Archive for the ‘sustainability’ category: Page 540
Mar 10, 2018
This New Hybrid Solar Cell Can Harvest Electricity From Actual Raindrops
Posted by Shane Hinshaw in categories: solar power, sustainability, transportation
As advanced and efficient as our solar panels are becoming, they’re still pretty much useless when rain clouds arrive overhead. That could soon change thanks to a hybrid cell that can harvest energy from both sunlight and raindrops.
The key part of the system is a triboelectric nanogenerator or TENG, a device which creates electric charge from the friction of two materials rubbing together, as with static electricity – it’s all about the shifting of electrons.
TENGs can draw power from car tyres hitting the road, clothing materials rubbing up against each other, or in this case the rolling motion of raindrops across a solar panel. The end result revealed by scientists from Soochow University in China is a cell that works come rain or shine.
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Mar 5, 2018
Tesla motor designer explains Model 3’s transition to permanent magnet motor
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: sustainability, transportation
Tesla made a significant change to its electric motor strategy with the introduction of the Model 3, switching from an AC induction motor to a permanent magnet motor.
Now, Tesla’s principal motor designer, Konstantinos Laskaris, explains the logic behind the move.
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Mar 5, 2018
Inside the Quest to Make Lab Grown Meat
Posted by Derick Lee in categories: food, sustainability
Food scientists and startups are trying to make meat more ethically appealing by growing it — cell by cell — in a lab instead of on a farm. Even some vegans support so-called “clean” meat. But can lab grown meat overcome the dreaded “yuck factor?”
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Mar 2, 2018
The US Could Supply 80 Percent of Its Energy with Wind and Solar
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: energy, sustainability
We could do this today. A couple ideas i would pitch would be: 1. A series of giant solar arrays in the American SW. 2. Giant wind turbines located in Tornado alley and built to withstand a direct hit from a tornado and try and put them where tornadoes would make direct hits on purpose.
After we get these sites built up enough to power the US, then build them up to power North and South America, eventually expand into Asia.
It would require an infrastructure overhaul costing hundreds of billions—if not trillions—of dollars, but technically speaking, it’s possible.
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Mar 2, 2018
China Will Plant 32,400 Square Miles of Trees to Combat Air Pollution
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: sustainability
China has tasked 60,000 soldiers to increase the country’s total forest coverage in an attempt to combat its serious air pollution problem.
Feb 28, 2018
Elon Musk’s latest Boring Co. boast: A San Francisco Bay tunnel at 1/10th the cost
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: Elon Musk, sustainability, transportation
Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk took to Twitter this week to decry the slow and costly pace of U.S. infrastructure projects, and thus a challenge — or boast — was born: The Boring Co. could build a tunnel across the San Francisco Bay far cheaper and far faster than current available estimates.
Musk was pointing to a San Francisco Chronicle editorial favoring a new Transbay Tube for public transportation over another cross-bay bridge to alleviate chronic traffic woes and public-transportation overcrowding in the Bay Area. The editorial cited a starting price of $12 billion for the new tunnel.
Probably about a tenth of the cost and a fifth of the time— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 28, 2018
Feb 26, 2018
Digestive ability of ancient insects could boost biofuel development
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: biotech/medical, sustainability
A study of the unusual digestive system of an ancient group of insects has provided new insights into future biofuel production.
Feb 25, 2018
Europa may have hidden liquid ocean to sustain life, new study reveals
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: nuclear energy, space, sustainability
Jupiter is a giant hot gaseous planet situated after the asteroid belt at a distance of 365 million miles when it is the closest w.r.t Earth and 601 million miles when it is the farthest. It was just a few years back when Jupiter’s moon Europa was reported as a potential planet that can hose life. Europa headlined on the internet in 2016 after scientists were able to see water vapor like plumes erupting from its crust. But, as a part of new research at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, Europa might have liquid water flowing beneath its 10-kilometer deep ice crust. The researchers used data extracted the data from an analogous location on Earth and found that life is sustainable in even the harsh environment that Europa offers as it has a huge liquid ocean under its crust.
Douglas Galante is the part of the research team that stretched towards the Mponeng Gold Mine in Johannesburg, South Africa in such as evidence. During the research, they found that bacterium Candidatus Desulforudis Audaxviator survives inside the mine at the depth of 2.8 km without any sunlight. It uses the method of water radiolysis where the water molecules are dissociated with the help of ionizing radiation. The analysis of the mine highlighted the cracks that run throughout the mine filled with cracks that supply water containing radioactive uranium which in turns, helps the bacterium to break down water molecules and consume the free radicals produced.
Once the free radicals are generated, these subatomic molecules attack rocks in the surrounding which produces sulfate. This is what these bacteria utilize to synthesize energy and store it without even interacting with the sunlight. One of a kind findings confirmed that it was the very first time when scientists were able to explore a living organism using nuclear energy to survive directly. Galante stated that this ecosystem is analogous to that of Europa’s ocean which has a great amount of thermal energy and absolute zero temperature.
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Feb 24, 2018
Tiny Light-Activated Gold-Covered Nanowires Can Make Neurons Fire
Posted by Roman Mednitzer in categories: genetics, nanotechnology, neuroscience, solar power, sustainability
Researchers at the University of Chicago have developed light-activated nanowires that can stimulate neurons to fire when they are exposed to light. The researchers hope that the nanowires could help in understanding complex brain circuitry, and they may also be useful in treating brain disorders.
Optogenetics, which involves genetically modifying neurons so that they are sensitive to a light stimulus, has attracted a lot of attention as a research tool and potential therapeutic approach. However, some researchers have misgivings about optogenetics, as it involves inserting a gene into cells, potentially opening the door to unforeseen effects and possibly permanently altering treated cells.
In an effort to develop an alternative, a research team at the University of Chicago has devised a new modality that can enable light activation of neurons without the need for genetic modification. Their technique involves nanowires that are so small that if they were laid side-by-side, hundreds of them would fit on the edge of a sheet of paper. Although initially designed for use in solar cells, their small size also makes them well suited to interacting with cells.
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