Taking a cue from the self-cleaning properties of the lotus leaf, researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have shed new light on microscopic forces and mechanisms that can be optimized to remove dust from solar panels to maintain efficiency and light absorption. The new technique removed 98 percent of dust particles.
In a new study published in Langmuir, the researchers confirmed that modifying the surface properties of solar panels may greatly reduce the amount of dust remaining on the surface, and significantly increase the potential of solar energy harvesting applications in the desert.
Dust adhesion on solar panels is a major challenge to energy harvesting through photovoltaic cells and solar thermal collectors. New solutions are necessary to maintain maximum collection efficiency in high dust density areas such as the Negev desert in Israel.
Every single member of the UN doubled-down today on a commitment to provide universal health coverage to their citizens. The fact that the US will be among them is perhaps evidence of how disconnected these declarations can be from actual domestic political agendas.
Yet the issue is important, and it shows just how out of line the US approach to health care coverage is compared to the rest of the world. Only about half the world’s population has access to the kind of affordable health care services that don’t require crippling out-of-pocket costs. Most of those people are in mid- and low-income countries. Or they are in the wealthiest country on Earth: the US.
Bringing universal health care to everyone is one of the “sustainable development goals,” the ambitious to-do list for UN member countries to complete by 2030. For the UN, universal health care means, “financial risk protection, access to quality essential health-care services and access to safe, effective, quality and affordable essential medicines and vaccines for all.”
California’s drought is spawning a slew of proposed desalination plants to create potable water from seawater, including one coming up in Santa Barbara. Just how clean are these facilities and what is their impact on ocean life?
CHICAGO, Dec. 5, 2019 — In a recent study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, scientists used a photocatalyst largely made of copper to transform carbon dioxide (CO2) to methanol.
Crew members in route to a distant planet may best be accommodated by full immersion VR. The actual spaceship could be reduced to a relatively simple, small, well-shielded vehicle. Inside the crew’s biological material could be supported by a simplified nutrition, waste and maintenance system. Their minds could inhabit a fully immersive VR environment that would provide them with all the luxuries of vast, diverse spaces and experiences — complete with simulated gravity, simulated pleasant nature-like and artificial environments, and simulated meals.
They could also engage in simulating the type of society they intend to build once they arrive in their new physical environment, using similar constraints to the ones they will encounter. This could allow many years for actual human experiences to test and refine what they will build and how they will interact in their new home.
Last week we covered how the Tesla Cybertruck’s aerodynamics might be better than its boxy shape suggests, and today Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to the numbers and suggested that the Cybertruck could get a Cd (drag coefficient) as low as .3 – quite impressive for a pickup truck.
RadNet data from individual near-real-time air monitors is available on a clickable map and is also listed by state and city. Sampling locations with drinking water, precipitation and air filter analysis results in 2016 are also listed.
Philippine-made ocean waste collector and dengue mapper to join the NASA global hackathon
MANILA, Philippines — A deployable, autonomous ocean waste collection system utilizing space data to locate nearby garbage patches built by students from De La Salle University and an automated information portal which correlates dengue cases with real-time data from satellite, climate, and search engines won the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s International Space Apps Challenge last October 18–20, 2019 in Manila, in collaboration with the Philippine Council for Industry, Energy and Emerging Technology Research and Development of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-PCIEERD), Animo Labs technology business incubator, PLDT InnoLab, American Corner Manila, the U.S. government, and part of the Design Week Philippines with Department of Trade and Industry-Design Center of the Philippines.
Using NASA’s Ocean Surface Current Analysis Real-time (OSCAR) data to determine possible locations of ocean garbage patches using GPS, PaWiKAN uses a pair of deployable, dynamically reconfigurable boats capable of trapping and returning ocean waste back to ground. It is equipped with extended-range radio system based on LoRa technology and Arduino to communicate with sensors and controlled by a deployment station. It was developed by Lasallian electronics and communications engineering students Samantha Maxine Santos, Antonio Miguel S. Alejo, Grant Lewis Bulaong, and Janos Lance L. Tiberio of Ocean’s 4, who also joined the last year’s hackathon, creating a hyper-casual puzzle game utilizing images from the Hubble Space Telescope and intuitive physics concepts.
“Our global bodies of water are actually littered with plastics. This is a very futuristic solution to help get rid of plastics currently floating or submerged in global waters. It is timely and relevant solution,” according to Monchito B. Ibrahim, Industry Development Committee Chairman of the Analytics Association of the Philippines and former undersecretary of the Department of Information and Communications Technology.
