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Archive for the ‘sustainability’ category: Page 495

May 24, 2019

Exposure to air pollution before and after birth may affect fundamental cognitive abilities

Posted by in categories: education, health, mathematics, neuroscience, sustainability

A growing body of research suggests that exposure to air pollution in the earliest stages of life is associated with negative effects on cognitive abilities. A new study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a centre supported by “la Caixa”, has provided new data: exposure to particulate matter with a diameter of less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) during pregnancy and the first years of life is associated with a reduction in fundamental cognitive abilities, such as working memory and executive attention.

The study, carried out as part of the BREATHE project, has been published in Environmental Health Perspectives. The objective was to build on the knowledge generated by earlier studies carried out by the same team, which found lower levels of cognitive development in children attending schools with higher levels of traffic-related air pollution.

The study included 2,221 children between 7 and 10 years of age attending schools in the city of Barcelona. The children’s cognitive abilities were assessed using various computerized tests. Exposure to air pollution at home during pregnancy and throughout childhood was estimated with a mathematical model using real measurements.

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May 21, 2019

The U.S. Has a Fleet of 300 Electric Buses. China Has 421,000

Posted by in category: sustainability

The rest of the world will struggle for years to match China’s rapid embrace of electric transit.

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May 20, 2019

Concentrated Solar Power and photovoltaic panels — what’s the difference?

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

Concentrated Solar Power and the better-known photovoltaic panels — what’s the difference, and is one better than the other?

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May 20, 2019

The average person in Europe loses two years of their life due to air pollution

Posted by in category: sustainability

It also causes 800,000 premature deaths in Europe every year, with an ‘Iron Curtain’ dividing East and West.

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May 20, 2019

1.5 Million Volunteers Plant 66 Million Trees in 12 Hours, Breaking Guinness World Record

Posted by in category: sustainability

The central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh set a new Guinness World Record on Sunday after 1.5 million volunteers planted more than 66 million tree saplings in just 12 hours along the Narmada river.

The effort bested the state of Uttar Pradesh’s previous record-breaking feat, when 800,000 participants planted 50 million trees in one day in July 2016.


May 19, 2019

This device could be a big boost for making solar power much cheaper

Posted by in categories: solar power, sustainability

By converting heat to focused beams of light, a new solar device could create cheap and continuous power.

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May 18, 2019

Hundreds of Americans Are Naming Babies “Elon” and “Tesla”

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Car Culture

Other automotive name choices include “Ford,” “Bentley,” and “Audi,” as Mashable reports, accounting for thousands of innocent newborns.

Whether the decision will help the car company overcome hurdles like hitting the lowest stock valuation since 2017 or dealing with multiple reports of Teslas randomly catching fire is unknown.

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May 17, 2019

Clean and effective electronic waste recycling

Posted by in categories: energy, health, sustainability

As the number of electronics devices increases around the world, finding effective methods of recycling electronic waste (e-waste) is a growing concern. About 50 million tons of e-waste is generated each year and only 20% of that is recycled. Most of the remaining 80% ends up in a landfill where it can become an environmental problem. Currently, e-waste recycling involves mechanical crushers and chemical baths, which are expensive, and manual labor, which can cause significant health and environmental problems when not performed properly. Thus, researchers from Kumamoto University, Japan have been using pulsed power (pulsed electric discharges) to develop a cleaner and more efficient recycling method.

Pulsed power has been shown to be successful in processing various waste materials, from concrete to waste water. To test its ability to be used in e-waste recycling, researchers examined its effectiveness in separating components found in one of the most prolific types of e-waste, CD ROMs. In previous work, they showed that complete separation of metal from plastic occurred using 30 pulses at about 35 J/pulse (At the current price of electricity in Tokyo, this amount of energy costs about 0.4 Yen for recycling 100 CD ROMs). To examine the mechanism of material separation using this method, researchers performed further analyses by observing the plasma discharge with a , by taking schlieren visualizations to assess the shock wave, and using shadowgraph images to measure fragment motion.

Images at the early stage of electrical discharge showed two distinct light emissions: blue-white and orange. These indicated excitation of aluminum and upper protective plastic respectively. After the plasma dissipated, fragments of metal and plastic could be seen flying away from the CD ROM sample.

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May 17, 2019

Triumph Is Building an Electric Motorcycle

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Just like Harley-Davidson and Ducati.

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May 16, 2019

Eyes in the sky project will show power plant pollution marks

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, robotics/AI, sustainability

Air pollution is responsible for millions of deaths every year, worldwide. According to a State of Global Air report, air pollution is the fifth greatest global mortality risk.

Air is the fifth highest cause of death among all health risks, ranking just below smoking; each year, more people die from related disease than from road traffic injuries or malaria.”

No wonder, then, that when Google.org issued an open call to organizations around the world to submit ideas for how they could use AI for societal challenges, Google chose one of the 20 winning organizations as one that was out to address pollution.

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