Tesla's Musk says to 'localise' China output: Xinhua
Shanghai (AFP) March 27, 2015 -
Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk said on Friday his company plans to "localise production" of electric cars in China over the next three years, state media reported.
"We have a strong long-term commitment to China and we tend to establish both local production and local engineering in China," he said in an interview with the official Xinhua news agency.
Localising production in China, as w ...
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Molecule from trees could make our roads and roofs greener
Denver CO (SPX) Mar 30, 2015 -
Construction crews may someday use a plant molecule called lignin in their asphalt and sealant mixtures to help roads and roofs hold up better under various weather conditions. It also could make them more environmentally friendly, according to a researcher at the 249th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).
The meeting, attended by thousands of scientists, ...
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Squeeze to remove heat with elastocaloric materials
Washington DC (SPX) Mar 30, 2015 -
Move over, vapor compression cooling technology. Emerging "elastocaloric" refrigeration is potentially much more efficient and, unlike vapor compression, relies on environmentally-friendly refrigerants. In elastocaloric materials a change in mechanical stress can create a change in temperature.
In the Journal of Applied Physics, from AIP Publishing, a team of researchers from Technical Uni ...
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New yeast strain to enhance biofuel and biochemical production
Austin TX (SPX) Mar 30, 2015 -
Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have used a combination of metabolic engineering and directed evolution to develop a new, mutant yeast strain that could lead to a more efficient biofuel production process that would make biofuels more economically competitive with conventional fuels. Their findings were published online in the journal Metabo ...
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UW scientists build a nanolaser using a single atomic sheet
Seattle WA (SPX) Mar 30, 2015 -
University of Washington scientists have built a new nanometer-sized laser - using the thinnest semiconductor available today - that is energy efficient, easy to build and compatible with existing electronics.
Lasers play essential roles in countless technologies, from medical therapies to metal cutters to electronic gadgets. But to meet modern needs in computation, communications, imaging ...
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Black hole winds pull the plug on star formation
Paris (ESA) Mar 30, 2015 -
Astronomers using ESA's Herschel space observatory have found that the winds blowing from a huge black hole are sweeping away its host galaxy's reservoir of raw star-building material. Found at the hearts of most galaxies, supermassive black holes are extremely dense and compact objects with masses between millions and billions of times that of our Sun.
Many are relatively passive, like th ...
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Artificial hand able to respond sensitively using smart metal wires
Saarbrucken, Germany (SPX) Mar 30, 2015 -
Engineers at Saarland University have taken a leaf out of nature's book by equipping an artificial hand with muscles made from shape-memory wire. The new technology enables the fabrication of flexible and lightweight robot hands for industrial applications and novel prosthetic devices.
The muscle fibres are composed of bundles of ultrafine nickel-titanium alloy wires that are able to tense ...
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Astronomers Upgrade Their Cosmic Light Bulbs
Pasadena CA (JPL) Mar 30, 2015 -
The brilliant explosions of dead stars have been used for years to illuminate the far-flung reaches of our cosmos. The explosions, called Type Ia supernovae, allow astronomers to measure the distances to galaxies and measure the ever-increasing rate at which our universe is stretching apart.
But these tools aren't perfect. In the cosmic hardware store of our universe, improvements are ongo ...
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A Year in Space
Washington DC (SPX) Mar 30, 2015 -
Two humans are getting ready to say farewell to Earth for nearly 12 months. On March 27, 2015, NASA astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian Cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko will launch to the International Space Station, beginning a one-year mission in space, testing the limits of human research, space exploration and the human spirit.
Most expeditions to the space station last four to six months. By ...
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Russia announces plan to build new space station with NASA
Moscow (AFP) March 28, 2015 -
Russia on Saturday announced initial plans to build a new orbital space station together with NASA to replace the International Space Station (ISS), which is set to operate until 2024.
Russia and NASA recently agreed to keep operating and financing the ISS until 2024, but future joint space projects have remained in doubt, as relations between Russia and the US have plunged to post-Cold War ...
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Manganese speeds up honey bees
St. Louis MO (SPX) Mar 30, 2015 -
Asked to name one way people have changed the environment, many people would probably say "global warming." But that's really just the start of it.
People burn fossil fuels, but they also mine and manufacture. It's who we are: Homo fabricus: man the maker. And as a side effect of our ingenuity and craft we have taken many metals originally buried safely in Earth's depths and strewn them ab ...
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Lightning injures 52 at Ecuador traffic police school
Quito (AFP) March 27, 2015 -
A lightning strike injured 52 people at a training school for traffic police near Quito, with 15 briefly hospitalized, officials said Friday.
"The candidates were in formation to enter the dining hall when they were struck by shock waves from lighting that hit the premises," the Metropolitan Transit Agency said in a statement.
Thirty-seven were treated at the scene of the incident late T ...
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Vietnam rice boom heaping pressure on farmers, environment
Can Tho, Vietnam (AFP) March 29, 2015 -
Rice farmer Nguyen Hien Thien is so busy growing his crops that he has never even visited Can Tho, a town only a few miles from his farm in the southern Mekong Delta.
"When I was a child, we grew one crop of rice per year - now it's three. It's a lot of work," 60-year-old Thien, who has been farming since he was a child, told AFP on the edge of his small paddy field.
Experts say Vietnam ...
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Did monkey business shape human society?
Buffalo, N.Y. (UPI) Mar 27, 2015 -
In the jungles of Sulawesi, an Indonesian island, primatologist Maura Tyrrell crouches to study the behavior of a crested black macaque, an endangered Old World monkey species. Tyrrell believes the monkeys - highly intelligent, playful and engaging - can shed light on the evolution of early human social structures.
Specifically, Tyrrell and her ongoing research suggests coalition-buil ...
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Future US Navy: robotic sub-hunters, deepsea pods
Washington (AFP) March 28, 2015 -
The robotic revolution that transformed warfare in the skies will soon extend to the deep sea, with underwater spy "satellites," drone-launching pods on the ocean floor and unmanned ships hunting submarines.
Officials at the US military's research agency outlined new programs this week that include a number of potentially groundbreaking technologies that could alter the way naval battles are ...
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Ground broken for Space Fence installation
Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands (UPI) Mar 24, 2015 -
Construction of facilities for the new Space Fence radar system has been started in the Marshall Islands by the U.S. Air Force and Lockheed Martin.
Space Fence is an S-band ground-based radar system. It will replace the 1960s Air Force Space Surveillance System to track objects in orbit around the Earth and increase the ability to predict and prevent space-based collisions.
"The ...
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50 years ago today, space welcomed its first sandwich
Washington (UPI) Mar 24, 2015 -
Fifty years ago, on March 23, 1965, space welcomed a sandwich - a corned beef sandwich, snuck aboard the Gemini 3 probe.
The sandwich was smuggled into space by NASA pilot John Young. Commander pilot Gus Grissom accompanied Young on the mission - the first manned Gemini mission and second manned U.S. space mission ever.
As Space.com reports, when Young pulled the sandwich from ...
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India's frugal Mars mission extended by six months
Bangalore, India (AFP) March 24, 2015 -
India's famously frugal Mars mission has been extended by around six months thanks to a surplus of fuel on board the spacecraft, the country's space agency said Tuesday.
The Mars Orbiter Mission spacecraft had been scheduled to wrap up its mission this month after India in September became the first Asian nation to reach the Red Planet, all on a shoe-string budget.
But scientists said th ...
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Mars has nitrogen, key to life: NASA
Washington (AFP) March 24, 2015 -
NASA's Curiosity rover has found nitrogen on the surface of Mars, a significant discovery that adds to evidence the Red Planet could once have sustained life, the space agency said Tuesday.
By drilling into Martian rocks, Curiosity found evidence of nitrates, compounds containing nitrogen that can be used by living organisms.
The Curiosity team has already found evidence that other ingre ...
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Intelsat EpicNG Completes Major Milestone on the Road to 2016 Launch
Luxembourg (SPX) Mar 22, 2015 -
Intelsat has announced the completion of a series of tests demonstrating the compatibility of the Intelsat EpicNG digital payload with existing ground equipment platforms. The digital payload is one of many unique design features on the company's Intelsat EpicNG satellites, the first of which, Intelsat 29e, is scheduled to launch in the first quarter of 2016.
As part of the tests, Intelsat ...
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An Ocean Of Bandwidth: KVH Connects More Ships At Sea With SES
Luxembourg (SPX) Mar 22, 2015 -
SES and KVH Industries have signed a new satellite capacity agreement to connect more ships traversing prime sea routes along the eastern coasts of Canada and the U.S. and throughout the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.
Under the multi-year agreement, KVH will use 36 MHz of Ku-band capacity aboard the SES-4 satellite to expand high-speed Internet access and Voice over IP services across i ...
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Beijing behind Internet security violation: group
Beijing (AFP) March 25, 2015 -
China's cyberspace administration is "complicit" in attacks on major Internet companies including Google, an anti-censorship group said Wednesday, calling on firms worldwide to step up their defences.
GreatFire.org, which operates websites seeking to circumvent China's vast censorship apparatus, pointed to statements by Google, Microsoft and Mozilla as showing the Chinese government was invo ...
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Galileo meets Galileo as launch draws near
Kourou, French Guiana (ESA) Mar 22, 2015 -
The seventh and eighth Galileo satellites, set for launch together in nine days' time, have been fitted together onto the dispenser that will carry them during their flight to orbit.
The fuelling of the two satellites was completed last week, leaving them ready to be placed into launch configuration. They were carefully lowered into place then attached to the dispenser.
The operation ...
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Proton launches Express AM-7 satellite for Russian Government
Baikonur, Kazakhstan (SPX) Mar 19, 2015 -
Lifting off from Baikonur at 01:05 am Moscow Time on Thursday, March 19, the Proton-M integrated launch vehicle (ILV) successfully orbited the Airbus DS-built Express AM-7 telecommunications satellite for Russian Satellite Communications Company (RSCC), under the Russian Federal Program, "Development of TV and Radio Broadcasting in the Russian Federation for 2009-2015". This second launch of 201 ...
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Global Eagle and SES sign capacity deals on three HTS satellites
Luxembourg (SPX) Mar 20, 2015 -
Satellite operator SES and Global Eagle Entertainment have announced they have signed important capacity deals for services on three SES satellites.
These agreements are part of a strategic partnership to deliver in-flight connectivity and services to airline passengers around the world.
Under the latest agreements, GEE will utilize Ku-band wide beam and High Throughput Satellite (HT ...
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