Tired of Obama Worship? New Technologies On The Horizon If We Still Have Freedom

HIGH SPEED RAILWAYS IN SPAIN: Spain is rapidly expanding its high-speed rail service, becoming one of most connected countries in the world. As the high- speed rail network grows, Spanish companies continue to innovate and provide new services and products at lower prices to meet the world’s growing demand. This is the fourth in an eight-part series highlighting new technologies in Spain and is produced by Technology Review, Inc.’s custom-publishing division in partnership with the Trade Commission of Spain. ..(Read the article at Technology Review)

TR10: Traveling Wave Reactor ...These problems are mostly accepted as a given, but not by a group of researcher­s at Intellectual Ventures, an invention and investment company in Bellevue, WA. The scientists there have come up with a preliminary design for a reactor that requires only a small amount of enriched fuel--that is, the kind whose atoms can easily be split in a chain reaction. It's called a traveling­-wave reactor. And while government researchers intermittently bring out new reactor designs, the traveling-wave reactor is noteworthy for having come from something that barely exists in the nuclear industry: a privately funded research company.

As it runs, the core in a traveling-­wave reactor gradually converts nonfissile material into the fuel it needs. Nuclear reactors based on such designs "theoretically could run for a couple of hundred years" without refueling, says John G­illeland, manager of nuclear programs at Intellectual Ventures. ..(Read at Technology Review).

LIQUID BATTERY: Without a good way to store electricity on a large scale, solar power is useless at night. One promising storage option is a new kind of battery made with all-liquid active materials. Prototypes suggest that these liquid batteries will cost less than a third as much as today's best batteries and could last significantly longer...(Read at Technology Review).