The Top 10 Military Powers In The World

Human nature seems to be centered around the belief that conflict brings about positive change. Why else is it that out of all the years that the human species has inhabited this planet that we have only seen, roughly, 300 years of complete peace.
This is a very depressing statistic. Having the need to constantly shed our brother’s blood only proves that we have yet to evolve into the most superior beings.
This said, countries are required to build armies that will be able to protect them from all the other countries that are looking to take their land and resources. Here is a list of the 10 most powerful armies in the world.
1. USA

Annual Defense Budget $515,000,000,000
Military Personnel 1,385,000
Population reaching military age annually 4,266,128
Fighter Jets 22,700
Navy Ships 1,600
Purchasing power $13,780,000,000,000

2. China

Annual Defense Budget $59,000,000,000
Military Personnel 2,255,000
Population reaching military age annually 20,470,412
Fighter Jets 2,400
Navy Ships 760
Purchasing power $7,099,000,000,000

3. Russia

Annual Defense Budget $43,000,000,000
Military Personnel 1,245,000
Population reaching military age annually 1,602,673
Fighter Jets 6,500
Navy Ships 525
Purchasing power $2,097,000,000,000

4. India

Annual Defense Budget $33,000,000,000
Military Personnel 1,325,000
Population reaching military age annually 22,229,373
Fighter Jets 1,250
Navy Ships 145
Purchasing power $2,966,000,000,000

5. UK

Annual Defense Budget $53,000,000,000
Military Personnel 195,000
Population reaching military age annually 784,520
Fighter Jets 2,670
Navy Ships 140
Purchasing power $2,130,000,000,000

6. France

Annual Defense Budget $62,000,000,000
Military Personnel 225,000
Population reaching military age annually 783,788
Fighter Jets 1,900
Navy Ships 135
Purchasing power $2,075,000,000,000

7. Germany

Annual Defense Budget $46,000,000,000
Military Personnel 250,000
Population reaching military age annually 863,773
Fighter Jets 1,100
Navy Ships 130
Purchasing power $2,807,000,000,000

8. Brazil

Annual Defense Budget $24,000,000,000
Military Personnel 287,000
Population reaching military age annually 3,275,154
Fighter Jets 1,650
Navy Ships 90
Purchasing power $1,849,000,000,000

9. Japan

Annual Defense Budget $44,300,000,000
Military Personnel 378,000
Population reaching military age annually 1,212,321
Fighter Jets 2,700
Navy Ships 150
Purchasing power $4,272,000,000,000

10. Turkey
Annual Defense Budget $30,936,000,000  Military Personnel 514,000
Population reaching military age annually 1,298,979
Fighter Jets 1,530
Navy Ships 180
Purchasing power $853,900,000,000

hydrogen-powered Remote-Control Car.

i-H2GO hydrogen-powered Remote-Control Car.

At the end of last month, Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies began shipments of its latest hydrogen fuel cell-powered remote-control toy car, the i-H2GO. Like its predecessor, the H2GO, it runs on hydrogen obtained from user-supplied water. The main thing that’s new about the i-H2GO, however, is the fact that it is now controlled using a free app on the user’s existing smartphone. I got my hands on an early production model, mainly just so that I could truthfully say “I’ve driven a fuel cell car.”
Like the H2GO, the new car comes with an included Refueling Station. The user pours purified water into that device, and it proceeds to electrolyze the H2O, separating it into H and O – hydrogen and oxygen. A plunger on the station rises as hydrogen fills its temporary holding compartment.
The user then connects the car to the station using a built-in hose, and manually pumps the hydrogen from the station into the car. The car’s fuel cell subsequently combines the hydrogen with atmospheric oxygen, producing a flow of electrons that powers its motor.
A photovoltaic panel is also included, to provide power to the Refueling Station’s battery. If the Sun isn’t shining or the user just doesn’t want to be bothered, however, the station can also be charged from a computer via an included USB cable.

My first order of business was to use that panel to charge the station. The instructions state that at least 10 hours in the sunlight will be necessary, and that 16 would be even better. Just to be on the safe side, I left mine out in direct sunlight all day for two full sunny days in a row. Unfortunately, that still wasn’t enough.
This didn’t come as a huge surprise, given my recent experiences trying to charge the Waka Waka Power solar lamp and device charger. The fact is that if you live in high-latitude places such as Scandinavia, Russia or (in my case) Canada, solar-powered devices are likely to take longer to charge than their makers claim.
Given that the Refueling Station indicates its charge level simply via an LED that’s either red or green, I had no way of knowing how close it was to a full charge. That being the case, I just took it inside and charged it the rest of the way from my computer. A full USB charge, starting from an empty battery, takes five to six hours.

Once the station was ready to go, I added filtered water to its water tank, turned it on, and watched it set about separating the hydrogen and oxygen. The electrolyzer itself could be seen furiously fizzing away, while the oxygen escaped as a stream of bubbles at the water’s surface. The hydrogen, meanwhile, accumulated in the holding compartment – the plunger rose steadily as it was displaced by the gas, providing an indication of how full the compartment was getting.
Within just a couple of minutes the compartment was full, as indicated both by the plunger being all the way up and the illumination of a green LED. I then hooked the station up to the car, and slowly and steadily pushed the plunger down, transferring the hydrogen from the compartment and into a “balloon” within the car. That balloon could actually be seen inflating as it filled with hydrogen gas. After disconnecting the car and allowing it warm up, it was time to try it out.
Although an Android version of the control app is on the way, presently just an iOS version is available. Not being an iPhone-owner, I took the car over to be test-driven by my Apple-enabled friend Jason.

Pairing the car with his iPhone was quick and easy. The dedicated app allows users to control the car either via touchscreen controls, or by going into Gyro mode and turning the phone itself to steer. Both methods worked fine for us, and the car zipped around just like you’d expect it to. Given its low ground clearance, however, it became pretty obvious that the i-H2GO is designed for smooth surfaces such as floors. When we first tried it out on a relatively rough asphalt road surface, it did a lot of bumping around and spinning out.
We were surprised at how quickly it went through its onboard store of hydrogen – after just a few minutes, it konked out. It turns out that that’s normal, given hydrogen’s relatively low energy density. Fortunately, one charge/water fill of the Refueling Station is good for several fillings of the car. Just keep the station close at hand, and expect to take the car out for a few back-to-back short runs instead of a single long one.
Overall, I liked the i-H2GO, and would recommend it for people with science-nerdy kids … or who are science-nerdy kids at heart, themselves. It may not offer the run time or simplicity of a regular battery-powered RC car, but it transforms fuel cell cars from being some concept that exists “out there,” to something that you use and understand yourself.
The i-H2Go is available now, for US$180.
source: http://www.horizonfuelcell.com/#!i-h2go-toy-car/c1ebm

First computer made of carbon nanotubes is unveiled

Max Shulaker with Cedric, the first carbon computer: "There is no limit to the tasks it can perform".

Continue reading the main story 

The first computer built entirely with carbon nanotubes has been unveiled, opening the door to a new generation of digital devices.

"Cedric" is only a basic prototype but could be developed into a machine which is smaller, faster and more efficient than today's silicon models.
Nanotubes have long been touted as the heir to silicon's throne, but building a working computer has proven awkward.
The breakthrough by Stanford University engineers is published in Nature.
Cedric is the most complex carbon-based electronic system yet realised.
So is it fast? Not at all. It might have been in 1955.

The computer operates on just one bit of information, and can only count to 32.

"In human terms, Cedric can count on his hands and sort the alphabet. But he is, in the full sense of the word, a computer," says co-author Max Shulaker.
"There is no limit to the tasks it can perform, given enough memory".
In computing parlance, Cedric is "Turing complete". In principle, it could be used to solve any computational problem.
It runs a basic operating system which allows it to swap back and forth between two tasks - for instance, counting and sorting numbers.
And unlike previous carbon-based computers, Cedric gets the answer right every time.
Imperfection-immune "People have been talking about a new era of carbon nanotube electronics, but there have been few demonstrations. Here is the proof," said Prof Subhasish Mitra, lead author on the study.
The Stanford team hope their achievement will galvanise efforts to find a commercial successor to silicon chips, which could soon encounter their physical limits.

The transistors in Cedric are built with "imperfection-immune" design

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are hollow cylinders composed of a single sheet of carbon atoms.
They have exceptional properties which make them ideal as a semiconductor material for building transistors, the on-off switches at the heart of electronics.
For starters, CNTs are so thin - thousands could fit side-by-side in a human hair - that it takes very little energy to switch them off.
"Think of it as stepping on a garden hose. The thinner the pipe, the easier it is to shut off the flow," said HS Philip Wong, co-author on the study.

But while single-nanotube transistors have been around for 15 years, no-one had ever put the jigsaw pieces together to make a useful computing device.

So how did the Stanford team succeed where others failed? By overcoming two common bugbears which have bedevilled carbon computing.
First, CNTs do not grow in neat, parallel lines. "When you try and line them up on a wafer, you get a bowl of noodles," says Mitra.
The Stanford team built chips with CNTs which are 99.5% aligned - and designed a clever algorithm to bypass the remaining 0.5% which are askew.
They also eliminated a second type of imperfection - "metallic" CNTs - a small fraction of which always conduct electricity, instead of acting like semiconductors that can be switched off.
To expunge these rogue elements, the team switched off all the "good" CNTs, then pumped the remaining "bad" ones full of electricity - until they vaporised. The result is a functioning circuit.
The Stanford team call their two-pronged technique "imperfection-immune design". Its greatest trick? You don't even have to know where the imperfections lie - you just "zap" the whole thing.

Cedric can only count to 32, but in principle it could count to 32 billion

"These are initial necessary steps in taking carbon nanotubes from the chemistry lab to a real environment," said Supratik Guha, director of physical sciences for IBM's Thomas J Watson Research Center.
But hang on - what if, say, Intel, or another chip company, called up and said "I want a billion of these". Could Cedric be scaled up and factory-produced?
In principle, yes: "There is no roadblock", says Franz Kreupl, of the Technical University of Munich in Germany.
"If research efforts are focused towards a scaled-up (64-bit) and scaled-down (20-nanometre transistor) version of this computer, we might soon be able to type on one."
Shrinking the transistors is the next challenge for the Stanford team. At a width of eight microns (8,000 nanometres) they are much fatter than today's most advanced silicon chips.
But while it may take a few years to achieve this gold standard, it is now only a matter of time - there is no technological barrier, says Shulaker.
"In terms of size, IBM has already demonstrated a nine-nanometre CNT transistor.
"And as for manufacturing, our design is compatible with current industry processes. We used the same tools as Intel, Samsung or whoever.
"So the billions of dollars invested into silicon has not been wasted, and can be applied for CNTs."
For 40 years we have been predicting the end of silicon. Perhaps that end is now in sight.