Lifeboat Foundation

Every year, the EU generates over 2.5 billion tonnes of waste – that’s 5 tonnes per person. The good news is that much of this waste can be recycled and reused. The bad news, however, is that doing so requires proper collection processes, which is often easier said than done.

“The challenge with waste collection is that it is a widely dispersed process,” says Tjerk Wardenaar, a consultant at EGEN, part of the PNO Group, the project’s lead partner. “Individual consumers discard small amounts of waste, local and regional authorities implement collection systems, waste management companies do the actual collecting, recycling companies recover materials, and so on.”

With the support of the EU-funded COLLECTORS project, Wardenaar aims to increase our understanding of how these various steps relate to one another. “Waste collection depends on a combination of social and technical factors,” he explains. “Our goal is to identify best practices that decision makers can use to implement an integrated waste collection system that supports Europe’s transition to a waste-free, circular economy.”

Mushroom-foam is as cheap as Styrofoam, requires no fossil fuel, and creates no plastic pollution, biodegrading in your garden in just a couple of weeks Ikea is switching to a new mushroom-based, biodegradable alternative to polystyrene (Styrofoam) packaging for its furniture and home decor. Known as Mycofoam, the product is […].

Microscopy data suggest that degradation starts from grain boundaries and propagates inwards.

Mitigating and reversing the effects of climate change is the most important scientific challenge facing humanity. Carbon sequestration describes a range of technologies with the potential to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO₂) in the atmosphere. Most of these schemes involve storing the gas underground, however, this is not without risk, and scientists are concerned that underground storage could lead to increased seismic activity (a phenomenon known as “induced seismicity”).

Now, researchers in the US and Switzerland have studied microseismicity, the small seismic events caused by carbon injection into host rock, at the Illinois Basin Decatur Project (IBDP) in the midwestern US. In 2011–2014, the IBDP injected one million tonnes of CO₂ into an underground reservoir just above a rhyolite crystalline basin. Nikita Bondarenko and Roman Makhnenko at the University of Illinois and Yury Podladchikov at the University of Lausanne have used a combination of field observations and computer simulations to show how microseismicity at the IBDP is highly dependent on the microscale structure of the host rock.

With the above in mind, projects looking to desalinate water in a more sustainable way will become increasingly important in the years ahead.

The idea of using waves to power desalination is not unique to the project being undertaken in the Canaries. In April, for example, the U.S. Department of Energy revealed the winners of the last stage of a competition focused on wave-powered desalination.

Back on the Canary Islands, Ocean Oasis said it would be looking to construct a second installation after testing at the PLOCAN facility had taken place. “In this phase, the prototype will be scaled with the capacity to produce water for consumption,” the company said.

One of Tesla’s upcoming software updates should give the sound systems in its current and new vehicles a considerable upgrade. According to our source, Tesla has been working with major record labels for months to bring Dolby Atmos to Tesla cars. Once the software update rolls out, over 1 million Teslas that are currently on the road will support Dolby Atmos, including all newly manufactured vehicles.

Dolby Atmos is a surround sound format from Dolby that uses height channels to interpret sounds as 3D objects. Dolby Atmos debuted in 2012 in Los Angeles, and has since made its way into thousands of movie theaters, home theaters, and even cars.

Lucid Motors was the first carmaker to bring Dolby Atmos sound to its Lucid Air sedan early last year. This fall, Volvo and Mercedes-Benz revealed that they will be bringing Dolby Atmos to more cars as well. Volvo’s EX90 SUV will have Dolby Atmos, while Mercedes-Benz is adding Atmos to the Mercedes-Maybach S-Class, Mercedes-Benz S-Class, and its EQE, EQE SUV, EQS, and EQS SUV electric vehicles. Before long, Tesla should be on this list, too.

Superconducting materials are characterized by the fact that they lose their electrical resistance below a certain temperature, the so-called transition temperature. In principle, they would be ideal for transporting electrical energy over very long distances from the electricity producer to the consumer.

Numerous energy challenges would be solved in one fell swoop: For example, the electricity generated by wind turbines on the coast could be channeled inland without losses. However, this would only be possible if materials were available that have superconducting properties at normal room and ambient temperatures.

In 2019, an unusually high transition temperature of minus 23 degrees Celsius was measured in experiments coordinated by the Max Planck Institute in Mainz. The measurement took place at a compression pressure of 170 gigapascals—1.7 million times higher than the pressure of the Earth’s atmosphere. The material was a lanthanum hydride (LaH_10+δ), a compound of atoms of the metal lanthanum with hydrogen atoms. The report on these experiments and other similar reports remain highly controversial. They have internationally aroused great interest in research on lanthanum hydrides with different compositions and structures.

A new study has revealed how the glass-like shells of diatoms help these microscopic organisms perform photosynthesis in dim conditions. A better understanding of how these phytoplankton harvest and interact with light could lead to improved solar cells, sensing devices and optical components.

“The computational model and toolkit we developed could pave the way toward mass-manufacturable, sustainable optical devices and more efficient light harvesting tools that are based on diatom shells,” said research team member Santiago Bernal from McGill University in Canada. “This could be used for biomimetic devices for sensing, new telecommunications technologies or affordable ways to make clean energy.”

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Some of them could fertilize ecosystems, while others could have pathogenic potential.

More and more glaciers are melting as the Earth heats up, posing a multitude of threats to humanity. From rising sea levels to increased coastal erosion, the record speed at which the world’s ice sheets are melting has the potential to disrupt societies globally.

Now scientists from Aberystwyth University warn that hundreds of thousands of tonnes of microbes could leak into lakes and rivers as the world’s glaciers melt due to climate change, according to an institutional press release.