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Category: sustainability – Page 492

The global low-carbon revolution could be at risk unless new international agreements and governance mechanisms are put in place to ensure a sustainable supply of rare minerals and metals, a new academic study has warned.

The amount of cobalt, copper, lithium, cadmium, and rare earth elements needed for solar photovoltaics, batteries, electric vehicle (EV) motors, wind turbines, fuel cells, and nuclear reactors will likely grow at a rapid pace in the upcoming years. Even if alternatives are found for one metal, there will be reliance on another as the scope of possibilities is inherently limited by physical and chemical properties of elements.

However, with global supplies often heavily monopolized by a single country, confronted by social and environmental conflict, or concentrated in poorly functioning markets, there is a real possibility that a shortage of minerals could hold back the urgent need for a rapid upscaling of low-carbon technologies. In some cases, markets are providing misleading signals to investors that can lead to poor decisions. In other cases, the countries or regions supplying minerals are politically unstable.

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Elon Musk’s rocket company SpaceX is kicking off the new year with an ultra busy month of tests and missions, including a major test for the company’s first crewed mission to fly NASA astronauts to and back from the International Space Station (ISS).

To drum up hype ahead of the big day, Musk posted a simulated video on Monday showing how the eventual manned launch will look.

SEE ALSO: Why Nobel Prize-Winning Scientists Universally Oppose Moving to Mars.

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Australian Research opens up new possibilities for hydrogen fuelled future.

Scientists show how using only water, iron, nickel and electricity can create hydrogen energy much more cheaply than before.

Hydrogen-powered cars may soon become more than just a novelty after a UNSW-led team of scientists demonstrated a much cheaper and sustainable way to create the hydrogen required to power them.

In research published in Nature Communications recently, scientists from UNSW Sydney, Griffith University and Swinburne University of Technology showed that capturing hydrogen by splitting it from oxygen in water can be achieved by using low-cost metals like iron and nickel as catalysts, which speed up this chemical reaction while requiring less energy.

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Let’s be clear.

What can we trust? Why is the ‘information ecology’ so damaged, and what would it take to make it healthy?

This is a fundamental question, because without good sensemaking, we cannot even begin to act in the world. It is also a central concern in what many are calling the “meaning crisis”, because what is meaningful is connected to what is real.

Daniel Schmachtenberger is an evolutionary philosopher — his central interest is civilization design: developing new capacities for sense-making and choice-making, individually and collectively, to support conscious sustainable evolution.

To get access to more exclusive content and to join this evolving conversation, become a Rebel Wisdom member: https://www.rebelwisdom.co.uk/plans

Continue reading “The War on Sensemaking, Daniel Schmachtenberger” | >

GivePower has deployed a new water desalination plant in Africa using Tesla batteries and solar power that is now providing clean water to thousands of people.

The system has been deployed in Kiunga, a rural village in Kenya where the lack of clean water had people sometimes rely on saltwater wells or even contaminated water.

Desalination is a power-consuming process that is hard to implement in a place where power is already scarce.

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In September 2018, United Nations secretary-general António Guterres gave a speech on the global lack of trust, or what he called a “trust deficit disorder.” He just gave a similar speech, this time discussing blockchain specifically. The organization isn’t just motivated to build a more sustainable world or reducing waste from their supply chain, but as American support has waned, donors are demanding assurance their donations are being spent for the purpose they were intended.

United Nations secretary-general António Guterres says the intergovernmental giant needs to embrace blockchain. In a statement provided to Forbes by the secretary-general’s office, Guterres touted the technology first made popular by bitcoin as a crucial component of the organization that generate’s $50 billion in revenue annually.

Coming at a time when the president of China has touted blockchain as a national priority, and the $6 billion United Nations Children’s Fund has started accepting bitcoin and ethereum donations for some of its projects, the statement from Guterres shows that cryptocurrency and the underlying blockchain technology is being seriously explored at the highest levels of the largest organizations in the world.

While China seems largely focused on using blockchain as a way to prevent money laundering and better track its citizens’ transactions, the United Nations work has been more focused on giving donors increased assurance their donations are being spent how they wish, while reducing waste in the organization’s giant supply chain.

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Would be cool to see Tesla use more recycled components.

McDonald’s used to send 62 million pounds of coffee chaff to landfills. But the company partnered with Ford Motor Company with hopes to eliminate their waste to landfills. The research team at Ford has already been using agave, wheat, and even denim byproducts to make car parts. They discovered that chaff can be used as well. Here’s an inside look of the process.

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#Ford #McDonalds #TechInsider

Tech Insider tells you all you need to know about tech: gadgets, how-to’s, gaming, science, digital culture, and more.

Continue reading “How Ford Makes Car Parts From Used McDonald’s Coffee Beans” | >

In the life extension movement, longevity escape velocity (sometimes referred to as Actuarial escape velocity[1]) is a hypothetical situation in which life expectancy is extended longer than the time that is passing. For example, in a given year in which longevity escape velocity would be maintained, technological advances would increase life expectancy more than the year that just went by.

Life expectancy increases slightly every year as treatment strategies and technologies improve. At present, more than one year of research is required for each additional year of expected life. Longevity escape velocity occurs when this ratio reverses, so that life expectancy increases faster than one year per one year of research, as long as that rate of advance is sustainable.[2][3][4]

The concept was first publicly proposed by David Gobel, co-founder of the Methuselah Foundation (MF). The idea has been championed by biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey[5] (the other co-founder of the MF), and futurist Ray Kurzweil,[6] who named one of his books, Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever, after the concept. These two claim that by putting further pressure on science and medicine to focus research on increasing limits of aging, rather than continuing along at its current pace, more lives will be saved in the future, even if the benefit is not immediately apparent.[2].

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An international research group has applied methods of theoretical physics to investigate the electromagnetic response of the Great Pyramid to radio waves. Scientists predicted that under resonance conditions, the pyramid can concentrate electromagnetic energy in its internal chambers and under the base. The research group plans to use these theoretical results to design nanoparticles capable of reproducing similar effects in the optical range. Such nanoparticles may be used, for example, to develop sensors and highly efficient solar cells. The study was published in the Journal of Applied Physics.

While Egyptian are surrounded by many myths and legends, researchers have little scientifically reliable information about their physical properties. Physicists recently took an interest in how the Great Pyramid would interact with electromagnetic waves of a resonant length. Calculations showed that in the resonant state, the pyramid can concentrate in the its internal chambers as well as under its base, where the third unfinished chamber is located.

These conclusions were derived on the basis of numerical modeling and analytical methods of physics. The researchers first estimated that resonances in the pyramid can be induced by radio waves with a length ranging from 200 to 600 meters. Then they made a model of the electromagnetic response of the pyramid and calculated the extinction cross section. This value helps to estimate which part of the incident wave energy can be scattered or absorbed by the pyramid under resonant conditions. Finally, for the same conditions, the scientists obtained the electromagnetic field distribution inside the pyramid.

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