Lifeboat Foundation

NuScale Power, the startup specializing in the design of small modular nuclear reactors, has published new data concerning the production capacities of its NuScale Power Module (NPM). Thanks to the 25% increase in power output of an NPM, each NuScale module is now capable of producing 2,053 kg/hour of hydrogen, or nearly 50 metric tons per day.

Just one NuScale Power Module can produce 77 MWe of carbon-free electricity to power 60,000 homes in the U.S. NuScale’s flagship power plant design can house up to 12 modules for a total gross output of 924 MWe. The 924 MWe that a 12-module NuScale plant produces is enough to power nearly 700,000 homes with clean, reliable energy.

Continue reading “NuScale modular nuclear reactors can produce over 2,000 kg/hour of hydrogen” »

Elon Musk recently shared a rather interesting update on Twitter — his companies now employ about 110,000 people worldwide. This is quite impressive considering that in the grand scheme of things, Tesla, SpaceX, and Musk’s other ventures are still just getting started.

Musk’s update came as a response to a TSLA bull on Twitter who inquired if his companies had already reached the 100,000-employee milestone. Musk’s response revealed that his companies had not only met their 100,000 employee mark — they had already passed it.

Elon Musk did not share further details about his companies’ worldwide employee headcount, though there is a good chance that the lion’s share of his workers today are in the United States and China. These are the two countries where Tesla, one of Musk’s largest companies, has operational vehicle production plants, after all.

The Tesla Model Y has boosted Tesla’s presence and sales in Europe. Charts that track EV sales in Europe reveal that Tesla Model Y sales have already exceeded numbers from legacy automakers in Norway, including Volkswagen, Ford, and Audi.

In terms of the full transition to electric vehicles, Norway might be considered the closest to the goal. The Norwegian Road Traffic Information Council (OFV) reported that most new passenger car sales in July were zero-emission cars, taking up 64.1% market share.

Norway might be an excellent place to test the Tesla Model Y’s future in Europe as Giga Shanghai continues to send exports to the continent. As of August 30 the top EV brand selling in Norway is Tesla, with 1,776 vehicle registrations. The top model sold in Norway this month was the Tesla Model Y, with 1,115 registrations.

In the past week, CleanTechnica readers were most attracted to stories about cool & cheap electric motorcycles, an Australian pastime that electric vehicles are sure to kill, and the standard-range Tesla Model 3 and Model Y getting LFP batteries. Following those medal winners, the BYD Dolphin potentially getting millions of sales, love for water batteries, and solar-powered trains took the next three spots.

For the details on those stories, to see the rest of the top 20 list, or to go explore the sometimes wild and crazy (but almost always useful) comments under the pieces, scroll down and have a gander.

A global microchip shortage has kept car prices high all year. Now, chip manufacturers are warning that it may not get better next year.

Summary: Researchers find a region of the brain stem called the periaqueductal gray may mediate religiosity and spirituality in humans.

Source: Elsevier.

Scientists have long suspected that religiosity and spirituality could be mapped to specific brain circuits, but the location of those circuits remains unknown. Now, a new study using novel technology and the human connectome, a map of neural connections, has identified a brain circuit that seems to mediate that aspect of our personality.

I believe the transduction theory has a great deal to offer in our scientific study of the mind–brain relationship. It is, of course, a dualist theory. It provides a framework for understanding the close link between brain states and mental states, yet at the same time, it explains mental states in a way that does not invoke nonsensical materialist metaphysics.

A successful understanding of the mind–brain relationship will necessarily involve understanding the brain as a transduction device in one way or another. Such an understanding could prove enormously fruitful and can help us move beyond the current materialist framework in which neuroscience is practiced, which has has held us so far back in our understanding of the mind and the brain. The brain is obviously material but it is just as obvious that the mind has immaterial abilities.

We accept that the ear is a transducer for sound to hearing and the eye is a transducer for light to vision. It is reasonable to infer that the brain is a transducer for thought to body. Transduction theory is a plausible approach to understanding the connection between the mind and the brain. It should be taken seriously by neuroscientists and philosophers of the mind.

As the middle child of the “DNA to RNA to protein” central dogma, RNA didn’t get much press until its Covid-19 vaccine contribution. But the molecule is a double hero: it both carries genetic information, and—depending on its structure—can catalyze biological functions, regulate which genes are turned on, tweak your immune system, and even crazier, potentially pass down “memories” through generations.

It’s also frustratingly difficult to understand.

Similar to proteins, RNA also folds into complicated 3D structures. The difference, explain Drs. Rhiju Das and Ron Dror at Stanford University, is that we comparatively know so little about these molecules. There are 30 times as many types of RNA as there are proteins, but the number of deciphered RNA structures is less than one percent compared to proteins.

South Korea’s parliament has approved a bill that will make it the first country to impose curbs on Google and Apple’s payment policies that force developers to only use the tech giants’ proprietary billing systems.

The legislation will become law once signed by President Moon Jae-in, whose party has been a vocal supporter of the bill.

Apple and Google’s policies usually require developers to pay the tech giants a commission as high as 30% of every transaction.