A collaboration between IBM and DARPA has produced “next generation” computer chips that adapt to unexpected inputs due to their structural mimicking of the brain’s neurons. Applications for these “neuro-synaptic chips” include analyzing financial market fluctuations and even predicting tsunamis.
Tag: processing
Calculating the True Cost of Coal
A recent Harvard Medical School study took a long look at the entire industrial coal process – extraction, transport, processing and combustion — crunched the numbers, and came up with a rather shocking tally:
“We estimate that the life cycle effects of coal and the waste stream generated are costing the U.S. public a third to over one-half of a trillion dollars annually.”
U.S. Wastes More Food Energy than Gained from Gulf Oil & Gas
Wasted food energy in the U.S. totals some 2150 trillion kilojoules per year–more than the U.S. could produce in ethanol (grain) biofuels. Further, an article in the New Scientist asserts that this amount is greater than the energy produced annually from all the oil and gas extracted from the Gulf of Mexico.