Lifeboat Foundation

As AFP reports, in a meeting with industry experts, an economy ministry official outlined a target completion date of post-2035. To achieve this ambitious goal, a significant investment of five trillion yen ($33 billion) will be allocated over the next decade, fueling research and development of the new passenger plane.

This latest endeavor seeks to establish Japan as a leader in passenger aircraft production – a position it hasn’t held in over half a century. Building on the challenges that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) encountered, which canceled its long-delayed passenger jet project in 2023, the new public-private consortium strongly emphasizes clean energy.

A team from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics made a breakthrough in converting methane to formic acid using oxygen at room temperature through a high-pressure electro-Fenton process, achieving significantly higher efficiency and productivity than traditional methods.

Direct conversion of methane (CH₄) and oxygen (O₂) to value-added chemicals is important for natural gas industries. However, challenges remain due to the difficulty of O₂ activation in forming active oxygen species for CH₄ activation under mild conditions.

Recently, a research group led by Prof. Dehui Deng, Assoc. Prof. Xiaoju Cui and Liang Yu from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) realized the electrochemical conversion of CH₄ by O₂ to formic acid (HCOOH) at room temperature. This study was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Researchers have reduced the size of steam turbines using supercritical CO₂ as a medium, hinting at smaller power plants.

A Japanese rocket by startup Space One has exploded in spectacular fashion following a launch attempt earlier today.

It’s yet another major setback for the company, which was hoping to become Japan’s first commercial entity to launch a satellite into orbit, the New York Times reports.

Drone footage shows the dramatic scene. At first, everything appears to go fine as the solid-fuel rocket dubbed Kairos lights its engines. But it doesn’t take long for the rocket to seemingly veer off path, erupting into a massive cloud of smoke just seconds later, causing major pieces of debris to rain down on the launch pad and engulf parts of the facility and a neighboring forest in flames.

Flames exhibit a spectrum of colors, ranging from yellow and orange to red, blue, and violet. Discover which hue denotes the highest temperature.

Invisible to the naked eye, an entire ecosystem buzzes with bioenergy.

Invisible vacuum energy is all around us. We could use it to power propulsion, enhance nanostructures, and build levitating devices.

Space may be the final frontier, but we can’t go far on rocket fuel. Now, two scientists are working on a device that may one day make the \.

A hydrogen fuel-cell passenger train developed by Swiss rail vehicle maker Stadler Rail has achieved a new Guinness World Record, traveling for almost two days around the clock for a distance of 1,741.7 miles.

Efforts to clean up dirty trains are already well underway, with heavy investment in electrifying networks around the world as well as rolling out battery-electric locomotives such as the FLXDrive, the Blues train and the Flirt Akku.

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