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Flying cars are fine — but why use a car when you can have a motorcycle instead? YC-backed startup JetPack Aviation wants to answer that question with the world’s first flying motorcycle, a personal aircraft dubbed “The Speeder,” a name that Star Wars fans will surely appreciate. Now, JetPack has raised a seed round of $2 million from investors indulging Draper Associates, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, YC, Cathexis Ventures and a group of angels that it says will fund the development of the Speeder’s first functional prototype.

Back in March, JetPack revealed its plans for the Speeder, which it says will provide a fully stabilized ride that’s either pilot-controlled or fully autonomous. It can take off and land vertically, and reach top speeds of potentially over 400 MPH. There are no exposed rotors systems, which make it a lot safer and easier to operate than a lot of other VTOL designs and helicopters, and the company says it can also be refueled in less than 5 minutes, which is a dramatically shorter turnaround time for powering up versus an electric vehicle.

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Ultra-small integrated circuits have revolutionized mobile phones, home appliances, cars, and other everyday technologies. To further miniaturize electronics and enable advanced functions, circuits must be reliably fabricated in three dimensions. Achieving ultrafine 3D shape control by etching into silicon is difficult, because even atomic-scale damage reduces device performance. Researchers at Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST) have published a new study in Crystal Growth and Design in which they etched silicon to adopt the shape of atomically smooth pyramids. Coating these silicon pyramids with a thin layer of iron imparted magnetic properties that until now were only theoretical.

NAIST researcher and senior author of the study Ken Hattori is widely published in the field of atomically controlled nanotechnology. One focus of Hattori’s research is in improving the functionality of -based technology.

“Silicon is the workhorse of modern electronics because it can act as a semiconductor or an insulator, and it’s an abundant element. However, future technological advances require atomically smooth device fabrication in three dimensions,” says Hattori.

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A team working with Roland Fischer, Professor of Inorganic and Metal-Organic Chemistry at the Technical University Munich (TUM) has developed a highly efficient supercapacitor. The basis of the energy storage device is a novel, powerful and also sustainable graphene hybrid material that has comparable performance data to currently utilized batteries.

Usually, energy storage is associated with batteries and accumulators that provide energy for electronic devices. However, in laptops, cameras, cellphones or vehicles, so-called supercapacitors are increasingly installed these days.

Unlike batteries they can quickly store large amounts of energy and put it out just as fast. If, for instance, a train brakes when entering the station, supercapacitors are storing the energy and provide it again when the train needs a lot of energy very quickly while starting up.

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A US company says it will have a nuclear-powered prototype vehicle on the road within two years.

Laser Power Systems from Connecticut is developing a method of propulsion that uses thorium to produce electricity to power a car engine.

Thorium is an element similar to uranium and because it is such a dense material it has the potential to produce massive amounts of heat.

According to Laser Power Systems CEO, Charles Stevens, just one gram of thorium produces more energy than 28000 litres of petrol. Mr Stevens says just eight grams of thorium would be enough to power a vehicle for its entire life.

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