Lifeboat Foundation

This innovative startup is revolutionizing architecture — with building panels made out of fastest-growing perennial grass on Earth.

With housing shortages in need of quick fixes, the manufacturing industry is facing a conundrum: how to source materials and build structures while cutting down on emissions. The answer lies with sustainable construction — not only could it help reduce our environmental impact, but it also keeps costs low during implementation.

Recently, a new startup named Plantd achieved a milestone of building ultra-strong building panels out of the fastest-growing perennial grass on Earth — the best sustainable alternative to construction.

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Professor Juhyuk Lee of the Department of Energy Engineering has developed an elastic triboelectric generator that can be used in the daily lives of frequent movers. The cause of the output reduction of the elastic triboelectric sensor was identified during joint research with Professor Joohun Lee of Hanyang University’s (ERICA campus) Department of Bio-Nanotechnology. Additionally, the professor used graphene to develop a touch sensor with stable output and expand the application of the triboelectric generator. The study is published in the journal Nano Energy.

Along with the rapid growth of various biosensors and wearable devices due to the continuous development of semiconductors and small electronic components, there has been a growing interest in triboelectric generators for use as sensors or energy sources. To use the triboelectric generator in a wearable device, the material that comes into contact with the body must be safe, and the output must be constant despite any deformations caused by movement.

However, the output of conventional elastic triboelectric generators is affected by its change in form. The reason for this relationship was not clearly understood. Similar to previously existing products, there are limitations to precise detection if the output changes along with the change in form, such as stretching.

A fuel cell is an electric power generator that is capable of producing electricity from hydrogen gas while discharging only water as a waste product. It is hoped that this highly efficient clean energy system will play a key role in the adoption of the hydrogen economy, replacing the combustion engines and batteries in automobiles and trucks, as well as power plants.

However, the cost of platinum, which can be up to ~30,000 USD per kg, has been a major limitation, making fuel cell catalysts prohibitively expensive. The production methods of highly-performing catalysts have also been complicated and largely limited. Accordingly, the development of a facile and scalable production method for platinum-based fuel cell catalysts is an urgent challenge, together with enhancing catalytic performance and stability while using a minimum amount of platinum.

To tackle this issue, a research team led by Prof. Sung Yung-Eun and Prof. Hyeon Taeghwan at the Center for Nanoparticle Research (CNR) within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), South Korea has discovered a novel method for the production of nanocatalysts.

In a paper published in the journal National Science Open, the morphology and structure regulation methods of supramolecular assembly are summarized. Then, recent progresses of supramolecular assembly derived carbon-nitrogen-based materials for photo/electrocatalysis are discussed. Furthermore, the developments and challenges in future are prospected.

The sustainable energy storage and conversion technologies based on redox reactions are promising pathway to solve energy issues. However, there is still lack of low-cost, ecofriendly and highly active photo/electrocatalysts, which play a crucial role in the redox reactions.

In this review, the author first summarized the effects of temperature, solvent type, pH value and monomer on the morphology and structure of the supramolecular assembly. Then, the effects of morphology and structure regulation on the physicochemical properties of supramolecular assembly-derived carbon-nitrogen-based materials were discussed, which determined the essential properties of catalysts for a specific photo/electrocatalytic reaction.

NASA’s NuSTAR telescope has spotted patches of high-energy X-rays radiation across the sun’s surface that could explain why the star’s atmosphere is mysteriously hot.

Are quantum fields real, or are they simply calculational tools? These 3 experiments show that if energy is real, so are quantum fields.

The project that resulted has helped slash the district’s annual energy consumption by 1.6 million kilowatts and in three years generated enough savings to transform the district’s $250,000 budget deficit into a $1.8 million surplus.

Just as Hester envisioned at the outset, a major chunk of the money is going toward teachers’ salaries — fueling pay raises that average between $2,000 and $3,000 per educator per month.

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The new system is described today in a paper in the journal Science Advances, by MIT graduate student Arny Leroy, professor of mechanical engineering and department head Evelyn Wang, and seven others at MIT and at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

Such a system could be used, for example, as a way to keep vegetables and fruit from spoiling, potentially doubling the time the produce could remain fresh, in remote places where reliable power for refrigeration is not available, Leroy explains.

2022 story:

Continue reading “System provides cooling with no electricity” »

A record-breaking gamma-ray burst detected in October 2022 has now been described as a one-in-a-thousand years event.

It’s called GRB 221009A, and with up to 18 teraelectronvolts of energy packed in its emissions of light, it’s considered the most powerful gamma-ray burst on record.

We’ve been waiting to learn more about this incredible explosion, and now the analyses have started to arrive on preprint server arXiv, with a trio of papers submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters.