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Category: sustainability

A biological method that produces metal nanoclusters using the electroactive bacterium Geobacter sulfurreducens could provide a cheap and sustainable solution to high-performance catalyst synthesis for various applications such as water splitting.

Metal nanoclusters contain fewer than one hundred atoms and are much smaller than nanoparticles. They have unique electronic properties but also feature numerous active sites available for catalysis on their surface. There are several synthetic methods for making nanoclusters, but most require multiple steps involving and harsh temperature and pressure conditions.

Biological methods are expected to deliver ecofriendly alternatives to conventional chemical synthesis. Yet, to date, they have only led to large nanoparticles in a wide range of sizes. “We found a way to control the size of the nanoclusters,” says Rodrigo Jimenez-Sandoval, a Ph.D. candidate in Pascal Saikaly’s group at KAUST.

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The Swiss startup’s pilot project will focus on the Western public rail system and cost around $437,240.

European startup Sun-Ways has devised a mechanical device to deploy removable solar panels along railway tracks.

This innovation could be implemented on half of the railway lines across the globe, according to the Swizerland-based energy startup.

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A system of robots that harvest and transport crops on their own without human assistance has been developed for use in agricultural facilities such as smart farms.

The research team under Choi Tae-yong, principal researcher at the AI Robot Research Division’s Department of Robotics and Mechatronics of the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials, an institution under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Science and ICT, has developed a multiple-robot system for harvesting crops.

This technology can be used to help at agricultural sites where there is a noticeable shortage of manpower by harvesting crops through an automated system. This system also includes robots that use autonomous driving technology to then transport the harvested crops to loading docks.

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“The goal is for community groups or individual citizens anywhere to be able to measure local air pollution.”

As per an estimation by WHO, air pollution causes around 4 million annual premature deaths all over the globe. Considering this issue, an MIT research team launched an open-source version of an economical, mobile pollution detector through which individuals can track the air-quality more broadly.

The detector, named Flatburn, can be fabricated through 3D printing or by ordering cheap parts. The researchers have now conducted tests and calibrated the detector concerning existing ultra-modern machines and are making people aware of how to assemble, use, and interpret the data.

Flatburn is an open-source, mobile pollution detector from the MIT Senseable City Lab intended to let people measure air quality cheaply.

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What do a T-shirt, a rug, and a soda bottle have in common? Many are made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a ubiquitous plastic that revolutionized the materials industry after it was patented in the 1940s.

Created from petroleum refining, PET is a material known for its durability and versatility. It is easily molded into airtight containers, woven into durable carpets, or spun into polyester clothing.

“The reality is that most PET products—especially PET clothing and carpeting—are not recycled today using conventional technologies,” explained Gregg Beckham, senior research fellow at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and CEO of the U.S. Department of Energy BOTTLE Consortium. “The is developing promising alternatives, including enzymes designed to depolymerize PET, but even these options have tended to lean on energy-intensive and costly preprocessing steps to be effective.”

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A breakthrough regarding dendrites made by MIT researchers may finally open the way to the building of a new type of rechargeable lithium battery that is safer, lighter, and more compact than existing models, a concept that has been pursued by labs all over the world for years.

The replacement of the liquid electrolyte between the positive and negative electrodes with a considerably thinner, lighter layer of solid ceramic material and the replacement of one electrode with solid lithium metal are the two essential components of this prospective advancement in battery technology. By making these changes, the battery’s overall size and weight would be significantly reduced, and the flammable liquid electrolytes that provide a safety risk would be eliminated. Dendrites, however, have proven to be a significant obstacle in that pursuit.

Dendrites are metal growths that can accumulate on the lithium surface, pierce through the solid electrolyte, and finally cross from one electrode to the other, shorting out the battery cell. Their name is from the Latin word for branches. There hasn’t been much advancement in the understanding of what causes these metal filaments or how to stop them from occurring, making lightweight solid-state batteries a problematic alternative.

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