Lifeboat Foundation

Forget the latest Hollywood film noir and spend some time learning about this story instead. The story is that of Reno, Nevada, and the location of the original Tesla Gigafactory. The historical drama, a true story, unfolds with twisting and dark details.

The story came to light due to the notable new podcast series The City (USA Today’s investigative podcast). Episode 4 of season 2 is titled “West World.”

Continue reading “Old Reno & The Promise Of New Reno. How Is Tesla Gigafactory Shifting Nevada?” »

On a farm near Moscow, the cows are walking around with VR goggles strapped to their heads in an effort to improve their living conditions, relax them, with the ultimate goal for them to produce more milk.

The Swedish company IKEA is always leading in terms of initiation and creativity when it comes to their projects.

Julian Melchiorri’s “Exhale” is a piece of green lighting where algae help purify air. The prototype chandelier was recently at the London Design Festival.

Sugar poses one of the most pressing health problems in the modern world – not least because it’s just so delicious. Rather than quitting sweets cold turkey, low-calorie alternatives to sucrose could make tasty treats that are at least less bad for us. And now, researchers from Tufts University have developed a more efficient method for producing one such sweetener, using farms of bacteria.

The sugar in question is called tagatose, which the FDA says is “generally regarded as safe.” It’s 92 percent as sweet as sucrose – regular old table sugar – but because the human digestive system doesn’t metabolize as much of it, it only has 38 percent of the calories. That, in turn, means tagatose has a much smaller effect on blood glucose and insulin, making it safe for diabetics. And to cap it off, tests show that it doesn’t contribute to cavities or tooth decay.

But, of course, there’s a catch – tagatose is a little complicated to produce. Normally, it’s done by hydrolyzing lactose to make galactose, which is then isomerized into tagatose, which then needs to be purified and crystallized into a solid, usable form. Yields from this process are low, at less than 30 percent.

Trial shows panels can smooth voltage fluctuations in the National Grid.

What could the UK’s recent investment announcement mean for the future of sustainable energy?
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There are many directions we could go when it comes to the future of sustainable energy—but the UK made a bold move when it announced a huge investment (220 million pounds huge) in a prototype fusion power facility that could be functioning as a commercial power plant by 2040.

Continue reading “The UK Is Racing to Build the World’s First Commercial Fusion Power Plant” »

Researchers from the University of Houston have reported a new device that can both efficiently capture solar energy and store it until it is needed, offering promise for applications ranging from power generation to distillation and desalination.

Unlike solar panels and solar cells, which rely on photovoltaic technology for the direct generation of electricity, the hybrid device captures heat from the sun and stores it as thermal energy. It addresses some of the issues that have stalled wider-scale adoption of solar power, suggesting an avenue for using solar energy around-the-clock, despite limited sunlight hours, cloudy days and other constraints.

The work, described in a paper published Wednesday in Joule, combines molecular energy storage and latent heat storage to produce an integrated harvesting and storage device for potential 24/7 operation. The researchers report a harvesting efficiency of 73% at small-scale operation and as high as 90% at large-scale operation.

Heliogen is a startup that wants to “replace fuels with sunlight.” And the Bill Gates-backed solar startup, which has flown under the radar until today, has made a major green-energy breakthrough for heavy industry. Heliogen “has created the world’s first technology that can commercially replace fuels with carbon-free, ultra-high temperature heat from the sun.”