Synopsis: Banks & insurance:


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#Spectrom: A device that allows desktop 3d printers to print in color for less than $100 Full color printing is generally a privilege limited to professional and high-end consumer 3d printers,

so the more casual user is stuck likely printing in one or two colors. But Cédric Kovacs-Johnson and Charles Haider, both chemical engineering undergraduates at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, say they have come up with a solution:


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Tesla is selling debt (convertible senior notes) to the tune of between $1. 6 billion to $1. 8 billion to fund part of the battery factory,


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#Bitcoin is not only digital currency, it s Napster for finance Bitcoin will start its transformation from a mere currency into an entire open-source.

Bitcoin s valuation didn t just skyrocket in 2013, but its infrastructure, services, and adoption exploded as well,

and NBA team the Sacramento kings would accept the digital currency as payment.####Some still doubt#bitcoin s usefulness and durability,

but 2014 may leave skeptics even further behind developers and entrepreneurs are already hard at work building features on top of the Bitcoin protocol that will allow for the decentralized execution of financial services, from currency hedging to loans to stock

and record-keeping that has kept the bitcoin currency secure as its value ballooned well past $10 billion.

In the long term, peer-to-peer finance threatens to weaken banks and other financial agents just as peer-to-peer file sharing did the music industry

The Bitcoin protocol (crucially distinct from bitcoin, the currency it underlies) was built from the ground up to support far more complex transactions and relationships than simple value transfers.

with contracts enforced by digital locks interacting with the Bitcoin blockchain to manage real-world leases, mortgages, and purchase contracts.

That means loans without banks, contracts without lawyers, and stocks without brokers, executed and recorded across hundreds of servers at all corners of the earth.

while also subtracting conventional banking and brokerage fees. The most immediate function Middleton envisions for his system is for hedging bitcoin against existing national currencies.

With bitcoin s valuation still showing huge volatility Middleton claims the availability of distributed hedging will both ensure the value of bitcoin for individuals holding the asset

Given persistent skepticism, there should be plenty of takers to short bitcoin against the dollar.

Such hedging functions have particularly unique promise because of the extremely low transaction costs of peer-to-peer currency.

if a loan payment wasn made t on time. Mike Hearn, one of the main developers of the Bitcoin architecture alongside the mysterious Nakamoto, has said that any implementation of the concept is at least a decade away because of the need for hardware upgrades on physical goods. The functions that advocates say could be automated through the Bitcoin network

bitcoin s threat to existing financial institutions would still be substantial. But with a full array of commission-free financial services on the horizon, there is even more reason to take heed.

Middleton sounds a bit like an 18th-century pirate striking back against the Empire when he declares thatwhat

I m doing right now is a direct threat to fiat merchant banking. For him

excitement over value fluctuations in the bitcoin currency is missing the point: It s not a threat as people sit there

it is still difficult to exchange bitcoin for national currencies in a quick, reliable manner.

It s unclear how Middleton s automated dollar-bitcoin hedging will work without a lightning-quick and reliable dollar-bitcoin exchange platform.

Some financial institutions Zynis predicts, will be nimble enough to adapt. If I m an investment firm, do

So, all bankers and stockbrokers might not go the way of the coal miner, telephone operator, or record store clerk.


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-and-trade scheme this amount of CO2 equates to 8-14 million British pounds ($13-23 million) per year in carbon credits the researchers estimated.


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#German bank and EU offers funding to Chile mining power plant State owned German bank Kfw has said it is to advance a#100 million loan ($123 million),

The German bank announced an advancement of its loan in a statement today, the funding represents around 10%of the total investment that is estimated to be required for the power plant project.


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Plastic-bodied ELFS weigh only 150 pounds achieve 1800 mpg (the company says) and can reach 20 mph with 15 miles of electric range


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What more a single EZ-Charge card will give Leaf-ers access to stations run by Chargepoint Blink Carcharging Group NRG evgo and Aerovironment.

It 31 inches tall weighs less than 200 pounds and can be wall-mounted. Businesses and municipalities that partner with BMW will be able to buy the charger

BMW's fast charger weighs less than 200 pounds and can be mounted on the wall. Photo:


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compared with multimillion-dollar missiles, Navy officials said.""At less than a dollar per shot, there's no question about the value Laws provides,

"Klunder said.""With affordability a serious concern for our defense budgets, this will more effectively manage resources to ensure our sailors


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The military research agency launched the Revolutionizing Prosthetics program in 2006 with the goal of developing a prosthetic device"to repay some of the debt we owe to our service members"


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The Launcherone rocket while still in the design and testing phase hopes to eventually deliver payloads from 250 pounds to 500 pounds into space for less than $10 million per flight.


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everybody has a home theater that would have cost tens of thousands of dollars just a few years ago.


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If there are data to back up these decisions it's based on an engineer traffic counts or an estimator dollar estimates.

You can put a dollar value on happiness and people have been doing it for years.


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Nature News The global drive to eliminate the last pockets of polio infection is to receive a boost of more than half-a billion dollars from international donors.

which Rotary matched dollar for dollar. The new money will go to vaccination programmes, better disease surveillance and research on new vaccines.


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Loans but not grants have been provided on this basis before, for example, through the World bank's Millennium Science Initiative."


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says Alistair Steel, executive director of the Brussels-based industry group Euro Chlor. Traditionally, chlorine production has used a mercury electrode in the electrolysis of sodium chloride,


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Yin contributed 3 billion Taiwanese dollars, the equivalent of roughly US$100 million, to set up the Tang Prize Foundation.

Each prize will consist of 40 million Taiwanese dollars (US$1. 34 million) as well as a 10-million-Taiwanese-dollar research grant.

but winners of the Tang Prize#either individuals or institutions#will not only get the 40-million-Taiwanese-dollar prize money,

but also receive 10 million Taiwanese dollars for their areas of research. The Tang Dynasty was renowned for its sophisticated cultural and scientific achievements.


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#South korea makes billion-dollar bet on fusion power South korea has embarked on the development of a preliminary concept design for a fusion power demonstration reactor in collaboration with the US Department of energy's Princeton Plasma physics Laboratory (PPPL) in New jersey.


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"Even on the low end, they still cost in the hundreds of dollars per gram,


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In particular, millions of dollars have been poured into drugs that inhibit a protein called PCSK9, an enzyme involved in cholesterol synthesis. This approach lowers LDL


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which included billions of dollars for science, and also charged the OSTP with improving public access to research (see Into the open).


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"It s a huge unmet need, says David Ferreiro, a biotechnology analyst with investment bank Oppenheimer & Company in New york,


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Image credit: Tom Deerinck, NCMIR, UC San diego. In the new Molecular Psychiatry paper, conducted with collaborators across the country and world,


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Image credit: Hari Prasad and Rajini Rao. Based on their autism research, the team suspected that the boost NHE9 gave to glioblastomas was explained by abnormal endosome acidity.


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Anyone caught participating in such unlawful activity as free speech will be fined up to about $600 (30,000 rubles)


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Could Your Body parts Replace Credit cards? Credit card security breaches are becoming more and more common, and customers'personal information is being exposed.

Could biometric payment methods replace credit cards altogether? Researchers from Tsinghua University and Tzekwan technology, a financial security protection firm, have announced the first ATM that works with facial recognition capabilities, reports the South China Morning Post.

The researchers stated that this new kind of ATM MACHINE will apply facial recognition technology, high-speed banknote handling,

and an improved capacity to recognize counterfeit bills. Gu Zikun, Tzekwan chairman, said that the machine would soon be available on the market.

but Baltimore Securityplus Federal Credit union did run a trial for a machine that used facial recognition tech


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#'Edible Barcodes'Help Fight Counterfeit Drugs Who knew that the answer to fighting the trillion-dollar global counterfeit drug problem rested in a particle the size of a speck of dust?


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Pressing the device big black button creates a vacuum that sucks the blood into a maze of tiny channels within its disposable credit cardized cartridge.


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But whereas a power plant is huge and costs hundreds of millions of dollars to build,


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Insurers might find it useful in investigating fraud and councils in tackling environmental assaults such as waste incineration or illegal logging and quarrying.

or an insurer checking a car is parked off-road as claimed. But most of the work will involve images taken by orbiting satellites especially as recent earth observation start-ups like Planet Labs


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For instance commodity traders might pay top dollar for detailed information on the level of oil in Saudi arabia's storage facilities.


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And it won't break the bank. Ardusat-1 and Ardusat-X were launched to the International space station (ISS) on 3 august aboard a Japanese resupply vehicle


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#Multibillion-dollar race to put internet into orbit The next-generation internet could come from above, with fleets of satellites delivering broadband to under-served areas of the world THE race is on to build a new kind of internet.

A host of companies and billions of dollars are in play, with the ultimate goal of ringing the planet with satellites that will allow anyone, anywhere,


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but are made for a few hundred dollars less and operate with greater efficiency, Coe-Sullivan says.


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How financial institutions can reduce risk by sharing threat intelligence; Developing cybersecurity policy frameworks for autonomous vehicles like drones and self-driving cars;


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In one of its earliest studies with a Bank of america call center for instance Sociometric tracked co-workers for three months.

Sure enough when the bank instituted the changes Sociometric measured a 15 to 20 percent bump in productivity a 19 percent drop in stress levels and decreased turnover from 40 to 12 percent.

Peter Gloor a researcher in the Center for Collective Intelligence was using surveys of employees at a German bank where the marketing division was split into four teams located across 10 rooms on two floors.

The bank wanted to know how this physical layout affected productivity and job satisfaction. Waber Pentland and other researchers developed

and deployed 22 prototypes of Sociometric badges at the bank for a month registering when two wearers were talking to one another and for how long.

Armed with these results the bank rearranged its layout to increase the proximity of the close-knit employees


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In launching Keystone, Smith gives some credit to MIT Venture Mentoring Service (VMS), which advised the startup cofounders on everything from early company formation to scaling up the business.


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in a paper by a team led by Xuanhe Zhao, the Brit (1961) and Alex (1949) d'Arbeloff Career development Associate professor in Engineering Design,


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Over a four-day period he says ride sharing saved $18000 in fares and operational costs and more than 1000 pounds in carbon emissions.


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This system can be built at a very low cost relative to the million-dollar MRI machines used in a hospital Peng says.


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which can cost hundreds of millions of dollars Currently the startup has raised $6 million in funding

and working with a Dutch health care insurance company to bring the Medeye to 15 hospitals across the country as well as Belgium the United kingdom and Germany.


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which requires introducing mutations into embryonic stem cells can take more than a year and costs hundreds of thousands of dollars.


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Arnold Scott, vice chairman and director of First Commons Bank, who was involved not in this research but mentored the group in the MIT $100k Entrepreneurship Competition, says this approach s very important because of its size.


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The cryptographic schemes that protect online banking and credit card purchases have proven their reliability over decades.

As more of our data moves online a more pressing concern may be its inadvertent misuse by people authorized to access it.


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can lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in avoidable annual costs. That why KGS aims to ake buildings betterwith cloud-based software, called Clockworks, that collects existing data on a building equipment specifically in HVAC (heating, ventilation,


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and test winches and cables Looking back Glass credits his undergraduate years on MIT s Solar Electrical Vehicle Team a student organization that builds and races solar


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At that rate, a winery would shave about 2 pounds of CO2 per case off of its carbon footprint


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and food can pose safety risks and cost governments and private companies hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

smartphone-readable particle that they believe could be deployed to help authenticate currency, electronic parts, and luxury goods, among other products.

or printed onto currency, the researchers say. They could also be incorporated into ink that artists could use to authenticate their artwork.


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#One currency one price? Economics has a aw of one price, which states that identical goods should, in theory,

along with a colleague from the University of Chicago, presents evidence of a strong convergence of prices within the Eurozone, the region of European countries sharing a common currency.

whose currencies are pegged to the Euro. hat is surprising about our paper is that we found the law of one price,

nd we found it to be very strongly dependent on the currency in which the prices are quoted.

Indeed, the unity of the currency seems to be a more powerful factor in determining prices than the characteristics of particular countries

and another co-author of the paper. ee finding those things don seem to matter relative to the retailer showing prices in the same currency.

the variation in prices observed in non-Euro countries most likely does not come from variations in production and distribution.

More evidence for the idea that the common currency drives identical pricing is that in countries like Denmark,

which do not use the Euro but peg their currencies to it, prices diverge markedly from nearby Eurozone countries.

The same holds for countries that do not use the U s. dollar, but peg their own currencies to it. hen we look at countries that do not use the same currency

but are pegged, we still find an enormous amount of dispersion, Cavallo says. hat points to the fact it not the flexibility

Cavallo says. r it could be that these firms just think about their pricing just in terms of currencies.

Whatever the benefits or flaws of the Eurozone, the research indicates that the common currency is delivering on one of the stated aims of its backers:

aving one currency means implicitly that in good times, you are buying the price stability of Germany.

if this zero volatility has to do with countries being in a currency union, versus if it is fixed because of a exchange rate,

For instance, with the entrance of Latvia to the Eurozone, they are now comparing how that change in currency has affected prices in Latvia u


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or thousands of dollars upfront Hynes says. When a fleet customer looks at the numbers they want to see benefits based on fuel savings


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or aid in stroke recovery is a multibillion-dollar endeavor that only rarely pays off in the form of government-approved pharmaceuticals.


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which include banks retail firms and telecommunications companies worldwide. After the purchase the Ksplice team joined Oracle to help the company integrate the software in its products.


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#Mobile money helps Kenyans weather financial storms Only about one-fourth of Kenyans have access to a traditional bank,

Informal insurance networks As Suri and Jack emphasize, the agricultural nature of the Kenyan economy undergirds the sudden rise in M-PESA use.

Suri says. hey also don have government programs like unemployment insurance or health insurance, and they don have private insurance either.

So they end up making deals with each other. In Kenya as in many developing countries neighbors

friends, and relatives often rely on informal agreements to make loans with one another when times are hard.

Mobile phone usage is far more prevalent in Kenya than traditional banking is and the system lets people transfer money by text message.

even though access to formal insurance is limited very, says Francis Vella, an economist at Georgetown University who has read the paper.

Among other things, she is now studying the financing of small-scale distributed solar power in areas of Kenya without either a formal grid or established banking systems;


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capstan-based mechanism ensures that the battery-powered device can lift two soldiers sometimes carrying 80 to 100 pounds of equipment swiftly along an attached rope, without jamming.

dubbed the APA-5 developed with funding from the Office of Naval Research Tech Solutions Program weighs roughly 20 pounds

and can lift up to 600 pounds at speeds of up to several feet per second. First designed for soldiers who plunged into caves and wells in Iraq and Afghanistan

Original specifications for the invention called for a device that weighed less than 25 pounds and could hoist 250 pounds 50 feet vertically in five seconds a remarkably high power-to-weight ratio exceeding that of a Dodge Viper, the team calculated.

Using drill batteries and other custom-designed equipment, the team completed a working prototype that achieved a 50-foot lift in seven seconds.

and launch their first product, the APA-3. Weighing 28 pounds, the first APA could lift up to 350 pounds at 5 feet per second,

and was adopted by several U s. military groups.)As one of the few companies in the relatively new but growing power-ascension market, Atlas has needed to continually hone APA specifications to meet field and customer expectations.

with smaller diameters. o carry a 200-foot section of rope was up to 15 pounds;

now it closer to 8 pounds, Ball says. ee always trying to find better ways to accomplish things.

Ball specifically credits former technology transfer specialist Lisa Shaler-Clark as instrumental in taking the APA rom the lab bench to the field.


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Having Medicaid increases emergency room visits Adults who are covered by Medicaid use emergency rooms 40 percent more than those in similar circumstances who do not have health insurance, according to a unique new study,

On one level, the results accord with a traditional economics framework suggesting that insurance, by lowering out-of-pocket costs, would increase the use of medical care.

Evidence from Oregon Health insurance Experiment, were lead author Sarah Taubman of the National Bureau of Economic Research, Heidi Allen of Columbia University School of Social work,

reduces out-of-pocket expenses or unpaid medical debt; and increases self-reported good health. In a 2013 paper published in the New england Journal of Medicine,


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by the MIT $100k Entrepreneurship Competition has earned millions of dollars in private and federal funding. In 2012, Semprus sold to a medical device-manufacturing giant for an amount that could reach $80 million.


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These artisans often rely on microcredit loans with high interest rates to fund their initial production, and can expect to see an average return of only 5 to 20 percent of the retail price of their goods. he supply chain design behind Morocrafts is part of Zyad business strategy,

The platform will also provide interest-free credit loans to artisans in order to ease barrier of entry,


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But this machine cost about $200 and weighed over 100 pounds, meaning villagers couldn easily afford


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billions of dollars could be saved. Not just finding the culprits These early innovations to the hardware have nabled Essess to have this large-scale,


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Apple and Mastercard adopting the technology. Biometric sensors are getting smaller and the ease with


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a film roughly the size of a sheet of paper costs only a few euros. Ensinger says that the price of gold is not a factor


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which insurance companies are more likely to provide reimbursement. In their latest research breakthrough the team fashioned a tiny DNA reading device a thousands of times smaller than width of a single human hair.


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but are made for a few hundred dollars less and operate with greater efficiency, Coe-Sullivan says.


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"Acknowledged Project The now patented Biogàsplus technology received in 2011 a 100,000 dollar grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.


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which corresponds to about one-third of a thousand-trillionth of a pound or one-seventh of a thousand-trillionth of a kilogram.


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"Besides the evident application in replacing the typical'rainbow holograms'of credit cards and other security items,


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Each device would probably cost pennies instead of pounds making it ideal technology for use in developing countries where there are not enough medically trained staff to effectively monitor


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El-Naggar credits Sahand Pirbadian USC graduate student with devising an ingenious yet simple strategy to make the discovery.


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Venkataraman credits organic materials chemist Gehan with postdoctoral fellow and device physicist Monojit Bag with making crucial observations and using persistent detective work to get past various roadblocks in the experiments.


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The study may have great implications to a multi-billion dollar electronics industry that seeks to revolutionize technology at scales 80000 times smaller than the human hair.


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"It has the potential to totally change the world's electronic basis. It's a trillion-dollar prospect. l


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or emboss the raised numerals on credit cardsould process nanoparticles more subtly than the most advanced chemistry.

but could be done today with the same equipment used by anyone who makes credit cards.""The method can be used to configure new types of materials.


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"says Fang, the Brit and Alex d'Arbeloff Career development Associate professor in Engineering Design. So far, the researchers at MIT and LLNL have tested the process using three engineering materialsetal, ceramic,


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or thousands of dollars you'd shell out to buy one. Even the minimalist#Printrbot Simple retails at $299.#


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Eliminating the expendable rockets needed to boost the shuttle into space could theoretically reduce the cost of launches from $10000 per pound to $1000 per pound.

Each pound you put into orbit requires about 10 pounds or so of fuel to get it there says NASA's Dumbacher.


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but at the time cost nearly $5 per pound. â ##What we don t know is


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Its goal is less than a dollar per test. And at that price, it's potentially the cheapest system yet s


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which now bisects the room It takes one hand and almost no effort--a feat that's to his credit not mine.


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For lenders interested in making sure loan repayments happen on schedule moving collateral can present an investment risk.

Now The New york times reports that some lenders are protecting their investments by making sure the cars are never really out of their control.

Thanks to GPS phone apps and ignition locking devices lenders can remotely shut down the car of someone who's behind on payments.

These devices mean lenders always know where the car is and can alert the owners

Often the shutdown of a car leads to an immediate loan payment if the borrower is capable though

because these are typically subprime loans that isn t always the case. Payment locks have spawned a whole cyberpunk culture built around hacking the devices.

In turn lenders are installing fake devices to outwit hacking attempts. From the story: These devices are distinct from previous attempts in car hacking not in function but in initiation.

With lenders installing ignition-locking devices as a loan condition the cars are sold instead effectively pre-hacked d


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It will carry a full nine person infantry squad along with their equipment up to 3200 pounds total.

The vehicle itself will weigh no more than 4500 pounds making the fully loaded and crewed vehicle under 8000 pounds.

It has to fit inside a CH-47 Chinook cargo helicopter so that the crew can drive right in


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There is so much demand for the open source products sold on the site that the waiting list alone contains nearly half a million dollars worth of orders.


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but doing so at high speeds in three dimensions on a rocking platform in the middle of the ocean with airplanes worth millions of dollars The X-47b#has earned a pair of nicknames:#


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The Alang ship recycling hub in Gujarat India will upgrade 70 shipbreaking yards over the next four years thanks to a US$ 180 million loan IHS Maritime has reported.

the proposal envisages that the loan will be repaid over 40 years at an interest rate of 1. 4%.Planned upgrades will cover:


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and weighs around 60 pounds. According to Bloomberg Businessweek Magazine the plan is to start slowly with 20 Peppers by the end of the year.


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Insurance prices could also increase and the total cost for a school research team or startup may be bigger for future missions.


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Image credit: 4bpblogspot. co n


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#Jerry the Bear: A robotic learning coach for kids with type 1 diabetes Less than three campaign days left!


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We are way past the MULTI-BILLION dollars in investments by now. Thanks Sebastian. Â s


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