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Water’s enigmatic surface: X-ray snapshots reveal atoms and molecules at work

Water is all around us, yet its surface layer—home to chemical reactions that shape life on Earth—is surprisingly hard to study. Experiments at SLAC’s X-ray laser are bringing it into focus.

Two-thirds of Earth’s surface is covered in water, most of it in oceans so deep and vast that only one-fifth of their total volume has been explored. Surprisingly, though, the most accessible part of this watery realm—the water’s surface, exposed on wave tops, raindrops and ponds full of skittering water striders—is one of the hardest to get to know.

Just a few layers of atoms thick, the surface plays an outsized role in the chemistry that makes our world what it is—from the formation of clouds and the recycling of water through rainfall to the ocean’s absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Trump’s Reprieve for Nvidia’s H200 Spurred by Huawei’s AI Gains

President Donald Trump decided to let Nvidia Corp. sell its H200 artificial intelligence chips to China after concluding the move carried a lower security risk because the company’s Chinese archrival, Huawei Technologies Co., already offers AI systems with comparable performance, according to a person familiar with the deliberations.

Administration officials who weighed whether to clear Nvidia’s H200 had considered multiple possible scenarios, factoring in the views of national security hawks in Washington, said the person. Options ranged from exporting zero AI chips to China to allowing exports of everything to flood the Chinese market and overwhelm Huawei. Ultimately the policy backed by Trump called for clearing H200s to China while holding back the latest Nvidia chips for American customers, the person said.

Antarctica’s only native insect is already eating microplastics

A global research team led by researchers from the University of Kentucky Martin-Gatton College of Agriculture, Food and Environment has found that Antarctica’s only native insect is already ingesting microplastics, even in one of the planet’s most remote regions.

The study, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, is the first to examine how microplastics affect an Antarctic insect and to document plastic pieces inside wild-caught midges.

Jack Devlin, who led the work back in 2020 as part of his Ph.D. before moving to Scotland to work as a marine ornithologist, said the project started after a documentary on plastic pollution left him stunned.

Artificial photosynthesis catalyst converts carbon dioxide into fuel using sunlight

A joint research team has developed a highly efficient photocatalyst that can convert carbon dioxide into the high-value-added fuel, methane, using sunlight, while explaining its operating principles. The work is published in the journal ACS Catalysis.

Carbon dioxide is a typical greenhouse gas, considered a major cause of climate change, and developing technologies to effectively reduce it is an important challenge worldwide.

The photocatalyst technology that caught the interest of the research team is a type of artificial photosynthesis technology that uses solar energy to convert carbon dioxide into fuel. It has garnered significant attention for its potential to contribute to carbon neutrality and eco-friendly energy production.

Alkaline-loving microbes could help safeguard nuclear waste buried deep underground for thousands of years

Billions of alkaline-loving microbes could offer a new way to protect nuclear waste buried deep underground. This approach overcomes the limitations of current cement barriers, which can crack or break down over time.

One of the best ways to keep nuclear waste out of harm’s way is to bury it in geological disposal facilities. These are purpose-built containers in tunnels and vaults hundreds of meters underground. Cement is used to provide structural support, seal gaps and encapsulate waste containers. While cement is a strong material, groundwater eventually reacts with it, forming microscopic cracks and pores through which radiation could escape.

This problem is made worse because traditional cement is extremely alkaline (pH greater than 12) and corrosive, which can weaken nearby protective layers such as clay barriers, potentially compromising a facility.

Gubernatorial Candidate Promises ROBOTS To Every Californian… Is Cenk Buying it?

Here’s my full 30-min interview from yesterday with Cenk Uygur on TYT! We cover a lot of things: superintelligence, Basic Income, my Automated Abundance Economy, and my California Governor run.

Cenk Uygur and Zoltan Istvan discuss the future of AI and California on The Young Turks. Do you agree with TYT’s take? Tell us what you think in the comments below. SUBSCRIBE today: ☞ https://go.tyt.com/ytsubscribe.

Get paid to use your phone less! Switch to Noble Mobile today: https://go.tyt.com/mobile.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Zoltan Istvan on running as a Democrat.
0:45 Transhumanist party.
2:30 Zoltan on AI & technology.
9:50 No corporate or Israel lobby money.
10:20 Zoltan’s policy priorities.
11:40 Robots for every Californian?!
14:00 Universal basic income.
23:00 Taxing robots?!
25:50 Reaching across the aisle.
28:00 AI revolution.

🔥 Tired of corporate media? Get honest news and bold commentary with TYT.

Continue reading “Gubernatorial Candidate Promises ROBOTS To Every Californian… Is Cenk Buying it?” | >

Iron-based magnetic material achieves major reduction in core loss

A research team from NIMS, Tohoku University and AIST has developed a new technique for controlling the nanostructures and magnetic domain structures of iron-based soft amorphous ribbons, achieving more than a 50% reduction in core loss compared with the initial amorphous material.

The developed material exhibits particularly high performance in the high-frequency range of several tens of kilohertz—required for next-generation, high-frequency transformers and EV drive power supply circuits. This breakthrough is expected to contribute to the advancement of these technologies, development of more energy-efficient electric machines and progress toward carbon neutrality.

The research is published in Nature Communications.

Seismic Mystery Solved: Scientists Find a New State of Matter at Earth’s Center

Chinese researchers have discovered that interstitial carbon in iron-carbon alloys behaves in a superionic, liquid-like state under Earth’s core pressure and temperature conditions. Beneath Earth’s molten outer core lies a solid central region, the inner core, a compact sphere made of an iron lig

3D-printable concrete alternative hardens in three days, not four weeks

Although we’ve heard a lot about how 3D-printing concrete homes speeds up the construction process, you still have to wait up to 28 days for the concrete to sufficiently cure. A new printable substitute, however, is ready to go in just three days.

Concrete consists of three parts: water, an aggregate such as sand or gravel, and a cement which binds everything together. The cement is the part that typically takes about a month to cure after being poured. And a slow curing time isn’t cement’s only problem.

Traditional Portland-style cement is made by grinding up limestone and other raw materials, then heating the resulting powder to temperatures of up to 1,450 ºC (2,642 ºF). Unfortunately, the processes by which that heat is generated produce a lot of carbon dioxide.

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