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Archive for the ‘business’ category: Page 130

Dec 26, 2020

For only $160 billion, you can buy … Mars!

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, business, health, space travel

NASA scientists and their colleagues are now proposing corporate financing for a human mission to Mars. This raises the prospect that a spaceship named the Microsoft Explorer or the Google Search Engine could one day go down in history as the first spaceship to bring humans to the Red Planet.

The proposal suggests that companies could drum up $160 billion for a human mission to Mars and a colony there, rather than having governments fund such a mission with tax dollars.

Joel Levine, a senior research scientist at NASA Langley Research Center, was quoted in a release in the Journal of Cosmology by Dr. Rhawn Joseph. The plan covers “every aspect of a journey to the Red Planet — the design of the spacecrafts, medical health and psychological issues, the establishment of a Mars base, colonization, and a revolutionary business proposal to overcome the major budgetary obstacles which have prevented the U.S. from sending astronauts to Mars,” said Levine.

Dec 26, 2020

US Department of Homeland Security warns American business not to use Chinese tech or let data behind the Great Firewall

Posted by in categories: business, security

Even fitness trackers ruled a big risk due to potential for record-matching identifying your family.

Dec 25, 2020

Making jet fuel out of carbon dioxide

Posted by in categories: business, chemistry, particle physics, sustainability, transportation

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in the U.K. and one in Saudi Arabia has developed a way to produce jet fuel using carbon dioxide as a main ingredient. In their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the group describes their process and its efficiency.

As scientists continue to look for ways to reduce the amount of emitted into the atmosphere, they have increasingly focused on certain business sectors. One of those sectors is the , which accounts for approximately 12% of transportation-related carbon dioxide emissions. Curbing in the aviation industry has proved to be challenging due to the difficulty of fitting heavy batteries inside of aircraft. In this new effort, the researchers have developed a that can be used to produce carbon-neutral jet fuel.

The researchers used a process called the organic combustion method to convert carbon dioxide in the air into jet fuel and other products. It involved using an iron catalyst (with added potassium and manganese) along with hydrogen, citric acid and carbon dioxide heated to 350 degrees C. The process forced the apart from the oxygen atoms in CO2 molecules, which then bonded with hydrogen atoms, producing the kind of hydrocarbon molecules that comprise liquid jet fuel. The process also resulted in the creation of water molecules and other products.

Dec 22, 2020

Exclusive: Apple targets car production by 2024 and eyes ‘next level’ battery technology

Posted by in categories: business, mobile phones, robotics/AI, sustainability, transportation

Even Apple wants to get into the automobile business it seems.


(Reuters) — Apple Inc is moving forward with self-driving car technology and is targeting 2024 to produce a passenger vehicle that could include its own breakthrough battery technology, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The iPhone maker’s automotive efforts, known as Project Titan, have proceeded unevenly since 2014 when it first started to design its own vehicle from scratch. At one point, Apple drew back the effort to focus on software and reassessed its goals. Doug Field, an Apple veteran who had worked at Tesla Inc, returned to oversee the project in 2018 and laid off 190 people from the team in 2019.

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Dec 21, 2020

‘We think we’ve found the answer’: The ‘Supercell’ that could bring safe energy storage to New York

Posted by in categories: business, energy

New York has among the world’s tightest rules on fire safety and regular readers of this site will be aware that that has had a big impact on the ability to site lithium-ion based battery energy storage systems (BESS) within the boundaries of the state’s urban regions.

While the development of large-scale systems is taking place in less densely populated upstate areas of New York, commercial and industrial (C&I) battery storage, which has been used elsewhere around the country to help businesses manage their energy costs and the wider network to adopt greater shares of renewables, has not really been able to gain a foothold.

A couple of weeks ago the New York Power Authority (NYPA) — a public-benefit corporation which serves around 25% of the state’s electric load — began trialling an energy storage system using lithium batteries based around start-up Cadenza Innovation’s ’Supercell’ architecture. Wrapping individual cells into a protective housing, the technology is a low-cost way to prevent thermal runaway from cascading through a battery rack and causing fires.

Dec 21, 2020

Dedicated commercial human in-space operations are coming sooner than you may realize

Posted by in categories: business, space

If you’ve ever heard someone refer to the idea of “working in space,” you’d be forgiven for thinking they were describing a science-fiction plot. But the number of humans actively working beyond Earth’s atmosphere — and living significant chunks of their lives there, too — is about to start growing at a potentially exponential rate. Given how small that population is now, the growth might look slow at first — but it’s happening soon, and plans are in place to help it start ramping up quickly.

The main company leading those plans in the near-term is Axiom Space, a private space station service provider, and eventual operator. Axiom is founded and led by people with International Space Station experience and expertise, and the company already operates R&D missions on behalf of private clients on the ISS with the help of NASA astronauts. It’s planning to begin shuttling entire flights of private astronauts to the station starting in 2021, and it’s also building a new, commercial space station to ultimately replace the ISS on orbit once that one is decommissioned.

Axiom Space’s Chief Business Office Amir Blachman joined us at TC Sessions: Space last week on a panel that included NASA Chief of Exploration and Mission Planning Nujoud Merancy, Sierra Nevada Corporation senior vice president and former astronaut Janet Kavandi, as well as Space Exploration Architecture (SEArch+) co-founder Melodie Yashar. The panel was focused on how public and private entities are preparing for a (relatively near) future in which humans spend more time off Earth — and further away from it, too.

Dec 20, 2020

Lilly’s neutralizing antibody bamlanivimab (LY-CoV555) receives FDA emergency use authorization for the treatment of recently diagnosed COVID-19

Posted by in categories: business, finance

People who are sick can ask for EUA drugs, but you have to ask often. INDIANAPOLIS, Nov. 9, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today granted Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for Eli Lilly and Company’s (NYSE: LLY) investigational neutralizing antibody bamlanivimab (LY-CoV555) 700 mg. Bamlanivimab is authorized for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 in adults and pediatric patients 12 years and older with a positive COVID-19 test, who are at high risk for progressing to severe COVID-19 and/or hospitalization. Bamlanivimab should be administered as soon as possible after a positive COVID-19 test and within 10 days of symptom onset. The authorization allows for the distribution and emergency use of bamlanivimab, which is administered via a single intravenous infusion.


The Investor Relations website contains information about Eli Lilly and Company’s business for stockholders, potential investors, and financial analysts.

Dec 20, 2020

Take a look at these houses made out of wooden LEGO-like bricks

Posted by in categories: business, energy, sustainability

Have you ever dreamed of building an actual house using your very own grown-up, sustainable version of LEGO? Meet Brikawood, the company making that dream a reality and transforming the modular home business.

Brikawood creates wooden bricks that interlock to create walls. This allows builders to assemble and disassemble an entire home without the use of glue, nails or screws. The wood-brick walls then get filled with wood shavings left over from the manufacturing of Brikawood bricks. These insulate both temperature and sound, which improve energy efficiency and peace of mind.

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Dec 19, 2020

All-electric off-grid glamping trailer ditches gas for solar power

Posted by in categories: business, climatology, sustainability

The new ERV from Retreat Caravans travels to the most distant corners of Australia and beyond, using only electric power to keep equipment running. That would be a nice feat for an RV as simple as a tiny teardrop trailer, but the ERV is more a dual-axle luxury condo. Its lithium battery and solar roof power the all-season climate control, indoor/outdoor entertainment system, electrified kitchen and even washing machine. Leave the LPG tanks and electrical grid behind, explore Outback-style remoteness and live like a kingly nomad in a high-tech hideaway.

Electric motorhomes and pickup campers have stolen the spotlight throughout 2019, but all-electric caravans have been quietly creeping forward in the backdrop. In the US, Thor Industries, the world’s largest RV manufacturer, worked up a more rigid definition of “off grid” with the Sonic X caravan concept back in March. Later in the year, another brand under the Thor umbrella, Germany’s LMC, followed suit with its own electrified trailer at the Düsseldorf Caravan Salon. The two models were quite distinct, but both shared the same goal: leaving behind every last trace of liquified petroleum gas (LPG) and tying together all onboard equipment with a single electrical architecture.

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Dec 18, 2020

Dr. Robert Schooley MD — Harnessing Phage Therapies In The Fight Against Drug Resistant “Super-Bugs”

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, business, education, health

As we sit here in 2020, in the middle of a major viral pandemic, we can’t forget the fact that a century after the first antibiotics were created, drug resistant bacterial infections have become a major threat around the globe, exactly at the same time that the antibiotic pipelines of pharma companies have either dried up, or they have gotten out of the business.

In the U.S. alone, Centers For Disease Control (CDC) estimates that antibiotic resistance causes more than 2 million infections, several million hospital stay days, and over 35, 000 deaths per year. Worldwide, such infections cause 750, 000 deaths every year. And a recent United Nations (UN) report concluded that by 2050, “super bugs” could kill 10 million people globally every year, if no action is taken to combat the problem.

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