Oh, dear, we're doomed... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412020322297 Plasticenta: First evidence of microplastics in human placenta Highlights • For the first time microplastics were detected by Raman microspectroscopy in human placentas. • Microplastics were found in all placental portions: maternal, fetal and amniochorial membranes. • Microplastics carry with them substances which acting as endocrine disruptors could cause long-term effects on human health. Abstract Microplastics are particles smaller than five millimeters deriving from the degradation of plastic objects present in the environment. Microplastics can move from the environment to living organisms, including mammals. In this study, six human placentas, collected from consenting women with physiological pregnancies, were analyzed by Raman Microspectroscopy to evaluate the presence of microplastics. In total, 12 microplastic fragments (ranging from 5 to 10 μm in size), with spheric or irregular shape were found in 4 placentas (5 in the fetal side, 4 in the maternal side and 3 in the chorioamniotic membranes); all microplastics particles were characterized in terms of morphology and chemical composition. All of them were pigmented; three were identified as stained polypropylene a thermoplastic polymer, while for the other nine it was possible to identify only the pigments, which were all used for man-made coatings, paints, adhesives, plasters, finger paints, polymers and cosmetics and personal care products.
USA TODAY: CES 2021: Hologram technology inspired by 'Star Wars' could bring 'new dimension' to smartphones. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech...ogram-tech-headed-your-smartphone/6598697002/ Hot Hardware: Ex-Intel Engineer Slams Misguided And Flawed Apple M1 Benchmarking Practices. https://hothardware.com/news/ex-intel-engineer-slams-apple-m1-benchmarking-practices Ars Technica: Why don’t PCs use error correcting RAM? “Because Intel,” says Linus. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/202...es-intel-for-lack-of-ecc-ram-in-consumer-pcs/ Ars Technica: How electric lighting changed our sleep, and other stories in materials science. https://arstechnica.com/science/202...sleep-and-other-stories-in-materials-science/ PC Gamer: No, half a million GeForce RTX 30 series GPUs were not lost in shipment and now found. https://www.pcgamer.com/no-half-a-m...gpus-were-not-lost-in-shipment-and-now-found/ Ars Technica: Amazon still hasn’t fixed its problem with bait-and-switch reviews. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...xed-its-problem-with-bait-and-switch-reviews/ Ars Technica: Scientists ID potential biomarkers to peg time of death for submerged corpses. https://arstechnica.com/science/202...s-to-peg-time-of-death-for-submerged-corpses/ SlashGear: Prehistoric “Sea Dragon” fossil discovered in the English Channel. https://www.slashgear.com/prehistoric-sea-dragon-fossil-discovered-in-the-english-channel-26652555/ Livescience.com: 10 geological discoveries that absolutely rocked 2020. https://www.livescience.com/geological-discoveries-2020.html MarketWatch: Videogames are a bigger industry than movies and North American sports combined, thanks to the pandemic. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/v...s-combined-thanks-to-the-pandemic-11608654990 Ars Technica: Study: children’s belief in Santa Claus is more nuanced than you think. https://arstechnica.com/science/202...n-santa-claus-is-more-nuanced-than-you-think/ ExtremeTech: Astronomers Spot Potentially Artificial Radio Signal From Nearby Star. https://www.extremetech.com/extreme...en-radio-signal-from-nearby-star?source=opera Phys.org: Study suggests great earthquakes cause of Arctic warming. https://phys.org/news/2020-12-great-earthquakes-arctic.html Phys.org: An updated way to calculate the likelihood of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. https://phys.org/news/2020-12-likelihood-extraterrestrial-civilizations.html
https://www.printedelectronicsworld.com/articles/23098/a-magnetic-twist-to-graphene A Magnetic Twist to Graphene Electrons in materials have a property known as 'spin', which is responsible for a variety of properties, the most well-known of which is magnetism. Permanent magnets, like the ones used for refrigerator doors, have all the spins in their electrons aligned in the same direction. Scientists refer to this behaviour as ferromagnetism, and the research field of trying to manipulate spin as spintronics. Down in the quantum world, spins can arrange in more exotic ways, giving rise to frustrated states and entangled magnets. Interestingly, a property similar to spin, known as "the valley," appears in graphene materials. This unique feature has given rise to the field of valleytronics, which aims to exploit the valley property for emergent physics and information processing, very much like spintronics relies on pure spin physics. For further information see the IDTechEx report on Graphene Market & 2D Materials Assessment 2021-2031. 'Valleytronics would potentially allow encoding information in the quantum valley degree of freedom, similar to how electronics do it with charge and spintronics with the spin.' Explains Professor Jose Lado, from Aalto's Department of applied physics, and one of the authors of the work. 'What's more, valleytronic devices would offer a dramatic increase in the processing speeds in comparison with electronics, and with much higher stability towards magnetic field noise in comparison with spintronic devices.' Structures made of rotated, ultra-thin materials provide a rich solid-state platform for designing novel devices. In particular, slightly twisted graphene layers have recently been shown to have exciting unconventional properties, that can ultimately lead to a new family of materials for quantum technologies. These unconventional states which are already being explored depend on electrical charge or spin. The open question is if the valley can also lead to its own family of exciting states.
Solar Surge will teach you all about being energy independent and how to set up your home to run off-the-grid during an emergency. We empower families to take control of their energy generation and storage so that they will never be left in the dark without electricity. In this video, Joe Ordia presents a head-to-head comparison of the Tesla Powerwall II and the Enphase Ensemble battery backup systems. The evaluation considers the following factors: power, capacity, warranty, price, and "X-Factor." *FREE eBook* Built to Survive - https://no_short_urls_allowed/y6bgluhv -- CONNECT WITH US -- Website: https://www.solarsurge.net/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/unitedsolars... Rumble: https://www.rumble.com/unitedsolarsurge/ -- LINKS -- Tesla Powerwall II - https://www.tesla.com/powerwall Enphase Ensemble - https://enphase.com/en-us/ensemble-te...
https://www.printedelectronicsworld...f-graphene-paves-the-way-to-industrialisation Terahertz Imaging of Graphene Paves the Way to Industrialisation X-ray scans revolutionised medical treatments by allowing us to see inside humans without surgery. Similarly, terahertz spectroscopy penetrates graphene films allowing scientists to make detailed maps of their electrical quality, without damaging or contaminating the material. The Graphene Flagship brought together researchers from academia and industry to develop and mature this analytical technique, and now a novel measurement tool for graphene characterisation is ready. The effort was possible thanks to the collaborative environment enabled by the Graphene Flagship European consortium, with participation by scientists from Graphene Flagship partners DTU, Denmark, IIT, Italy, Aalto University, Finland, AIXTRON, UK, imec, Belgium, Graphenea, Spain, Warsaw University, Poland, and Thales R&T, France, as well as collaborators in China, Korea and the US. For further information see the IDTechEx report on Graphene Market & 2D Materials Assessment 2021-2031. Graphene is often 'sandwiched' between many different layers and materials to be used in electronic and photonic devices. This complicates the process of quality assessment. Terahertz spectroscopy makes things easier. It images the encapsulated materials and reveals the quality of the graphene underneath, exposing imperfections at critical points in the fabrication process. It is a fast, non-destructive technology that probes the electrical properties of graphene and layered materials, with no need for direct contact. The development of characterisation techniques like terahertz spectroscopy is fundamental to accelerating large-scale production, as they guarantee that graphene-enabled devices are made consistently and predictably, without flaws. Quality control precedes trust. Thanks to other developments pioneered by the Graphene Flagship, such as roll-to-roll production of graphene and layered materials, fabrication technology is ready to take the next step. Terahertz spectroscopy allows us to ramp up graphene production without losing sight of the quality. "This is the technique we needed to match the high-throughput production levels enabled by the Graphene Flagship," explains Peter Bøggild from Graphene Flagship partner DTU. "We are confident that terahertz spectroscopy in graphene manufacturing will become as routine as X-ray scans in hospitals," he adds. "In fact, thanks to terahertz spectroscopy you can easily map even meter-scale graphene samples without touching them, which is not possible with some other state-of-the-art techniques." Furthermore, the Graphene Flagship is currently studying how to apply terahertz spectroscopy directly into roll-to-roll graphene production lines, and speed up the imaging.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/03/f...ye8mDsNc0lEuU__Cpb-E9xqceGXbpHAUV2FYzqfu6eV9V Firms backed by Robert Downey Jr. and Bill Gates have funded an electric motor company that slashes energy consumption Sometimes the smallest innovations can have the biggest impacts on the world’s efforts to stop global climate change. Arguably, one of the biggest contributors in the fight against climate change to date has been the switch to the humble LED light, which has slashed hundreds of millions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions simply by reducing energy consumption in buildings. And now firms backed by Robert Downey Jr. and Bill Gates are joining investors like Amazon and iPod inventor Tony Fadell to pour money into a company called Turntide Technologies that believes it has the next great innovation in the world’s efforts to slow global climate change — a better electric motor. It’s not as flashy as an arc reactor, but like light bulbs, motors are a ubiquitous and wholly unglamorous technology that have been operating basically the same way since the nineteenth century. And, like the light bulb, they’re due for an upgrade. “Turntide’s technology and approach to restoring our planet will directly reduce energy consumption,” said Steve Levin, the co-founder (along with Downey Jr. ) of FootPrint Coalition. The operation of buildings is responsible for 40% of CO2 emissions worldwide, Turntide noted in a statement. And, according to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), one-third of energy used in commercial buildings is wasted. Smart building technology adds an intelligent layer to eliminate this waste and inefficiency by automatically controlling lighting, air conditioning, heating, ventilation and other essential systems and Turntide’s electric motors can add additional savings. “Our mission is to replace all of the motors in the world,” Morris said. He estimates that the technology is applicable to 95% of where electric motors are used today, but the initial focus will be on smart buildings because it’s the easiest place to start and can have some of the largest immediate impact on energy usage. “The carbon impact of what we’re doing is pretty massive,” Morris told me last year. “The average energy reduction [in buildings] has been a 64% reduction. If we can replace all the motors in buildings in the U.S. that’s the carbon equivalent of adding over 300 million tons of carbon sequestration per year.”
https://www.printedelectronicsworld.com/articles/23159/carbon-capture-technology-a-long-road-ahead Carbon Capture Technology: A Long Road Ahead Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS), or carbon capture and storage (CCS), is a set of technologies used to strip carbon dioxide from industrial waste gases or directly from the atmosphere. Once the carbon dioxide is captured, it is either stored permanently underground (carbon storage) or it is used for a range of industrial applications (carbon utilization), such as CO2-derived fuels or building materials. CCUS technologies are likely to play a key role in the fight against climate change, with the UN estimating that CCUS could mitigate between 1.5 and 6.3 gigatonnes of CO2 equivalents per year by 2050. The world has already taken its steps along this pathway. Over the last decade, the deployment of carbon capture technology has been steadily scaling up, with global carbon capture capacity reaching 40 million tonnes in 2020. Plans for more than 30 new CCUS facilities have been announced since 2017. If all these projects proceeded, global capture capacity would triple to around 140 million tonnes per year. However, this is a drop in the ocean compared with global CO2 emissions, which reached 36 billion tonnes in 2019. Although global emissions are believed to have dropped to around 31 billion tonnes in 2020, stemming from the global slowdown in the wake of COVID-19, this is probably a blip in the wider picture, and global CO2 emissions are likely to continue growing over the next few years. For CCUS to have a meaningful impact on emissions in a timely manner, it will need to scale up hundreds of times compared with today's levels. CCUS technologies also face some major challenges that could hamper widespread deployment. Although each aspect of CO2 capture, utilization, and storage faces its own challenges, a common challenge facing all aspects of the industry is that of economics. Separating out CO2 from a mixture of gases is costly. Although separation is fairly straightforward for waste streams with high concentrations of CO2, such as in natural gas processing or ammonia production, it becomes costlier as the relative amount of CO2 in the stream decreases. Capturing one tonne of CO2 from a flue gas stream in an average coal-fired power plant currently costs around $40-80. Capturing CO2 directly from the atmosphere can cost around $600. The energy requirements to capture the CO2 are also an issue - a coal plant equipped with CO2 capturing equipment can require about 25% more fuel to generate the same amount of power as one without it. Once the carbon has been captured, there's the challenge of what to do with it. Captured CO2 can either be stored underground or utilized for various industrial applications. Underground storage is by far the most widely used option, with most industrial-scale CCUS facilities using captured CO2 for enhanced oil recovery (EOR), where CO¬2 is injected into oil wells to boost productivity. This is somewhat problematic in its own sense, as it is essentially using CO2 to access more oil which will then be burned to give out CO2, but it also requires high oil prices to be commercially viable. The drop in oil prices stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic made EOR less viable in 2020, resulting in the Petra Nova facility's closure in Texas, which was the world's largest installation of CO2 capture on a power plant. Carbon pricing schemes and tax credits such as the 45Q scheme in the US can help make CO2 storage more viable, although such schemes are still in their early stages across much of the world.
https://www.offgridenergyindependen...-ocean-wave-energy-harvesting-for-blue-energy The research team led by Prof. Zi Yunlong, Assistant Professor of the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering at CUHK, has recently overcome the above technical limitations and developed a water-tube-based TENG (WT-TENG) for irregular and low-frequency environmental energy harvesting, such as water waves. They encapsulated water in a finger-sized tube (FEP). When water moves in the tube between regions of the two electrodes, triboelectrification happens and electric currents can be generated. Taking advantage of the flexibility of water, the WT-TENG can be operated in various modes, including rotation, swing, seesaw, and horizontal linear modes, to harvest energy from diverse mechanical movements in the environment, such as ocean waves, wind, body and vehicle movements. Due to the high contact intimacy of water and the tube surface, the output volumetric charge density of the WT-TENG is significantly enhanced, reaching 9 mC/m3 at a frequency as low as 0.25 Hz, which is beyond all previous reports. Moreover, just like toy building bricks, multiple small WT-TENG units can be easily combined and integrated as one larger unit and realise multiplied electric outputs. Researchers designed two power generation units. One is a box with 34 WT-TENG units which was placed in the sea to collect ocean wave energy. Another one is a wristband composed of 10 WT-TENG units. A researcher put it on and kept swinging her arms for body motion energy harvesting. The peak power generations of the two tests were both enough to drive 150 LED light bulbs. Prof. Zi Yunlong stated, "Previous designs of ocean energy harvesters have been equipped with electromagnetic-based generators which are large in size and heavy, and will only generate power if the frequency of ocean waves reaches a certain high level. Our latest research has overcome the technical hurdles and will promote the use of nanogenerators, especially in "blue energy" harvesting, offering a new direction for the development of renewable energy to achieve carbon neutrality."
https://www.offgridenergyindependen...-water-filter-removes-lead-other-contaminants Posted on April 8, 2021 Low Cost Solar Powered Water Filter Removes Lead, Other Contaminants A new invention that uses sunlight to drive water purification could help solve the problem of providing clean water off the grid. The device resembles a large sponge that soaks up water but leaves contaminants - like lead, oil and pathogens - behind. To collect the purified water from the sponge, one simply places it in sunlight. The researchers described the device in a paper published this week in the journal Advanced Materials. The inspiration for the device came from the pufferfish, a species that takes in water to swell its body when threatened, and then releases water when danger passes, said the device's co-inventor Rodney Priestley, the Pomeroy and Betty Perry Smith Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Princeton's vice dean for innovation. For further information see the IDTechEx report on Desalination: Off Grid Zero Emission 2018-2028. "To me, the most exciting thing about this work is it can operate completely off-grid, at both large and small scales," Priestley said. "It could also work in the developed world at sites where low-cost, non-powered water purification is needed." Xiaohui Xu, a Princeton Presidential Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and co-inventor, helped develop the gel material at the heart of the device. "Sunlight is free," Xu said, "and the materials to make this device are low-cost and non-toxic, so this is a cost-effective and environmentally friendly way to generate pure water." Princeton University campus. Xu placed the gel into the cool water (25 degree Celsius, or 77 degrees Fahrenheit) of the lake, which contains microorganisms that make it unsafe to drink, and let it soak up the lake water for an hour. At the end of the hour, Xu lifted the gel out of the water and set it on top of a container. As the sun warmed the gel, pure water trickled into the container over the next hour. The device filters water much more quickly than existing methods of passive solar-powered water purification methods, the researchers said. Most other solar-powered approaches use sunlight to evaporate water, which takes much longer than absorption and release by the new gel. Other water filtration methods require electricity or another source of power to pump water through a membrane. Passive filtration via gravity, as with typical household countertop filters, requires regular replacement of filters. hydrophilic, while other regions are hydrophobic or water-repelling. At room temperature, the chains are long and flexible, and water can easily flow via capillary action into the material to reach the water-loving regions. But when the sun warms the material, the hydrophobic chains clump together and force the water out of the gel. This gel sits inside two other layers that stop contaminants from reaching the inner gel. The middle layer is a dark-colored material called polydopamine that transforms sunlight into heat and also keeps out heavy metals and organic molecules. With PDA in place, the sun's light can heat up the inner material even if the actual outdoor temperature is not very warm. The final external layer is a filtering layer of alginate, which blocks pathogens and other materials from entering the gel. Xu said that one of the challenges to making the device was to formulate the inner gel to have the correct properties for water absorption. Initially the gel was brittle, so she altered the composition until it was flexible. Xu synthesized the materials and conducted studies to assess the device's ability to purify water, aided by coauthors Sehmus Ozden and Navid Bizmark, postdoctoral research associates in the Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials. The team is exploring ways to make the technology widely available with the help of Princeton Innovation, which supports University researchers in the translation of discoveries into technologies and services for the benefit of society. Source and top image: Princeton University
First results from Fermilab’s Muon g-2 experiment strengthen evidence of new physics https://news.fnal.gov/2021/04/first...xperiment-strengthen-evidence-of-new-physics/
fantastic article at least for me see here: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/05/13/2130207/cheap-highly-efficient-new-ev-motor-uses-no-magnets
hmm What do you think about ...https://slashdot.org/story/21/05/13...-down-its-azure-blockchain-service?sdsrc=prev
It would be good to see in simple terms how is that essentially different from what Tesla himself already has done...???
^ well I think you are confusing the "things" because it is another great company (Mahle) too and in the context I see absolutely nothing to do with Tesla of our "poor" friend EM
I think you do not understand the difference between Nikola Tesla, the inventor, who made them in XIX century (to whom I am referring) and Tesla the car company...