse reward computations, uncertainty and environmental change modelling, dual model based and model free modes of operation, things to monitor context, it even seems to have mechanisms that reward the development of conceptual knowledge. When I ask leading experts in the field whether we will understand reinforcement learning in the human brain within ten years, the answer I get back is “yes, in fact we already have a pretty good idea how it works and our knowledge is developing rapidly.”

Shane's mode is about 2025, my expected value is actually a bit higher at 2028. This is not because I’ve become more pessimistic during the year, rather it’s because this time I’ve tried to quantify my beliefs more systematically and found that the probability I assign between 2030 and 2040 drags the expectation up. Perhaps more useful is my 90% credibility region, which from my current belief distribution comes out at 2018 to 2036.

Molecular nanotechnology/nanofactories will not be developed in a basement. The implementation problems will involve complex devices and extensive laboratory facilities, they will be most effectively addressed by large teams of diverse and well-funded specialists.

Another idea that should be dropped, the idea of a direct leap from accessible, starting-point technologies to the most advanced technologies that have been discussed.

Problems of perception and organization are the chief obstacles to more rapid progress in developing molecular machine technologies on the critical path to fulfilling the promise that launched the field of nanotechnology.

Available technologies now enable the design and fabrication of intricate, atomically precise nanometer-scale objects made from a versatile engineering polymer, together with intricate, atomically precise, 100-nanometer scale frameworks that can be used to organize these objects to form larger 3D structures. These components can and have been designed to undergo spontaneous, atomically precise self assembly. Together, they provide an increasingly powerful means for organizing atomically precise structures of million-atom size, with the potential of incorporating an even wider range of functional components.

The nanometer-scale objects that I mentioned above have nylon-like backbones that link and organize an extraordinarily diverse set of molecular components to form structural elements, electronic devices, and machines. The problem is that because they are traditionally called “protein molecules” their nature is obscured by a powerful association with food. The frameworks have a similar representativeness-heuristic problem: “DNA” makes one think of genetic information in cells, but structural DNA nanotechnology uses it as a construction material.

We now have in hand the engineering materials for a new, breakthrough class of nanosystems, yet the bug in our minds whispers “meat” and “genes”. And even in more sophisticated minds, the biological origin of the these materials encourages the seductive idea that their engineering is a task that can be left to biologists. Developing complex, functional systems, however, is quite unlike studying complex, functional systems that already exist. In science, nature provides the pattern. In engineering, human beings provide the pattern. The difference in tasks and mindsets is profound.

The productive nanosystems I refer to above are, of course, ribosomes and nucleic acid polymerases, the programmable molecular machines that assemble polypeptide and polynucleotide chains. In making these polymers, productive nanosystems assemble monomers of different kinds in sequences specified by information encoded in the sequences of (other) polynucleotides, and these sequences determine how, for example, a foldamer product will fold and the functions that the resulting component can perform.

Advances along these lines can support the development of artificial productive nanosystems that are specialized to produce complex, atomically precise components of new kinds. The most accessible advances in this direction would be devices that expand the range of available foldamers. Clever exploitation of existing productive nanosystems has already expanded the range of products by enabling the use of a wider range of monomeric building blocks; new productive nanosystems could add the ability to build foldamers of wholly new kinds that offer (for example) stiffer backbones and greater chemical and physical stability.

The productive nanosystems in use today can operate only in aqueous environments, and their products are usually (but not always) used under the same conditions. I expect that next-generation productive nanosystems built from components of this sort will also be constrained to operate in aqueous environments. For chemical reasons, the presence of water limits the range of fabrication operations that these devices can perform, but these constraints allow more than one might suppose. Within the scope are not only novel foldamers and highly cross-linked 2D and 3D polymeric nanostructures, but also high-modulus inorganic solids, such as metal oxides and pyrite. Even metals and semiconductors are within the scope of aqueous synthesis.

The ability to make better and more robust components will, of course, enable the fabrication of better and more robust products, including better and more robust productive nanosystems that are not constrained to operate in aqueous environments. And these, of course, will provide means for working with a wider range of materials, enabling the production of components and systems that are even better. The expanded scope of component fabrication can be applied to improve Brownian assembly, but constrained Brownian assembly will become more practical and desirable as fabrication technologies advance.

Note that graphenes, carbon nanotubes, and related structures are locally 2D, and can be regarded as extreme cases of “highly cross-linked polymeric nanostructures”. The useful electronic and mechanical properties of these materials are legendary, and they also work well as low-friction nanoscale moving parts. With the aid of nanoscale arrays of catalytic particles, materials of this class have been synthesized at room temperature.

A productive nanosystem can build chains by controlling positions in just one dimension, extending a 1D chain by adding monomers to the end. A mechanism of a similar kind, with essentially 1D control could extend a 2D sheet by stepping along an edge, adding monomers to the end of a row. In some implementations, devices of this sort could be simpler than a ribosome.

To extend a complex structure with a 3D bond network, however, will typically require adding building blocks of specific kinds at specific locations across a 2D surface. This will typically require a mechanism that can step through a series of positions with two degrees of freedom — a step toward greater complexity

Annex I Parties to the Convention commit to reducing their emissions individually or jointly by at least 80 per cent by 2050. They also commit to implement individually or jointly the quantified economy-wide emissions targets for 2020 as listed in appendix l, yielding in aggregate reductions of greenhouse gas emissions of X per cent in 2020 compared to 1990 and Y per cent in 2020 compared to 2005. Annex I Parties that are Party to the Kyoto Protocol will thereby further strengthen the emissions reductions initiated by the Kyoto Protocol. Delivery of reductions and financing by developed countries will be measured, reported and verified in accordance with existing and any further guidelines adopted by the Conference of Parties, and will ensure that accounting of such targets and finance is rigorous, robust and transparent.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., warned about that possibility two days ago when he first arrived in Copenhagen, saying that without a solid deal it would be "exceedingly difficult" to persuade fence-sitting lawmakers to get on board with the kind of emissions-curbing legislation that passed the House months ago.

A compromise climate and energy bill drafted by a trio of U.S. senators will emphasize investment in clean energy, expanded offshore drilling and nuclear power as well as a greenhouse gas emissions cut of 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020.

The encouragement of nuclear power and expanded domestic oil and gas production are clearly aimed at garnering at least some Republican support. But the framework does not provide details, including the scope and location of “expanded drilling” in the U.S. and the amount of federal loan guarantees that might be available for nuclear power plants.

We’re pretty lucky to be here during this rare, warm period in climate history. But the broader lesson is, climate doesn’t stand still. It doesn’t even stand stay on the relatively constrained range of the last 10,000 years for more than about 10,000 years at a time.

Does this mean that CO2 isn’t a greenhouse gas? No.

Does it mean that it isn’t warming? No.

Does it mean that we shouldn’t develop clean, efficient technology that gets its energy elsewhere than burning fossil fuels? Of course not. We should do all those things for many reasons — but there’s plenty of time to do them the right way, by developing nanotech. (There’s plenty of money, too, but it’s all going to climate science at the moment. ) And that will be a very good thing to have done if we do fall back into an ice age, believe me.

For climate science it means that the Hockey Team climatologists’ insistence that human-emitted CO2 is the only thing that could account for the recent warming trend is probably poppycock.

The more the warming falls into a documented natural range of temperature variation, the harder it is to portray it as requiring man-made forcings to explain. This is also the exact same reason alarmist scientists work so hard to eliminate the Medieval Warm Period and little ice age from the temperature record. Again, the goal is to show that natural variation is in a very narrow range, and deviations from this narrow range must therefore be man-made.

When projected back to pre-industrial CO2 levels, these future forecasts imply that we should have seen 2,3,4 or more degrees of warming over the last century, and even the flawed surface temperature records we are discussing with a number of upwards biases and questionable adjustments only shows about 0.6C.

Sure, there are some time delay issues, probably 10-15 years, as well as some potential anthropogenic cooling from aerosols, but none of this closes these tremendous gaps. Even with an exaggerated temperature history, only the no feedback 1C per century case is really validated by history. And, if one assumes the actual warming is less than 0.6C, and only a part of that is from anthropogenic CO2, then the actual warming forecast justified is one of negative feedback, showing less than 1C per century warming from manmade CO2 — which is EXACTLY the case that most skeptics make.

The UK Government sets out details today of a £9 billion plan to introduce smart meters in all 26 million British homes by 2020. However, the company (BP) advising the Government on the technology said yesterday that there was no reason “in principle” why the introduction could not be completed four years ahead of the government schedule.

Consumers will be rewarded for using energy-hungry appliances such as dishwashers and tumble dryers at off-peak times, such as between 1am and 5am, allowing for a reduction in the total number of power stations needed to power Britain.

Inaccurate billing should also end because suppliers would receive exact data.

Mr Abbosh said: “The rapid roll-out of smart meters is critical if they are to help address the generation gap forecast for 2014 to 2017, as meters will help reduce and manage consumption. We expect the industry to be ready for mass deployment by 2013, so full deployment by 2016 is possible, albeit challenging.”

Mr Svanberg also said that large chunks of global air, road and rail passenger traffic could be removed through the use of teleconferencing and telecommuting.

“We continue to travel the world just to have meetings . . . [but] you can replace an awful lot of meetings with teleconferencing.”

Transport accounts for 14 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. The bulk of these are from road transport, at 76 per cent of total transport emissions, and aviation, at 12 per cent

A unique electricity generation process uses natural gas and solid oxide fuel cells at high electrical efficiency (74%HHV) and zero atmospheric emissions. The process contains a steam reformer heat-integrated with the fuel cells to provide the heat necessary for reforming. The fuel cells are powered with H2 and avoid carbon deposition issues. 100% CO2 capture is achieved downstream of the fuel cells with very little energy penalty using a multi-stage flash cascade process, where high-purity water is produced as a side product. Alternative reforming techniques such as CO2 reforming, autothermal reforming, and partial oxidation are considered. The capital and energy costs of the proposed process are considered to determine the levelized cost of electricity, which is low when compared to other similar carbon capture-enabled processes.

This product will be good for the environment and will reduce animal suffering. If it feels and tastes like meat, people will buy it.

“You could take the meat from one animal and create the volume of meat previously provided by a million animals.”

The scientists extracted cells from the muscle of a live pig and then put them in a broth of other animal products. The cells then multiplied and created muscle tissue. They believe that it can be turned into something like steak if they can find a way to artificially "exercise" the muscle.

The reason why even the Guardian's George Monbiot has expressed total shock and dismay at the picture revealed by the documents is that their authors are not just any old bunch of academics. Their importance cannot be overestimated, What we are looking at here is the small group of scientists who have for years been more influential in driving the worldwide alarm over global warming than any others, not least through the role they play at the heart of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The senders and recipients of the leaked CRU emails constitute a cast list of the IPCC's scientific elite, including not just the "Hockey Team", such as Dr Mann himself, Dr Jones and his CRU colleague Keith Briffa, but Ben Santer, responsible for a highly controversial rewriting of key passages in the IPCC's 1995 report; Kevin Trenberth, who similarly controversially pushed the IPCC into scaremongering over hurricane activity; and Gavin Schmidt, right-hand man to Al Gore's ally Dr James Hansen, whose own GISS record of surface temperature data is second in importance only to that of the CRU itself.

Garrett treats civilization like a "heat engine" that "consumes energy and does 'work' in the form of economic production, which then spurs it to consume more energy," he says.

"If society consumed no energy, civilization would be worthless," he adds. "It is only by consuming energy that civilization is able to maintain the activities that give it economic value. This means that if we ever start to run out of energy, then the value of civilization is going to fall and even collapse absent discovery of new energy sources."

Garrett says his study's key finding "is that accumulated economic production over the course of history has been tied to the rate of energy consumption at a global level through a constant factor."

That "constant" is 9.7 (plus or minus 0.3) milliwatts per inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar. So if you look at economic and energy production at any specific time in history, "each inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar would be supported by 9.7 milliwatts of primary energy consumption," Garrett says.

Garrett tested his theory and found this constant relationship between energy use and economic production at any given time by using United Nations statistics for global GDP (gross domestic product), U.S. Department of Energy data on global energy consumption during 1970-2005, and previous studies that estimated global economic production as long as 2,000 years ago. Then he investigated the implications for carbon dioxide emissions.

Another expert feels that the steps announced by US are meaningless. "The US has announced an absolute reduction target of 17% below 2005 levels, by 2020. This means a mere 3% reduction below 1990 levels. Science demands that developed countries cut emission by 40% below 1990 levels. In fact, the US proposal is a death-knell for the Kyoto Protocol, which in its first commitment period had asked for more -- 5.2% reduction over 1990 levels," said Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment.

Jiangxi Provincial government announced during the conference that the the province would cooperate with the Finland government to build a low carbon eco-city in Gongqing city by the Poyang Lake,China's largest freshwater lake.

The city covering six square kilometers was designed to accommodate 100,000 residents. The project will begin at the beginning of 2010 and be completed in 2013.

"China's urbanization process will bring millions of rural people into the cities. How to build cities for sustainable development is a challenge to China," said Mauri Tommila, whose company, Finland's DigiEcoCity Ltd, joined the eco-city project.

The company will build another eco-city in east China's Jiangsu Province and had begun negotiation with Shanghai and Beijing Municipal government for more eco-city plans, Tommila said.

Mohne Dam bombed on the night of May 16/17 1943. The attack successfully breached the dam and caused widespread loss of life and destruction. almost 1,300 people died in the floods following the dam bombing, many of them Ukrainian women and children, trapped in a German prisoner of war camp below the Mohne dam.

The resulting huge floodwave killed at least 1579 people, 1026 of them foreign forced labourers held in camps downriver. The small city of Neheim-Hüsten was particularly hard-hit with over 800 victims, among them at least 526 victims in a camp for Russian women held for forced labour

The overall goal of this project is to demonstrate a cost-effective membrane-based process to capture CO2 from coal-fired power plant flue gas. The process will reduce power plant CO2 emissions and mitigate the potentially damaging effects of global warming. This project will provide a demonstration of CO2 capture from actual coal-fired flue gas with a membrane system using commercial-scale components. Results from this field test will provide key performance data to allow a thorough technical and economic evaluation of the proposed membrane process. The impact of system scale-up and the development of low-cost components on the capture process economics will be determined. The endpoint and primary technical objective of the program will be to complete a field test of MTR’s [Membrane Technology & Research] CO2 capture membrane process at a coal-fired power plant.

The objective of the proposed two-year research and development program is to develop, test, and validate a membrane process capable of effectively and efficiently capturing >90% of the CO2 from coal-fired power plant flue gas in the temperature range of 50-60 °C. The testing will include a slipstream field test of MTR’s membrane process using commercial modules to treat coal combustion flue gas.

Bakajin and Noy’s research originally focused on using carbon nanotubes as a less expensive solution to desalination. The technique involves a nanotube membrane on a silicon chip the size of a quarter that may offer a cheaper way to remove salt from water. The Livermore team created a membrane made of carbon nanotubes and silicon that may offer, among many possible applications, a less expensive desalination method.

Livermore’s carbon nanotubes will be integrated into polymer membranes to increase the flux of carbon dioxide capture membranes by two orders of magnitude. The technology could enable much less expensive carbon capture from coal plants.

They make a token attempt to price in storage (e.g., compressed air for solar PV, hot salts for CSP). But tellingly, they never say HOW MUCH storage they are costing in this analysis (see table 6 of tech paper), nor how much extra peak generating capacity these energy stores will require in order to be recharged, especially on low yield days (cloudy, calm, etc). Yet, this is an absolutely critical consideration for large-scale intermittent technologies, as Peter Lang has clearly demonstrated here. Without factoring in these sort of fundamental ‘details’ — and in the absence of crunching any actual numbers in regards to the total amount of storage/backup/overbuild required to make WWS 24/365 — the whole economic and logistical foundation of the grand WWS scheme crumbles to dust. It sum, the WWS 100% renewables by 2030 vision is nothing more than an illusory fantasy. It is not a feasible, real-world energy plan.

Jacobson and Delucchi are willing to forecast such optimistically low costs for future solar, then we can be quite comfortable doing the same for IFR (Integral Fast Reactors) and LFTR (Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors), the Gen IV nuclear

"The theoretical efficiency of iron sulfide is 31 percent. That's as good as silicon," says Wadia. What's more, 20 nanometers of pyrite can absorb as much light as 300 micro?meters of silicon. Because it absorbs so much more light, it can be made into thinner cells, which require less raw material.

Fuel reprocessing, like GE Hitachi's electrometallurgical process, was the area of the technology that was least well proven, Hore-Lacy said.

Abram agreed, saying: "On a relatively small scale, the electrometallurgical reprocessing technology has been shown to work."

"It's conceptually relatively easy to describe. But because the fuel is very radioactive, all of the fuel manufacturing operations would have to be done in very heavily shielded facilities, and remotely, using robotic manipulation. Nobody has demonstrated it at industrial scales yet."

GE Hitachi says it could develop the technology in 10-15 years as it has been working on it since the 1980s, partly funded by the U.S. government.

The ARC combines electrometallurgical processing and one or more sodium cooled fast burner reactors on a single site. This process produces power while alleviating the spent nuclear fuel burden from nuclear power generation.

The ARC starts with the separation of spent nuclear fuel into three components: 1) uranium that can be used in CANDU reactors or re-enriched for use in light water reactors; 2) fission products (with a shorter half life) that are stabilized in glass or metallic form for geologic disposal; and 3) actinides (the long lived radioactive material in SNF) which are used as fuel in the Advanced Recycling Reactor (ARR).

GEH has selected the electrometallurgical process to perform separations. The electrometallurgical process uses electric current passing through a salt bath to separate the components of Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF).

A major advantage of this process is that it is a dry process (the processing materials are solids at room temperature). This significantly reduces the risk of inadvertent environmental releases. Additionally, unlike traditional aqueous MOX separations technology, electrometallurgical separations does not generate separated pure plutonium making electrometallurgical separations more proliferation resistant. Electrometallurgical separations technology is currently widely used in the aluminum industry and has been studied and demonstrated in US National Laboratories as well as other research institutes around the world.

The actinide fuel (including elements such as plutonium, americium, neptunium, and curium) manufactured from the separations step is then used in GEH’s PRISM (Power Reactor Innovative Small Modular) advanced recycling reactor to produce electricity. PRISM is a reactor that uses liquid sodium as a coolant. This coolant allows the neutrons in the reactor to have a higher energy (sometimes called fast-reactors) that drive fission of the actinides, converting them into shorter lived “fission products.” This reaction produces heat energy, which is converted into electrical energy in a conventional steam turbine. Sodium cooled reactors are well developed and have safely operated at many sites around the world.

The ARC produces carbon-free base load electrical power. An ARC consists of an electrometallurgical separations plant and three power blocks of 622 MWe each for a total of 1,866 MWe. The sale of electricity will provide the revenues (private sector) to operate the ARC while supplemental income will be obtained from the sale of uranium (private sector) and the payment for SNF treatment (currently Government controlled).

Today, in the US there are approximately 100 nuclear power reactors in operation. Assuming that they each produce 20 tons of SNF a year for 60 years of operation, then the current fleet will produce 120,000 tons of SNF. 26 ARCs are capable of consuming the entire 120,000 tons of SNF. Additionally, they are capable of producing 50,000 MWe and avoiding the emission of 400,000,000 tons of CO2 every year.

In order to gain the confidence of utilities and financial markets that the regulatory and resource issues (personnel and materials) can be solved, a first of a kind ARC must be built at “full-scale.” A full-scale facility is a single reactor and 50 tons per year separations facility. This facility could be available as early as 2020. A well-managed US government sponsored program using US technology, US national laboratories and universities, and US companies can lead this process. The project will take approximately 10 years to complete. We estimate the total first of a kind cost for the Nuclear Fuel Recycling Center and a PRISM reactor (design, technology development, licensing, constructions, safety testing, etc.) is $3.2B thus requiring an average spend of $320M/yr with peak construction period requiring $700M. The first PRISM reactor could be fueled by excess Pu from the weapons stockpile, thus further reducing proliferation risk. This program will enable the US to lead the world nuclear community in demonstrating a sound approach to solving the problem of SNF, a solution that our national laboratories pioneered decades ago. The US taking action to build the GEH Advanced Recycling Center allows the US to capitalize on existing US funded technology and demonstrate US leadership in providing a safe, proliferation resistant method to close the nuclear fuel cycle.

Charcoal is traditionally made by burning wood in pits or temporary structures, but modern pyrolysis equipment greatly reduces the air pollution associated with this practice. Gases emitted from pyrolysis can be captured to generate valuable products instead of being released as smoke. Some of the by-products can be condensed into "bio-oil," a liquid that can be upgraded to fuels including biodiesel and synthesis gas. A portion of the noncondensable fraction is burned to heat the pyrolysis chamber, and the rest can provide heat or fuel an electric generator.

Pyrolysis equipment now being developed at several public and private institutions typically operate at 350–700°C. In Golden, Colorado, Biochar Engineering Corporation is building portable $50,000 pyrolyzers that researchers will use to produce 1–2 tons of biochar per week. Company CEO Jim Fournier says the firm is planning larger units that could be trucked into position. Biomass is expensive to transport, he says, so pyrolysis units located near the source of the biomass are preferable to larger, centrally located facilities, even when the units reach commercial scale.

Steiner and coauthors noted in the 2003 book Amazonian Dark Earths that the charcoal-mediated enhancement of soil caused a 280–400% increase in plant uptake of nitrogen.

Preliminary results in a greenhouse study showed that low-volatility [biochar] supplemented with fertilizer outperformed fertilizer alone by 60%.

Because the heat and chemical energy released during pyrolysis could replace energy derived from fossil fuels, the IBI calculates the total benefit would be equivalent to removing about 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year. That would offset 29% of today’s net rise in atmospheric carbon, which is estimated at 4.1 billion metric tons, according to the Energy Information Administration.

India is expected to generate 30,000 MW of nuclear energy by 2020, according to Baldev Raj, director, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR), at Kalpakkam.

Addressing the 23rd convocation at Shanmugha Arts, Science, Technology and Research Academy (SASTRA) University, here yesterday, he said the generation may go upto 400,000 MW by 2050. "Large amount of energy is needed for bring'' out changes in various fields in the country," Dr Raj said.