Pixelate the world.
Category: futurism – Page 189
Batteries the key as cell prices plunge and wind and solar ramp up towards 50 pct share
Renewable generation should be around 50 per cent of supply on Australia’s main grid by July, 2026, although it might be a bit less depending on progress on the second stage of Golden Plains, which will be the country’s biggest wind farm – at least for a time – when complete.
To get to 80 per cent by 2030 will partly depend on what happens to demand. If demand is flat, then capacity capable of supplying around 67 terawatt hours (TWh) a year will be needed. After allowing for rooftop solar, I reckon that equates to about 25 gigawatts of new capacity, maybe a bit more.
That’s a heck of an ask, but in my opinion still possible and broadly in line with the objectives and scale of the Capacity Investment Scheme (CIS). I’ll have more to say on the role of the CIS once I get round to talking about ITK’s price forecasts, but that can wait. We’re talking capacity and output in this not.
Bone remains indicate extinct humans survived on the Tibetan plateau for 160,000 years
Bone remains found in a Tibetan cave 3,280 m above sea level indicate an ancient group of humans survived here for many millennia, according to a new study published in Nature.
The Denisovans are an extinct species of ancient human that lived at the same time and in the same places as Neanderthals and Homo sapiens. Only a handful of Denisovan remains have ever been discovered by archaeologists. Little is known about the group, including when they became extinct, but evidence exists to suggest they interbred with both Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.
A research team led by Lanzhou University, China, the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, CAS, China, and involving the University of Reading studied more than 2,500 bones from the Baishiya Karst Cave on the high-altitude Tibetan Plateau, one of the only two places where Denisovans are known to have lived.
What’s going on in our Brains when we Plan? Study uncovers how Mental Simulations rely on Stored Memories
In pausing to think before making an important decision, we may imagine the potential outcomes of different choices we could make. While this “mental simulation” is central to how we plan and make decisions in everyday life, how the brain works to accomplish this is not well understood.
An international team of scientists has now uncovered neural mechanisms used in planning. Its results, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, suggest that an interplay between the brain’s prefrontal cortex and hippocampus allows us to imagine future outcomes in order to guide our decisions.
“The prefrontal cortex acts as a ‘simulator,’ mentally testing out possible actions using a cognitive map stored in the hippocampus,” explains Marcelo Mattar, an assistant professor in New York University’s Department of Psychology and one of the paper’s authors.
