As climate change fuels more intense storms, Deltec and other companies build hurricane-proof homes.
Imagine filling up your gas tank with 10 gallons of gas, driving just far enough to burn a half gallon and discarding the rest. Then, repeat. That is essentially the practice that the U.S. nuclear industry is following.
Spent nuclear fuel from power plants still has 95% of its potential to produce electricity. Current plans are to dispose of the spent nuclear fuel in a geologic repository. So, why is it not recycled? It turns out that separating usable versus unusable parts of spent nuclear fuel is complicated.
“Spent nuclear fuel contains roughly half of the periodic table. So, from a chemistry standpoint, there’s a lot going on,” said Gregg Lumetta, PNNL chemist and laboratory fellow. “And to reduce proliferation risk, it is best if pure plutonium is not produced at any point in the separation process.”
Why luxury brands like Hermès, Iris Van Herpen, and Stella McCartney are turning to mushrooms for an eco-alternative to leather.
The wondrous fungi-inspired creations in Dutch couture designer Iris Van Herpen’s Spring 2021 collection are like nothing else in the fashion world. Undulating crowns of brass coils top delicate micro-plissé gowns with bodices formed from sinuous silk tendrils. An early adopter of 3D printing and advocate for sustainability, van Herpen has emerged as a kind of oracle within the fashion industry. She spent lockdown in Amsterdam reading biologist Merlin Sheldrake’s book, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures, which describes the hidden world of mycelium, the sprawling underground root-like networks of fungi (the visible part we know as mushrooms are akin to fruit on trees).
Israeli/American company Eviation is preparing for the first test flights of its gorgeous Alice, an all-electric 11-seat luxury plane with an impressive 506-mile (814-km) range from a single charge of its huge 820-kWh battery pack.
The company says it’s just taken delivery of its first electric motor, one of three Magnix Electric Propulsion Units the Alice will use to power its three variable pitch pusher props, one on a pod at the end of each wing and a third on the tail. The latter is designed to accelerate fast-moving air around the fuselage and turn the whole body into a bonus wing surface for extra lift.
The prototype is certainly a striking looking aircraft, all space-age looking with its big v-tail and that tastefully squashed high-lift fuselage. Once everything’s all hooked up, it’ll carry two crew and nine passengers at cruise speeds up to 253 mph (407 km/h), and Eviation says the low noise output of its electric powertrain will make a solid contribution to the comfort factor in the back.
The program was established in the mid-2000s under the Bush administration, and it was set up to boost the US biofuel industry in order to reduce US dependence on foreign oil. In the process, it created a strange situation where a ton of farmland started being used by ethanol producers who are now heavily subsidized by the program. Since electric vehicles would also help accomplish this goal, it has been proposed that they could be included in the program, and the Biden administration is expected to review the proposal.
Tesla has reportedly applied to enter the profitable renewable fuel credit market that is currently dominated by ethanol producers as it is expected to be opened to electric vehicles.
There are currently at least eight companies who applied with the Environmental Protection Agency to be included in the multi-billion dollar US renewable credit market, but the agency did not release their names.
Continue reading “Tesla prepares to disrupt ethanol producers” »
Whether it’s turning forests into cropland or savannah into pastures, humanity has repurposed land over the last 60 years equivalent in area to Africa and Europe combined, researchers said Tuesday.
If you count all such transitions since 1960, it adds up to about 43 million square kilometres (16.5 square miles), four times more than previous estimates, according to a study in Nature Communications.
“Since land use plays a central role for climate mitigation, biodiversity and food production, understanding its full dynamics is essential for sustainable land use strategies,” lead author Karina Winkler, a physical geographer at Wageningen University & Research in the Netherlands, told AFP.
Children are our future, in every sense of the word. But what might that future be like, and how might it shape the lives of young people? Thanks to COVID and numerous other social, ecological, and technological shifts taking place right now, the future of childhood is evolving.
So what happens when three leading female futurists come together to envision what the children of the future could be like or what world they might inhabit? The result is this article, that shares creative and thought-provoking profiles of five kids from the future.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/cathyhackl/2021/04/18/five-kids…026247a379
Toyota’s first car in its new Beyond Zero brand will be the bZ4X electric SUV. Look for it before the end of 2022.
Car companies love to create new brands. The Japanese Big Three gave us Lexus, Infiniti, and Acura 30+ years ago when they wanted to go upmarket with high profit premium cars. People who would never consider dropping $30000 on a Toyota were happy to spend double that on a Lexus. Such is the power of branding.
In the electric car era, several companies have have created new brands for their battery powered cars. Mercedes has its EQ division, Volkswagen its ID branded cars, BMW uses a simple “i,” while Hyundai is employing the Ioniq moniker for its battery electric cars. While all those companies have been ramping up EV offerings, Toyota has been largely content to hang out in the background and sell variations of its Synergy hybrid powertrain, cars it often misleadingly characterizes as “self charging electric cars.”
Continue reading “Toyota Introduces Beyond Zero Electric SUV At Shanghai Auto Show” »
Pretty soon, you’ll start seeing this term on very expensive items.
New Material Absorbs and Stores Solar Energy ‘The light that is thus trapped can be released by making a small spark near the glass.’ — L. Sprague de Camp, 1940.
3D Printed Damascus Steel Now Possible ‘… lined with durite, that strange close-packed laboratory product.’ — Robert Heinlein, 1939.
Engineers at Duke University have developed the world’s first fully recyclable printed electronics. Their recycling process recovers nearly 100% of the materials used—and preserves most of their performance capabilities for reuse.
By demonstrating a crucial and relatively complex computer component—the transistor—created with three carbon-based inks, the researchers hope to inspire a new generation of recyclable electronics.
“Silicon-based computer components are probably never going away, and we don’t expect easily recyclable electronics like ours to replace the technology and devices that are already widely used,” said Aaron Franklin, the Addy Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke. “But we hope that by creating new, fully recyclable, easily printed electronics and showing what they can do, that they might become widely used in future applications.”
