Global payments giant Visa says it will invest $1 billion by 2027 to expand its investments in Africa amidst a digital payments boom on the continent.
Visa chief Al Kelly announced this pledge on Wednesday during the U.S.-Africa Business Forum, a sub-event in the broader U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, a three-day event where U.S. President Joe Biden invited heads of state and senior government officials from Africa to discuss several issues ranging from food security to climate change.
“Visa has been investing in Africa for several decades to grow a truly local business, and today our commitment to the continent remains as firm and unwavering as ever,” said the Visa CEO in a statement.
Dr. Tobias Reichmuth, Ph.D. is Founding Partner at Maximon (https://www.maximon.com/), The Longevity Company Builder, which empowers entrepreneurs to build impactful, science-based and scalable companies providing healthy aging and rejuvenation solutions.
Maximon recently announced the launch of their 100 million CHF Longevity Co-Investment Fund, which will be looking to invest up to CHF 10 million per company, which allows them to finance up to 10–12 start-ups in this fast growing industry over the next four years.
MSM and Experts fail to see the logic in how Elon Musk is taking over Twitter. They think it’s chaos, a mess, he’s out of his depth. But Elon is just working AGILE, and AGILE always seems like a mess to onlookers used to traditional work! The video describes Elon’s Agile Takeover of Twitter and shows the opportunity worth BILLION$ that Elon Musk has ALREADY unlocked.
Though plants can serve as a source of food, oxygen and décor, they’re not often considered to be a good source of electricity. But by collecting electrons naturally transported within plant cells, scientists can generate electricity as part of a “green,” biological solar cell.
Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces have, for the first time, used a succulent plant to create a living “bio-solar cell” that runs on photosynthesis.
In all living cells, from bacteria and fungi to plants and animals, electrons are shuttled around as part of natural, biochemical processes. But if electrodes are present, the cells can actually generate electricity that can be used externally. Previous researchers have created fuel cells in this way with bacteria, but the microbes had to be constantly fed. Instead, scientists, including Noam Adir’s team, have turned to photosynthesis to generate current.
WASHINGTON — The United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution calling for a halt to one type of anti-satellite (ASAT) testing, a largely symbolic move intended to support broader space sustainability initiatives.
The resolution, introduced by the United States and several other nations, was approved by the U.N. General Assembly Dec. 7 among dozens of other resolutions on arms control and related topics with little discussion or debate. A total of 155 nations voted in favor of the resolution, with 9 voting against it and 9 others abstaining.
The resolution calls on countries to halt destructive testing of direct-ascent ASAT weapons, citing concern that such creates large amounts of debris that threaten the safety of other satellites. An example is the November 2021 ASAT test by Russia that destroyed the Cosmos 1,408 satellite, creating nearly 1,800 tracked pieces of debris and likely many more objects too small to be tracked. About a third of the tracked debris from that test was still in orbit nearly a year later.
The Kardashev Scale has become a standardized way of classifying (hypothetical) advanced civilizations. The lowest rank, Type 1, is still way ahead of us — but by how much? When will we achieve Type 1 status and exactly how could we plausibly do so? In this video, we go through some estimates of when humanity might become Type 1, and in particular what kind of energy sources we could harness to achieve this feat.
► Kardashev (1964), “Transmission of Information by Extraterrestrial Civilizations”, Soviet Astronomy, 8217: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1964SvA… ► Michio Kaku video clip from BigThink: https://youtu.be/7NPC47qMJVg. ► Wind map movie credit to Rufinoman and earth.nullschool.net: https://youtu.be/cj2JHsQUoRs. ► Wind energy calculation based off Smil (2004), “Inherent limits of renewable energies“ ► References for the 3.7TW figure for tidal energy dissipation are: Cartwright 1993 (Theory of ocean tides with application to altimetry, in Satellite Altimetry in Geodesy and Oceanography, edites by R. Rummel and F. Sanso, pp. 99–141, Springer-Verlag, New York), Ray 1994 (Tidal energy dissipation: Observations from astronomy, geodesy, and oceanography, in, The Oceans, edited by S. Majumdaret al., pp. 171–185, Pa. Acad. of Sci., Easton, Pa.), Kagan & Sundermann 1996 (Kagan Dissipation of tidal energy paleotides, and evolution of the Earth-Moon system, Adv. Geophys., 38, pp. 179–266) ► Solar video comes from NASA SDO and GSFC: https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/12706 ► Learn more about the Carno cycle here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_cycle. ► Learn more about the planetary equilibrium calculation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_equilibrium_temperature. ► Tidal power map comes from Gunn & Stock-Williams (2012): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148112001310 ► Outro music by Thomas Bergersen “Final Frontier”: http://www.thomasbergersen.com. ► Columbia University Department of Astronomy: http://www.astro.columbia.edu. ► Cool Worlds Lab website: http://coolworlds.astro.columbia.edu.
A Dutch entrepreneur is helping to fight climate change rather unexpectedly — by using cryptocurrency mining to grow tulips!
In a modern twist, the Dutch are using bitcoin mining to reap an age-old bounty — tulips! Known for centuries as one of their most iconic cash crops, these beloved flowers now have another purpose in Holland: powering cryptocurrency.
The idea is so promising that even philosopher Nassim Nicholas Taleb has compared bitcoin mining in greenhouses to his concept of the “black swan” event. Despite the comparisons to Tulipmania, Koning believes that Dutch agriculturalists could benefit greatly from bitcoin mining in the years ahead.
Even though the cryptocurrency sector is currently facing a major downfall – from $16,300 per unit to $68,000 in 2021, De Groot is not worried.
Clean energy will reduce dependency on Russia and Arab countries for oil and gas.
What if the weight could instead be distributed between multiple support poles? That’s the design Eolink has in mind; its floating turbine swaps out the single large pole for four thinner ones angled towards each other in a pyramid shape. This not only distributes the weight of the turbine’s pieces, it allows the whole structure to be lighter.
The turbine Eolink plans to build as a proof of concept will have a generating capacity of five megawatts and weigh 1,100 tons. Its base will be a square with each side 171 feet (52 meters) long, and its rotor’s diameter will be 469 feet (143 meters). For reference, that’s about one and a half Big Bens, or four-fifths of the Washington Monument.
You wouldn’t think that such a huge piece of machinery would be simple to build and transport. But compared to conventional offshore turbines, Eolink’s design does carry a myriad of advantages in terms of both cost and ease.
Solar cell technology is a seen as a key pillar in our transition to cleaner forms of energy, but within this field there is all kinds of room for experimentation. Solar cells that are thin and flexible hold unique promise in the area, as they could be applied to all kinds of irregular, curvy or otherwise unsuitable surfaces. Thinner than a human hair, a new lightweight solar cell from MIT scientists continues to push the envelope in this space.
The MIT team behind the technology sought to build on its previous advances in material science, which in 2016 culminated in ultra-thin solar cells light enough to sit atop a soap bubble without breaking it. As is the case with other thin, light and flexible solar cells we’ve looked at over the years, this pointed to all kinds of possibilities, from paper-based electronics to lightweight wearables that harvest energy throughout your day.
Despite the potential, the team still had some problems to solve, with the fabrication technique for the solar cells requiring vacuum chambers and expensive vapor deposition methods. In order to scale the technology up, the scientists have now turned to ink-based printable materials to streamline the process.
The technology could help make EVs more affordable as well as easier to charge.
A collaboration between researchers at the Yokohoma National University in Japan and the University of New South Wales Sydney, Australia has led to the development of a new electrode material that can be used in solid-state batteries. Thus the electrode doesn’t diminish after multiple charges and discharge cycles and can help in manufacturing durable batteries for electric vehicles.
As the world is turning over to electric modes of transportation in its bid to reduce carbon emissions, the battery has become a focal area of development.
