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Archive for the ‘economics’ category: Page 87

Dec 17, 2020

Hydropower Vision: New Report Highlights Future Pathways for U.S. Hydropower

Posted by in categories: business, economics, employment, energy, engineering

Hydropower has been around for more than a century, and is currently the nation’s largest source of clean, domestic, renewable electricity. What could its role look like in the year 2050?

Providing about 7 percent of the nation’s electricity, hydropower supports more than 143, 000 jobs in engineering, manufacturing, construction and utility operations and maintenance — all while improving the environment and strengthening our economy. Additionally, pumped-storage hydropower represents 97 percent of all energy storage in the United States, offering the flexibility and reliability the electricity grid needs to deliver affordable clean energy to American homes and businesses.

So what does the future of hydropower look like? To answer that question, over the past two years the Energy Department has collaborated with more than 300 experts from more than 150 hydropower industry companies, environmental organizations, state and federal governmental agencies, academic institutions, electric power system operators, research institutions and other stakeholders to explore how it could evolve in the coming decades.

Dec 9, 2020

Hyundai to acquire Boston Dynamics for nearly $1B

Posted by in categories: economics, robotics/AI

Boston Dynamics Atlas robot.

Hyundai Motor will acquire Boston Dynamics. The acquisition will be finalized at Hyundai’s December 10 board meeting. News about the deal was first reported by The Korea Economic Daily, which said the deal is for $921 million (1 trillion won). The Robot Report has also confirmed the news with a source familiar with the deal. The source said the acquisition is for about $1 billion.

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Dec 8, 2020

Research group has made a defect-resistant superalloy that can be 3D-printed

Posted by in categories: chemistry, economics, engineering, nuclear energy, particle physics, space

In recent years, it has become possible to use laser beams and electron beams to “print” engineering objects with complex shapes that could not be achieved by conventional manufacturing. The additive manufacturing (AM) process, or 3D printing, for metallic materials involves melting and fusing fine-scale powder particles—each about 10 times finer than a grain of beach sand—in sub-millimeter-scale “pools” created by focusing a laser or electron beam on the material.

“The highly focused beams provide exquisite control, enabling ‘tuning’ of properties in critical locations of the printed object,” said Tresa Pollock, a professor of materials and associate dean of the College of Engineering at UC Santa Barbara. “Unfortunately, many advanced metallic alloys used in extreme heat-intensive and chemically corrosive environments encountered in energy, space and nuclear applications are not compatible with the AM process.”

The challenge of discovering new AM-compatible materials was irresistible for Pollock, a world-renowned scientist who conducts research on advanced metallic materials and coatings. “This was interesting,” she said, “because a suite of highly compatible alloys could transform the production of having high economic value—i.e. materials that are expensive because their constituents are relatively rare within the earth’s crust—by enabling the manufacture of geometrically complex designs with minimal material waste.

Dec 8, 2020

Twitter billionaire Jack Dorsey gives U.S. mayors $15M to fund basic income

Posted by in category: economics

Dorsey has previously donated $3 million to the progressive cause.

Dec 2, 2020

Virginijus Sinkevičius, European Commissioner for Environment, Oceans and Fisheries

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, economics

Andrea Macdonald founder of ideaXme interviews Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius, European Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries.

The EU Commission @European Commission.

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Dec 2, 2020

Privacy Overview

Posted by in categories: chemistry, climatology, economics, law, sustainability

Warrior for our planet!

Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevicius:

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Nov 30, 2020

Making the First Martians: Building an Economy on Mars

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, economics, food, health, space

Welcome back to our series on Martian colonization! In Part I, we looked at the challenges and benefits of colonization. In Part II, we looked at what it would take to transport people to and from Mars. In Part III, we looked at how people could live there. Today, we will address the question of how people could establish an industrial base there.

If we intend to “go interplanetary” and establish a colony on Mars, we need to know how to address the long-term needs of the colonists. In addition to shelter, air, water, food security, and radiation shielding, the people will need to create an economy of sorts. The question is, what kind of industry would Mars support?

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Nov 26, 2020

China and Japan Race to Dominate Future of High-Speed Rail

Posted by in categories: economics, transportation

Japan and China are racing to build a new type of ultra-fast, levitating train, seeking to demonstrate their mastery over a technology with big export potential.

Magnetic levitation, or maglev, trains use powerful magnets to glide along charged tracks at super fast speeds made possible by the lack of friction. A handful of short distance and experimental maglev trains are already in operation, but Asia’s two biggest economies are vying to develop what would be the world’s first long-distance intercity lines.

Nov 25, 2020

Space or Earth? Both!

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, climatology, economics, policy, space, space travel, sustainability

While we are opening our preliminary discussion for the 3rd SRI World Congress, a number of questions and concerns are being expressed by the main space columnists, about what could be the philosophic setup of the space policy defined by the new US Administration, should it be confirmed the next December 14th. Though Joe Biden didn’t yet say very much about space policy, the most accredited plans foresee cuts to the budget of NASA’s manned space flight programs, in order to give more fuel to the observation of Earth, climate change, and environmental issues.

We are not against raising the budget to Earth observation programs, which are much needed in the current climatic and environmental situation. Besides Earth observation, space agencies should also begin considering the use of space technologies to mitigate the effects of the climate change and the environmental issues, i.e. active space strategies targeted to control the Earth climate.

However, the most important point to be duly focused is that the same priority granted to environmental space programs should be given to bootstrapping the geo-lunar space region settlement and industrialization. Space development is the primary strategy against the awful multi-crisis that is striking our globalized civilization: pandemics, economic, climatic-environmental, resource conflicts, migrations, unemployment.

Nov 23, 2020

The Economic Singularity: From Capitalism’s Unplanned Obsolescence to the New Transcendent Economy

Posted by in categories: economics, nanotechnology, singularity, sustainability, virtual reality

What if with the new wave of technologies, such as nanotechnology which would enable us to reprogram matter at a molecular level, we can overcome scarcity once and for all? Design would then become the most important part from start to end product which can be freely shared or have a premium in the marketplace. At any rate, this will dismantle the current social, economic, and political system, because it will become irrelevant; every institution, every value system, every aspect of our lives have been governed by scarcity: the problem of distributing a finite amount of “stuff.” There will be no need for any of today’s social institutions. In other words, when nanotech and ultra-realistic VR are commonplace, the system built on scarcity will crumble and that would herald the forthcoming “economic singularity.” #EconomicSiingularity


The current faltering economic model is suboptimal, hinders economic growth, and is not sustainable going forward.

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