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Category: sustainability – Page 450

“Photonic Sunflower” – Controlled by Light Alone, New Smart Materials Twist, Bend and Move

Technology paves way for intelligent solar cells, other highly efficient devices programmed at the macro and nano scale.

Researchers at Tufts University School of Engineering have created light-activated composite devices able to execute precise, visible movements and form complex three-dimensional shapes without the need for wires or other actuating materials or energy sources. The design combines programmable photonic crystals with an elastomeric composite that can be engineered at the macro and nano scale to respond to illumination.

The research provides new avenues for the development of smart light-driven systems such as high-efficiency, self-aligning solar cells that automatically follow the sun’s direction and angle of light, light-actuated microfluidic valves or soft robots that move with light on demand. A “photonic sunflower,” whose petals curl towards and away from illumination and which tracks the path and angle of the light, demonstrates the technology in a paper that appears today (March 12th, 2021) in Nature Communications.

Irakli Beridze, Head, Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics — UNICRI — United Nations

AI And Robots For Law And Order — Irakli Beridze — Head, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, UNICRI – United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute.

Irakli Beridze is the Head of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI).

With a Master’s Degree in International Relations and National Security Studies, and a law degree, Mr. Beridze has more than 20 years of experience in leading multilateral negotiations, developing stakeholder engagement programs with governments, UN agencies, international organizations, private industry and corporations, think tanks, civil society, foundations, academia, and other partners on an international level.

Mr. Beridze advises governments and international organizations on numerous issues related to international security, scientific and technological developments, emerging technologies, innovation and disruptive potential of new technologies, particularly on the issue on crime prevention, criminal justice and security, and is now actively focused on supporting government’s worldwide on the strategies, action plans, roadmaps and policy papers on Artificial Intelligence.

Since 2014, Mr. Beridze has initiated and managed one of the first United Nations Programs on AI, initiating and organizing a number of high-level events at the United Nations General Assembly, and other international organizations, finding synergies with traditional threats and risks, as well as identifying solutions that AI can contribute to the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

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Controlled by light alone, new smart materials twist, bend and move

Researchers at Tufts University School of Engineering have created light-activated composite devices able to execute precise, visible movements and form complex three-dimensional shapes without the need for wires or other actuating materials or energy sources. The design combines programmable photonic crystals with an elastomeric composite that can be engineered at the macro and nano scale to respond to illumination.

The research provides new avenues for the development of smart -driven systems such as high-efficiency, self-aligning solar cells that automatically follow the sun’s direction and angle of light, light-actuated microfluidic valves or soft robots that move with light on demand. A “photonic sunflower,” whose petals curl towards and away from illumination and which tracks the path and angle of the light, demonstrates the technology in a paper that appears March 12th, 2021 in Nature Communications.

Color results from the absorption and reflection of light. Behind every flash of an iridescent butterfly wing or opal gemstone lie complex interactions in which natural photonic crystals embedded in the wing or stone absorb light of specific frequencies and reflect others. The angle at which the light meets the crystalline surface can affect which wavelengths are absorbed and the heat that is generated from that absorbed energy.

Seeing both sides of light collection

Two types of materials are better than one when it comes to solar cells, as revealed by an international team that has tested a new combination of materials and architecture to improve solar-cell efficiency.

Silicon has long dominated as the premier material for , helped by its abundance as a raw material. However, perovskites, a class of hybrid organic-inorganic material, are a viable alternative due to their low-cost and large-scale manufacture and potentially higher performance. While still too unstable for full commercialization, they might become available to the market by 2022.

KAUST’s Michele De Bastiani and Stefaan De Wolf, working with colleagues in Canada, Germany and Italy, now show that a combination of the two is the best approach. By optimizing the and the architecture of a “tandem” , the team has achieved efficiencies beyond commercial silicon solar panels.

Plastic Polymer Cables That Rival Fiber Optics

MIT scientists demonstrate a hair-like plastic polymer cable that can transmit data 10 times as fast as USB.

How fast does data flow? The answer: not fast enough.

The search for more efficient data-transfer solutions to meet the ever-increasing demand for computation never ends. Even today, most data transmission happens via traditional copper cables, which are power-hungry, leading to a compromise between data exchange and energy consumed. Fiber-optic cables are an alternative, but they don’t work well with the silicon chips in our computing systems. Overcoming these limitations, while theoretically possible, can turn out to be prohibitively expensive, especially for electronics-rich applications like data centers, spacecraft, electric vehicles and so on.

A team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have recently demonstrated a plastic polymer cable that is a complementary solution; it takes the best of copper wires and fiber-optics while ditching their shortcomings. Thinner and lighter than copper, this cable is capable of data transfer speeds rivaling fiber-optic threads, while being compatible with silicon chips. The team, which presented its findings at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference in February, reported data-transfer speeds topping 100 gigabits per second.

Electric Airplanes are Coming

The aviation industry is a terrible emitter of greenhouse gases. In 2019, it emitted 918 million tons of carbon dioxide into the environment. To solve this problem, aircraft must go green. One solution is battery-powered airplanes. Battery-powered airplanes have existed for decades and with improvements in battery technology, could become widespread in the near future. However, for long-distance intercontinental flights, we will need hydrogen airplanes. Hydrogen airplanes are also very feasible and could be used with turbofan technology, producing only water as emissions.

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Thank you to the following sources!

Information.

Global Emissions


https://theicct.org/publications/co2-emissions-commercial-aviation-2020
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00090-3
https://aviationbenefits.org/economic-growth/supporting-employment/
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48630656
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_aircraft#First_prototypes.
https://www.atag.org/facts-figures.html.
https://www.airbus.com/innovation.html.
https://www.airbus.com/innovation/zero-emission/hydrogen/zeroe.html.

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In a leap for battery research, machine learning gets scientific smarts

Scientists have taken a major step forward in harnessing machine learning to accelerate the design for better batteries: Instead of using it just to speed up scientific analysis by looking for patterns in data, as researchers generally do, they combined it with knowledge gained from experiments and equations guided by physics to discover and explain a process that shortens the lifetimes of fast-charging lithium-ion batteries.

It was the first time this approach, known as “scientific machine learning,” has been applied to cycling, said Will Chueh, an associate professor at Stanford University and investigator with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory who led the study. He said the results overturn long-held assumptions about how lithium-ion batteries charge and discharge and give researchers a new set of rules for engineering longer-lasting batteries.

The research, reported today in Nature Materials, is the latest result from a collaboration between Stanford, SLAC, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Toyota Research Institute (TRI). The goal is to bring together foundational research and industry know-how to develop a long-lived electric vehicle battery that can be charged in 10 minutes.

Israeli 5-minute battery charge aims to fire up electric cars

From flat battery to full charge in just five minutes—an Israeli start-up has developed technology it says could eliminate the “range anxiety” associated with electric cars.

Ultra-fast recharge specialists StoreDot have developed a first-generation lithium-ion that can rival the filling time of a standard car at the pump.

“We are changing the entire experience of the driver, the problem of ‘range anxiety’… that you might get stuck on the highway without energy,” StoreDot founder Doron Myersdorf said.

New Lego-like beams could revolutionize construction

Researchers from the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV) have come up with and patented a new system for manufacturing beams that aims to revolutionize the architecture, construction and civil engineering sectors. They are manufactured with 3D-printed plastic pieces that can be assembled as if they were pieces of Lego adding a high-performance layer of concrete in the most compressed area.

Its advantages, according to its creators, are several: they weigh up to 80% less than concrete or metallic beams, which means that no heavy cranes or lorries are needed to carry and install them; they save time and money on labor and materials; and they can be printed and assembled in situ, which facilitates their installation anywhere, regardless of how difficult it is to reach. In addition to all of this, it uses recycled plastics as the raw material, giving a new life to this product and thus helping move towards more sustainable construction.

The development of these innovative beams is the result of almost three years of research. “Our goal was to propose an alternative to the current reinforced concrete beams. These are made using profiles built for the length of the piece, which requires expensive installation and are hard to transport,” says José Ramón Albiol, lecturer at the Higher Technical School of Construction Engineering (ETSIE) of the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Following numerous hours of tests and trials, the combination of 3D printing, plastics and concrete provided optimum results. And last October they patented the system.

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