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Category: sustainability – Page 610

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If you have trouble wrapping your mind around quantum physics, don’t worry — it’s even hard for supercomputers. The solution, according to researchers from Google, Harvard, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories and others? Why, use a quantum computer, of course. The team accurately predicted chemical reaction rates using a supercooled quantum circuit, a result that could lead to improved solar cells, batteries, flexible electronics and much more.

Chemical reactions are inherently quantum themselves — the team actually used a quote from Richard Feynman saying “nature isn’t classical, dammit.” The problem is that “molecular systems form highly entangled quantum superposition states, which require many classical computing resources in order to represent sufficiently high precision,” according to the Google Research blog. Computing the lowest energy state for propane, a relatively simple molecule, takes around ten days, for instance. That figure is required in order to get the reaction rate.

That’s where the “Xmon” supercooled qubit quantum computing circuit (shown above) comes in. The device, known as a “variational quantum eigensolver (VQE)” is the quantum equivalent of a classic neural network. The difference is that you train a classical neural circuit (like Google’s DeepMind AI) to model classical data, and train the VQE to model quantum data. “The quantum advantage of VQE is that quantum bits can efficiently represent the molecular wave function, whereas exponentially many classical bits would be required.”

Continue reading “Quantum computers show potential to revolutionize chemistry” | >

Biowire.

Researchers led by microbiologist Derek Lovely say the wires, which rival the thinnest wires known to man, are produced from renewable, inexpensive feedstocks and avoid the harsh chemical processes typically used to produce nanoelectronic materials.

Lovley says, “New sources of electronic materials are needed to meet the increasing demand for making smaller, more powerful electronic devices in a sustainable way.” The ability to mass-produce such thin conductive wires with this sustainable technology has many potential applications in electronic devices, functioning not only as wires, but also transistors and capacitors. Proposed applications include biocompatible sensors, computing devices, and as components of solar panels.

This advance began a decade ago, when Lovley and colleagues discovered that Geobacter, a common soil microorganism, could produce “microbial nanowires,” electrically conductive protein filaments that help the microbe grow on the iron minerals abundant in soil. These microbial nanowires were conductive enough to meet the bacterium’s needs, but their conductivity was well below the conductivities of organic wires that chemists could synthesize.

Continue reading “‘Green’ electronic materials produced with synthetic biology” | >

Large Earth-orbiting greenhouses will someday likely be as commonplace as peanut acreage on Georgia’s coastal plains.

Low-Earth orbit (LEO) would hardly appear to be the best place to take up farming. But both NASA and the burgeoning commercial space industry are already planning for a time when in addition to on-orbit space hotels and new research stations, there will also be Earth-orbiting greenhouses. Such structures will provide a horn of plenty for growing numbers of LEO residents and astronauts venturing beyond Earth orbit to the Moon, Mars or even the Main Asteroid Belt.

The initial case for LEO agriculture would be to feed a growing population of space-dwellers — either using a greenhouse that remained permanently attached to the LEO habitat, or a greenhouse that was free-flying and uncrewed.

Here are five reasons why Earth-orbiting space greenhouses make sense.

Continue reading “5 Reasons To ‘Farm’ In Low-Earth Orbit” | >

Over the past several years, Northwestern Engineering’s Michael Jewett did the seemingly impossible. He overcame the critical barrier to making mutant ribosomes, the core catalyst in cells that are responsible for life.

Now, with funding from the Department of Defense’s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives (MURI) program, Jewett is ready to take this research to the next level. Along with a multi-school team, he plans to use engineer and repurpose the ribosome to make new kinds of polymers for flow batteries.

“We are in a new era of biomaterial design,” Jewett said. “So far, the ribosome has been this untouchable biomolecular machine — one that we couldn’t engineer or modify. Now, armed with recent advances in our ability to construct new versions, new applications may only be limited by our imagination.”

The MURI grant joins researchers from Northwestern, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Texas at Austin, and Georgia Institute of Technology who will work together to develop new types of electrical materials for battery storage. By using biological catalysts, the team aims to produce materials for sustainable, rechargeable batteries that are currently impossible to make chemically.

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New method for solar cells.

New solar cells could lead to improved light-emitting diodes, lasers and sensors.

Mercouri Kanatzidis Mercouri G. Kanatzidis.

EVANSTON, Ill. — A new type of two-dimensional-layered perovskite developed by Northwestern University, Los Alamos National Laboratory and Rice University researchers will open up new horizons for next-generation stable solar-cell devices and new opto-electronic devices such as light-emitting diodes, lasers and sensors.

Continue reading “Flipping Crystals Improves Solar-Cell Performance” | >

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies offer great promise for creating new and innovative products, growing the economy, and advancing national priorities in areas such as education, mental and physical health, addressing climate change, and more. Like any transformative technology, however, AI carries risks and presents complex policy challenges along a number of different fronts. The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) is interested in developing a view of AI across all sectors for the purpose of recommending directions for research and determining challenges and opportunities in this field. The views of the American people, including stakeholders such as consumers, academic and industry researchers, private companies, and charitable foundations, are important to inform an understanding of current and future needs for AI in diverse fields. The purpose of this RFI is to solicit feedback on overarching questions in AI, including AI research and the tools, technologies, and training that are needed to answer these questions.

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In just a few years, we could see an electric car on the market that doesn’t need a charging station to ‘fuel up.’

The biggest apparent stumbling blocks for electric vehicles (EVs) seems to be their range — the distance that can be driven between charging — and the time it takes for an EV battery to be charged. When competing against gas cars, which can be filled up in just a few minutes, and can cover a range of several hundred miles per tank, the idea of having a limited range and a longer ‘fueling’ time with an EV isn’t one that most of us are comfortable with. And when considering the easy availability of fuel from the vast number of gas stations (as opposed to the EV charging stations that are few and far between in most areas), switching from gas to electric mobility is a bit of a stretch for many people (not even taking into account the higher cost for EVs).

However, as costs go down, and as EV ranges increase (along with the growing numbers of dedicated EV charging stations), electric transport options will start to become more and more desirable (especially in times of rising gas prices), but will still most likely need to be tethered to charging points, unless the next generation of electric cars follows in the footsteps of one Chinese company.

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Space and technology have collided in a recent design challenge hosted by Star Trek and NASA. Future Engineers has once again called upon students to push their creative boundaries. Since February 2016, they have been working hard to engineer 3D printable design concepts aimed at food sustainability in space. More than 400 students from 30 US states created amazing solutions that would aid astronauts in harvesting, preparing, eating and disposing of food while on long-duration space missions. A panel of judges from NASA, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Foundation, and Made In Space, Inc. selected Kyle Corrette from Phoenix, Arizona and Sreyash Sola from Asburn, Virginia as winners of their respective Teen Group and Junior Group. Judges also selected three finalists from each group, who were each awarded a MakerBot Replicator Mini Compact 3D printer for their school and a PancakeBot for their household. Winners Corrette and Sola received a grand prize trip to New York City for a private viewing of the Space Shuttle Enterprise with astronaut Mike Massimino at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, as well as a VIP tour of MakerBot’s headquarters in Brooklyn, New York.

Read more about each finalist’s innovative design concept below:

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