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Category: sustainability – Page 265

Your Clothes in The Future Could Be a Living, Self-Repairing Material

A team from Newcastle University and Northumbria University in the UK has found that the thin, root-like threads produced by many fungi can potentially be used as a biodegradable, wearable material that’s also able to repair itself.

In their tests, the researchers focused on the Ganoderma lucidum fungus, producing a skin from branching filaments known as hyphae, which together weave into a structure called a mycelium.

With a little more work the fragile skins could serve as a substitute for leather, satisfying vegan, environmental, and fashion tastes, though the process of its creation also needs to be sped and scaled up before it can be transformed into next season’s jacket.

A Solar Farm Connects Directly to the UK Grid for the First Time

On May 4, the first photovoltaic solar farm to connect directly to the UK’s National Grid transmission network went online.

Larks Green is a 200-acre solar farm located on the Severn Vale next to the hamlet of Itchington, to the north of Bristol, and with the addition of a big battery energy storage facility, it’s being heralded as a game-changer in creating a future where solar power is a consistent supplier of much of Britain’s electricity.

The 50 MW solar farm is owned and operated by Cero Generation and Enso Energy and was connected to the National Grid’s Iron Acton substation.

Qualcomm to acquire Israeli auto-chip maker Autotalks

May 8 (Reuters) — Chip designer Qualcomm Inc (QCOM.O) said on Monday it would buy Israel’s Autotalks Ltd that makes chips used in technology aimed at preventing vehicle crashes, as the U.S. firm looks to deepen its automotive business.

With increasing electric vehicles and automatic features in cars, the number of chips used by automakers is surging, making the automotive market a key growth area for chipmakers.

Autotalks makes dedicated chips used in the vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications technology for manned and driverless vehicles to improve road safety.

Italian startup carves sculptures with robotic arm guided by AI

“Our robots are born from sculptors for sculpture,” says the artist.

A new startup called Robotor is seeking to revolutionize how sculptures are made by simplifying the sculpting process with the use of robotics and artificial intelligence. Founded by Filippo Tincolini and Giacomo Massari, the new company aims to make these works of art faster and easier to produce and even more sustainable.

The new technology allows for the development of structures that were once deemed inconceivable, according to a report by TNW published on Friday.

Exciton Fission Breakthrough Could Revolutionize Photovoltaic Solar Cell Technology

Researchers have resolved the mechanism of exciton fission, which could increase solar-to-electricity efficiency by one-third, potentially revolutionizing photovoltaic technology.

Photovoltaics, the conversion of light to electricity, is a key technology for sustainable energy. Since the days of Max Planck and Albert Einstein, we know that light as well as electricity are quantized, meaning they come in tiny packets called photons and electrons. In a solar cell, the energy of a single photon.

A photon is a particle of light. It is the basic unit of light and other electromagnetic radiation, and is responsible for the electromagnetic force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature. Photons have no mass, but they do have energy and momentum. They travel at the speed of light in a vacuum, and can have different wavelengths, which correspond to different colors of light. Photons can also have different energies, which correspond to different frequencies of light.

Improving Performance and Lifetime — Scientists Solve Battery Mystery

Researchers at the KIT Institute of Nanotechnology (INT) now managed to characterize the formation of the SEI with a multi-scale approach. “This solves one of the great mysteries regarding an essential part of all liquid electrolyte batteries – especially the lithium-ion batteries we all use every day,” says Professor Wolfgang Wenzel, director of the research group “Multiscale Materials Modelling and Virtual Design ” at INT, which is involved in the large-scale European research initiative BATTERY 2030+ that aims to develop safe, affordable, long-lasting, sustainable high-performance batteries for the future.

The KIT researchers report on their findings in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.

To examine the growth and composition of the passivation layer at the anode of liquid electrolyte batteries, the researchers at INT generated an ensemble of over 50 000 simulations representing different reaction conditions. They found that the growth of the organic SEI follows a solution-mediated pathway: First, SEI precursors that are formed directly at the surface join far away from the electrode surface via a nucleation process.

A major problem with fusion is solved leading us closer to a perpetual energy source

Fusion reactor.

Without a doubt someday it is possible to have fusion power plants providing sustainable energy resolving our long-standing energy problems. This is the main reason so many scientists throughout the world are carrying out research on this power source. The generation of power from this method actually mimics the sun.

Brains on board: Smart microrobots walk autonomously

A collaborative effort has installed electronic “brains” on solar-powered robots that are 100 to 250 micrometers in size – smaller than an ant’s head – so that they can walk autonomously without being externally controlled.

Cornell researchers installed electronic “brains” on solar-powered robots that are 100 to 250 micrometers in size, so the tiny bots can walk autonomously without being externally controlled. Noël Heaney/Cornell University

While Cornell researchers and others have previously developed microscopic machines that can crawl, swim, walk and fold themselves up, there were always “strings” attached; to generate motion, wires were used to provide electrical current or laser beams had to be focused directly onto specific locations on the robots.

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