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Archive for the ‘sustainability’ category: Page 492

Jun 18, 2019

Engineers boost output of solar desalination system

Posted by in categories: nanotechnology, physics, sustainability

Rice University’s solar-powered approach for purifying salt water with sunlight and nanoparticles is even more efficient than its creators first believed.

Researchers in Rice’s Laboratory for Nanophotonics (LANP) this week showed they could boost the efficiency of their solar-powered desalination system by more than 50% simply by adding inexpensive plastic lenses to concentrate sunlight into “hot spots.” The results are available online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Jun 18, 2019

Toyota May Introduce Solid-state Batteries for Electric Cars By 2020

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Toyota is working on potentially game-changing solid-state batteries, and they may arrive sooner than expected. The Japanese automaker’s R&D boss said Toyota hopes to unveil the batteries in 2020, two years ahead of schedule. Toyota plans to introduce more electric cars to its lineup.

Jun 16, 2019

Drug-Resistant Bacteria Common at Horse Farms, Study Shows

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, sustainability

Scientists found 200 E. coli strains, about half of which were resistant to at least one microbial agent, in manure, air, and horse nostrils at Polish riding centers. Here’s what that means for you.

Jun 16, 2019

Space Gets 100 Times Cheaper By 2023 and We Will Get Moon Bases and More

Posted by in categories: satellites, solar power, sustainability

If SpaceX gets a fully reusable Super Heavy Starship flying to orbit in 2020 and then has 100 fully reusable flights by 2023 then the cost of space will drop by 100 times. This will start fulfilling the plans for lunar bases, lunar mining, and space-based solar power.

If each Super Heavy Starship costs $300 million and has $1 million in operating and maintenance cost per flight then the per flight cost is $4 million. Super Heavy Starship is supposed to launch about 100 tons to orbit.

Assuming that 800 Starlink satellites are launched by April 2020, then SpaceX will start doubling its revenue from $2–3 billion to $5–6 billion in 2020 and ten billion in 2021. This will mean that SpaceX will be able to afford to build dozens of Super Heavy Starships.

Jun 15, 2019

Spinach power for solar cells

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

Popeye would be proud.


Popeye uses spinach to power his muscles. Now, scientists are looking to spinach as a power source for making electricity.

A solar cell converts sunlight into electricity. Most of these, today, are made of a material called silicon. The new device instead uses proteins from spinach and from a bacterium called Rhodobacter sphaeroides.

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Jun 10, 2019

Matrix’s PowerWatch 2 needs no charger, uses body heat and solar power

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

A color smartwatch that never needs charging.

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Jun 10, 2019

KickSat: Our goal is to dramatically lower the cost of spaceflight, making it easy enough and affordable enough for anyone to explore space

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, solar power, space travel, sustainability

We can do this by shrinking the size and mass of the spacecraft, allowing many to be launched together.

Sprite

The Sprite is a tiny (3.5 by 3.5 centimeter) single-board spacecraft. It has a microcontroller, radio, and solar cells and is capable of carrying single-chip sensors, such as thermometers, magnetometers, gyroscopes, and accelerometers. To lower costs, Sprites are designed to be deployed hundreds at a time in low Earth orbit and to simultaneously communicate with a ground station receiver.

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Jun 10, 2019

Skyscraper Farms Are About to Go Global

Posted by in categories: food, sustainability

Spread is producing pesticide-free vegetables.

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Jun 10, 2019

World’s First Hydraulic-Driven Vertical Farm Produces 1 Ton of Vegetables Every Other Day

Posted by in categories: climatology, sustainability

Year-round vegetables, minimal resources, climate-resistant—we’ve sung praises about vertical farms many times before. But Singapore’s Sky Greens is something very special.

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Jun 9, 2019

The “Quantum Glass” Battery Hype

Posted by in categories: finance, quantum physics, sustainability, transportation

There is a new battery type being hyped, with terms such as “Quantum Glass” battery or even “The Jesus Battery” and a claim that “It Will Ignite the Global $3 Trillion Electric Car Revolution.” Go and see it for yourself at investorplace.com (video transcript available from me), Forbes, and other financial information services.

This touted breakthrough in battery technology is the latest in a slew of innovative ideas that include “batteries made with sand,” “stretchable batteries,” “foam batteries,” “pee powered batteries,” “laser-made micro-super-capacitors” and more (13 Amazing Battery Innovations That Could Change The World).

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