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Category: transportation – Page 200

‘Wind Challenger’: World’s first partially wind-powered cargo ship successfully sailed

It is the first coal carrier to be powered by hard sail wind power propulsion technology.

The world’s first partly wind-powered bulk carrier ship sailed to the Port of Newcastle on its maiden voyage this week. The Japanese shipping company Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL), which delivered the 100,422 dwt (dead-weight tonnage) bulker on October 7, 2022, sailed to Newcastle on Monday, reported Offshore Energy.

The Japanese shipping company Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL), which delivered the 100,422 dwt (dead-weight tonnage) bulker on October 7, 2022, sailed to Newcastle on Monday, reported Offshore Energy.

“The world’s first bulk carrier to be partially powered by wind, the Shofu Maru, sailed into #Newcastle this morning on its maiden voyage,” the Port of Newcastle authorities wrote on Twitter.

Elon Musk tweets that the social media platform he’s buying is important to civilization

This harkens back to the first time he spoke about Twitter as a town square.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, has now confirmed he is buying Twitter. The billionaire has tweeted a letter of sorts addressed to the advertisers who use Twitter. In the letter, Musk explains why he bought Twitter and that most of the speculation surrounding the purchase has been wrong.

Twitter is important to civilization

In the letter, which is separated into three parts, each a tweet, he starts off by saying right away that he feels Twitter is important to civilization because it provides a “town square” where a wide range of beliefs can debated in a healthy manner, without resorting to violence. This sentiment has been a staple of Musk’s feelings about the social media platform, as he has stated before in interviews.

How one startup plans to increase EV range

It will also increase energy density by 30 percent.

The innovative UK start-up Ionetic, specializing in EV battery pack technology, introduced its cutting-edge EV battery pack design platform, which can shorten the time and cost of development for automakers developing new electric vehicles.

It has traditionally been expensive and time-consuming for many automobile firms to provide a high-performance and secure battery pack solution. Fully customized designs are frequently out of reach for most consumers, while current off-the-shelf battery pack solutions have low energy density and optimization. This is especially true for specialty, low-volume automakers who have particular needs.

Scientists discover material that can be made like a plastic but conducts like a metal

Scientists with the University of Chicago have discovered a way to create a material that can be made like a plastic, but conducts electricity more like a metal.

The research, published Oct. 26 in Nature, shows how to make a kind of material in which the molecular fragments are jumbled and disordered, but can still conduct electricity extremely well.

This goes against all of the rules we know about for conductivity—to a , it’s kind of like seeing a car driving on water and still going 70 mph. But the finding could also be extraordinarily useful; if you want to invent something revolutionary, the process often first starts with discovering a completely new material.

Tiny Ultrasound Sensors Could Monitor EV Batteries

Ultrasound sensors as small as a thumbnail can scan lithium-ion batteries to check their charge, health, and safety, a new study finds.

The findings suggest that ultrasound—that is, sound waves at frequencies higher than human hearing can detect—might one day help electric vehicles better estimate how much charge remains in their batteries. This approach might also help detect unstable batteries on the verge of disaster, quickly test battery quality during manufacturing, and identify which used batteries are healthy enough to be resold to reduce waste, says study lead author Hongbin Sun, an ultrasonic engineer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee.

Estimating how much charge is left in a commercial lithium-ion battery is currently a challenging task. For instance, electric vehicles typically experience an uncertainty of about 10 percent when estimating battery charge. This in turn reduces their driving range by about 10 percent, to ensure that they stay within their batteries’ safety margins.

Rats with backpacks will be the savior of earthquake survivors

They’re tiny but have a knack for saving human life.

The Belgian non-profit organization APOPO trains rats to help earthquake survivors. Called RescueRATs, these rats are preparing to save those under the earthquake debris with their high-tech backpacks on their backs.

As CNN reported, “Rats are typically quite curious and like to explore — and that is key for search and rescue,” says Donna Kean, a behavioral research scientist and leader of the project. She also adds that they train rats because they have a good sense of smell and can easily fit into small spaces.

How are the rats trained?

HeroRATS/Instagram.

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Tesla is rumored to be looking to invest in Mexico

Tesla is rumored to be looking to invest in Nuevo Leon, a Mexican state bordering Texas, as CEO Elon Musk meets with the governor.

Earlier this year, people crossing the border between Texas and Nuevo Leon were surprised to see not just the usual marked lanes for cars and trucks but also one marked “Tesla” – pictured above.

We ended up finding out that Tesla had struck a deal with the state of Nuevo Leon to have its own lane at the border crossing in order to reduce wait times for cargo going through the border. Or at least that was the explanation of Ivan Rivas, the economy minister of Nuevo Leon.

Bill Gates-backed startup builds a massive refinery to turn alcohol into jet fuel

Bill Gates founded Breakthrough Energy and has recently announced that its first Catalyst project funding will come in the form of a $50 million grant to LanzaJet’s Freedom Pines Fuels sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) plant in Soperton, Georgia.

Breakthrough Energy Catalyst is a unique program that brings together businesses and nonprofits to fund key first-of-its-kind commercial-scale projects that speed up the deployment of essential technologies.

Adding Heat to Electric Vehicle Batteries Helps Them Charge in Just 10 Minutes

Most efforts so far have relied on external heating and cooling systems, but these add a lot of bulk and also tend to use up a considerable amount of energy themselves. The researchers’ innovation, outlined in a recent paper in Nature , was to add an extra component to the batteries: a sheet of nickel foil just a few micrometers thick between the stacked electrodes of each cell.

This ultra-thin sheet is used as a heating element, and when a current is passed through it the cell heats up to 149° Fahrenheit in about a minute. This temperature is maintained through charging, but the cell then quickly cools back to room temperature as soon as the current is switched off.

When they tested their approach, the researchers found that they could charge a 265 watt-hour battery to 70 per cent in 11 minutes. They also showed that heating the battery didn’t seriously affect its lifetime, as it survived 2,000 cycles of charging, which would provide enough energy to drive more than 500,000 miles overall.