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Archive for the ‘sustainability’ category: Page 573

Mar 15, 2017

Blockchain can dramatically reduce pollution and traffic jams

Posted by in categories: bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, Elon Musk, energy, environmental, futurism, sustainability, transportation

The World Economic Forum has posted an article that hints at something that I have also suggested. (I am not taking credit. Others have suggested the idea too…But advancing tech and credible, continued visibility may help us to finally be taken seriously!)

I am not referring to purchasing and retiring carbon credits. I like that idea too. But here is a blockchain idea that can enable fleets of autonomous, shared, electric vehicles. Benefits to individuals and to society are numerous.

The future is just around the corner. Non-coin applications of the blockchain will support many great things. Goodbye car ownership. Hello clean air! The future of personal transportation.

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Mar 13, 2017

Scientists Have Found a Crazy New Way to Print on Paper Using Light

Posted by in categories: nanotechnology, sustainability

A new method for printing on paper using light promises to be much cheaper, and easier on the environment than the traditional ink-based printing we’re used to.

Scientists have developed a special nanoparticle coating that’s easy to apply to normal paper and changes colour when ultraviolet (UV) light shines on it. The colour change can be reversed when the coating is heated to 120 degrees Celsius (248 degrees Fahrenheit), and allows for up to 80 rewrites.

The team of researchers from the US and China say that their new high-resolution light printing technique could be used everywhere from newspapers to labels, saving on the cost of ink and paper, and on the environmental cost of their recycling and disposing.

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Mar 13, 2017

China’s New “Weather-Controlling Tech” Could Make it Rain on Demand

Posted by in categories: climatology, sustainability

In Brief

  • China has spent $168 million on cloud seeding technology to hopefully manipulate the weather and combat drought and extreme weather due to climate change
  • Cloud seeding technology has existed for a long time, however because of early false claims and deep-rooted skepticism, there isn’t sufficient research to back up the tech

The China Meteorological Administration wants to increase rainfall and snow across 960,000 square kilometers of the country. A more effective way of making this happen that doesn’t involve a ritualistic rain dance? Spending $168 million on cloud seeding technology that they hope will allow them to manipulate the weather.

Here’s how it works. The money will be invested into four new aircrafts, upgrading eight existing planes, and launching 900 rocket systems that will allow them to sprinkle substances above the clouds that could induce the rainmaking process. These substances range from silver iodide to dry ice. Adding these chemicals into clouds might lower their temperature and speed up the condensation process.

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Mar 13, 2017

Tesla Unveils an Enormous Solar Farm to Replace 1.6M Gallons of Fuel a Year

Posted by in category: sustainability

Tesla’s new plant makes solar more sustainable.

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Mar 12, 2017

Recycling Space Junk for a LunarBase

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, satellites, sustainability

It costs $80k to send a Nano- Satellite into space! To send the materials to build a lunar base is going to be expensive!

This week it was announced that NASA found a forgotten satellite in Lunar Orbit, which got me thinking about an idea to recycle existing Space Junk in the construction of an International Lunar Base with cost savings. We could use a modified version of my Google Deepmind NEO tracker to source the Space Junk and the ideas listed below to capture and redirect the Space Junk.

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Mar 12, 2017

Australian desert farm grows 17,000 metric tons of vegetables with just seawater and sun

Posted by in categories: food, sustainability

Plenty of desert for this sort of thing.


Sundrop Farms grows tomatoes in the Australia desert using solely sunlight and seawater, which is desalinized with solar power.

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Mar 9, 2017

Tesla Completes Hawaii Storage Project That Sells Solar at Night — By Mark Chediak | Bloomberg

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, energy, solar power, sustainability, transportation

“Tesla Inc. has completed a solar project in Hawaii that incorporates batteries to sell power in the evening, part of a push by the electric car maker to provide more green power to the grid.”

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Mar 6, 2017

Nanotechnology Combatting Global Warming

Posted by in categories: chemistry, complex systems, disruptive technology, energy, environmental, innovation, materials, nanotechnology, Singularity University, sustainability, transportation

Superlubricity nano-structured self-assembling coating repairs surface wear, decreases emissions and increases HP and gas mileage.

Globally about 15 percent of manmade carbon dioxide comes from vehicles. In more developed countries, cars, trucks, airplanes, ships and other vehicles account for a third of emissions related to climate change. Emissions standards are fueling the lubricant additives market with innovation.

Up to 33% of fuel energy in vehicles is used to overcome friction. Tribology is the science of interacting surfaces in relative motion inclusive of friction, wear and lubrication. This is where TriboTEX, a nanotechnology startup is changing the game of friction modification and wear resilience with a lubricant additive that forms a nano-structured coating on metal alloys.

This nano-structured coating increases operating efficiency and component longevity. It is comprised of synthetic magnesium silicon hydroxide nanoparticles that self-assemble as an ultralow friction layer, 1/10 of the original friction resistance. The coating is self-repairing during operation, environmentally inert and extracts carbon from the oil. The carbon diamond-like nano-particle lowers the friction budget of the motor, improving fuel economy and emissions in parallel while increasing the power and longevity of the motor.

TriboTEX has a Kickstarter campaign that has just surpassed $100,000 in funding. The early bird round has just closed that offered the product at one half the cost of its retail. The final round offers the lubricant system self-forming coating at 75 percent and is ending shortly. The founder Dr. Pavlo Rudenko, Ph.D. is a graduate of Singularity University GSP11 program.

Mar 3, 2017

Researchers remotely control sequence in which 2-D sheets fold into 3D structures

Posted by in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, nanotechnology, satellites, solar power, sustainability

Inspired by origami, North Carolina State University researchers have found a way to remotely control the order in which a two-dimensional (2-D) sheet folds itself into a three-dimensional (3D) structure.

“A longstanding challenge in the field has been finding a way to control the sequence in which a 2-D sheet will fold itself into a 3D object,” says Michael Dickey, a professor of chemical and at NC State and co-corresponding author of a paper describing the work. “And as anyone who has done origami — or folded their laundry—can tell you, the order in which you make the folds can be extremely important.”

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Mar 3, 2017

Want more crop variety? Researchers propose using CRISPR to accelerate plant domestication

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

The more crops we cultivate, the less chance our food supply wil get wiped out by a disease.


Out of the more than 300,000 plant species in existence, only three species—rice, wheat, and maize—account for most of the plant matter that humans consume, partly because in the history of agriculture, mutations arose that made these crops the easiest to harvest. But with CRISPR technology, we don’t have to wait for nature to help us domesticate plants, argue researchers at the University of Copenhagen. In a Review published March 2 in Trends in Plant Science, they describe how gene editing could make, for example, wild legumes, quinoa, or amaranth, which are already sustainable and nutritious, more farmable.

“In theory, you can now take those traits that have been selected for over thousands of years of crop domestication—such as reduced bitterness and those that facilitate easy harvest—and induce those mutations in plants that have never been cultivated,” says senior author Michael Palmgren, a botanist who heads an interdisciplinary think tank called “Plants for a Changing World” at the University of Copenhagen.

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