Lifeboat Foundation

Canada’s newly announced $5,000 incentive for electric vehicles is officially going into effect on May 1st next month and the federal government has released the list of eligible vehicles.

Tesla vehicles are officially ineligible for the incentive.

As we reported last month, the Canadian federal announced a new $5,000 incentive for electric cars with a $45,000 price limit, which virtually excluded Tesla vehicles.

Continue reading “Canada’s $5,000 EV incentive starts next month, Tesla officially disqualified” »

Scientists bring some functions in a pig’s BRAIN ‘back to life’ — four hours after the farm animal died„.

Scientists have been able to partially revive the brains of decapitated pigs that died four hours earlier in a groundbreaking study.

Continue reading “Scientists restore some functions in a pig’s BRAIN hours after it died” »

About a billion people around the world lack access to safe drinking water. Desalinating salty water into drinkable water can help to fill this dangerous gap. But traditional desalination systems are far too expensive to install and operate in many locations, especially in low-income countries and remote areas.

Now researchers at the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering have demonstrated a successful prototype of one critical component for affordable small-scale desalination: an inexpensive solar evaporator, made of wood. The evaporator generates steam with high efficiency and minimal need for maintenance, says Liangbing Hu, associate professor of materials science and engineering and affiliate of the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute.

The design employs a technique known as interfacial evaporation, “which shows great potential in response to global water scarcity because of its high solar-to-vapor efficiency, low environmental impact, and portable device design with low cost,” Hu says. “These features make it suitable for off-grid water generation and purification, especially for low-income countries.”

Continue reading “Solar evaporator offers a fresh route to fresh water” »

World Water Day aims to raise awareness of the global water crisis, which could leave one in four people with a recurring water shortage by 2050. As the global population continues to climb, that means more than 2 billion people could soon be starved for world’s most precious resource.

To tackle this mounting issue, one company has turned to a solution in nature.

Make water from the air with the AquaBoy® Pro II, air to water generator. The AquaBoy® Pro II produces up to 2 to 5 gallons per day of “purified great tasting water” by making it directly from the air around us. This award-winning, luxury appliance provides access to both hot and cold purified drinking water with just the touch of a button that is perfect for hot tea, gourmet coffee, purified ice, cooking, pet care and much more. There is also a hot water lock button to help prevent accidental dispensing.

The first of the TTC’s zero-emission electric buses arrived today.

According to TTC spokesperson Stuart Green, the new vehicle must undergo testing and commissioning first before it can enter regular service later this spring.

The first of the #TTC ‘s zero emission electric buses arrived today! This @newflyer vehicle (#3700) will undergo testing and commissioning before it enters regular service later this Spring. We’ll have 60 e-buses by year end, making the TTC a national clean-tech fleet leader. pic.twitter.com/voobFV8JEM

Continue reading “The first of the TTC’s zero-emission electric buses rolled into town today (PHOTOS)” »

The farther you get from the equator, the less effective solar panels become at reliably generating power all year round. And it’s not just the shorter spans of sunlight during the winter months that are a problem; even a light dusting of snow can render solar panels ineffective. As a result of global warming, winters are only going to get more severe, but there’s at least one silver lining as researchers from UCLA have come up with a way to harness electricity from all that snow.

The technology they developed is called a snow-based triboelectric nanogenerator (or snow TENG, for short) which generates energy from the exchange of electrons. If you’ve ever received a nasty shock when touching a metal door handle, you’ve already experienced the science at work here. As it falls towards earth, snowflakes are positively charged and ready to give up electrons. In a way, it’s almost free energy ready for the taking, so after testing countless materials with an opposite charge, the UCLA researchers (working with collaborators from the University of Toronto, McMaster University, and the University of Connecticut) found that the negative charge of silicone made it most effective for harvesting electrons when it came into contact with snowflakes.

The cause of cancer is written into the DNA of tumours, scientists have discovered, in a breakthrough which could finally show how much disease is attributable to factors like air pollution or pesticides.

Until now the roots of many cancers have proved elusive, with doctors unable to tease out the impact of a myriad of carcinogenic causes which people encounter everyday.

Even with lung cancer, it is not known just how much can be attributed to smoking and how much could be linked to other factors, such as living by a busy road, or inhaling pollutants at work.

Continue reading “Cause of cancer is written into DNA of tumours, scientists find, creating a ‘black box’ for origin of disease” »

In a paper to be published in the forthcoming issue in NANO, a team of researchers from the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Hunan University of Science and Technology have proposed a novel strategy for the synthesis of non-precious metal catalysts in zinc-air batteries that do not compromise its electroactivity, affordability and stability.

As a green and sustainable energy generator, zinc-air battery has attracted great attention from researchers due to its high specific energy, high current density, low cost, and environmental friendliness. Yet it is not without its drawbacks. The slow oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) of its cathode has become an obstacle to its commercial application. One possible solution is to use platinum (Pt) and Pt-based catalysts, but its high cost and scarce availability make it less ideal. In addition, alkaline KOH (or NaOH) is generally used as the electrolyte, but it leads to the generation of carbonates (CO₃^2-) due to the dissolution of CO₂ in the electrolyte as well as the spontaneous corrosion of the anodic zinc in strong alkaline media. This has the effect of slowing down the ionic conductivity of the electrolyte and battery life. Therefore, a neutral electrolyte should be used instead.