Three new solar power plants planned for site near Sea of Japan
Tokyo (UPI) Jun 5, 2013 -
Japanese conglomerate Marubeni Corp. said Thursday it signed an agreement to build three solar power plants near the country's western coast.
Marubeni said it will build and operate three solar power plants in Niigata Prefecture on the coast of the Sea of Japan. Combined, the facilities would be able to produce 2,700 kilowatts of power.
"Marubeni will construct the environmentall ...
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Japan's SoftBank unveils 'family member' robot
Urayasu, Japan (AFP) June 05, 2014 -
Japan's SoftBank on Thursday unveiled what it billed as an "emotional" humanoid robot that will entertain customers at the mobile carrier's phone outlets - and maybe become a member of their family.
Company president Masayoshi Son joked around with the talking, dancing and singing humanoid named Pepper at an event just outside Tokyo.
The bug-eyed 120-centimetre (3.9-feet) tall robot ma ...
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Vietnam PM woos investors after riots
Hanoi (AFP) June 05, 2014 -
Vietnam's prime minister pledged Thursday to step up economic reforms and prevent a repeat of riots targeting foreign-owned factories, seeking to reassure nervous investors.
Nguyen Tan Dung said the mid-May unrest, in which Beijing says four Chinese workers were killed, was "unprecedented and unexpected".
"I can confirm that there will not be any more riots," he said at a business forum ...
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Developing world helps drive renewable energy capacity to global record
Toronto, Canada (SPX) Jun 04, 2014 -
The number of emerging economy nations with policies in place to support the expansion of renewable energy has surged more than six-fold in just eight years, from 15 developing countries in 2005 to 95 early this year. Those 95 developing nations today make up the vast majority of the 144 countries with renewable energy support policies and targets in place, says REN21's Renewables 2014 Global St ...
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Quantum criticality observed in new class of materials
Houston TX (SPX) Jun 05, 2014 -
Quantum criticality, the strange electronic state that may be intimately related to high-temperature superconductivity, is notoriously difficult to study. But a new discovery of "quantum critical points" could allow physicists to develop a classification scheme for quantum criticality - the first step toward a broader explanation.
Quantum criticality occurs in only a few composite crystall ...
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WSU researchers confirm 60-year-old prediction of atomic behavior
Pullman WA (SPX) Jun 04, 2014 -
Researchers at Washington State University have used a super-cold cloud of atoms that behaves like a single atom to see a phenomenon predicted 60 years ago and witnessed only once since. The phenomenon takes place in the seemingly otherworldly realm of quantum physics and opens a new experimental path to potentially powerful quantum computing.
Working out of a lab in WSU's Webster Hall, ph ...
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No evidence of the double nature of neutrinos
Munich, Germany (SPX) Jun 05, 2014 -
Neutrinos are tiny, neutral elementary particles that, contrary to the standard model of physics, have been proven to have mass. One possible explanation for this mass could be that neutrinos are their own antiparticles, so-called Majorana particles.
Though experimental evidence for this is still lacking, many theoretical extensions of the standard model of physics predict the Majorana nat ...
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