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Solar cells could be printed out like newspapers after Australia’s leading science organisation opened a $6.8 million facility dedicated to flexible solar technology.

The CSIRO launched its state-of-the-art Printed Photovoltaic Facility in south-east Melbourne on Wednesday, following more than 15 years of research into the renewable energy technology.

Researchers said printed, flexible photovoltaic cells could not only lower the cost of solar energy but could be used to deliver power in challenging areas such as space exploration, defence and disaster recovery.

“Scheduled for delivery in 2026, these new ferries will be powered with a hybrid mix of 85% hydrogen fuel cells and 15% biofuel from Bergen’s C25:33 engines.”

Norwegian power solutions supplier Bergen Engines has been selected to provide four generating sets to support the world’s largest hydrogen ferries, operating on Norway’s longest ferry connection from Bodø to Lofoten.

The C25:33L8A generating sets will be fueled by low carbon Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) and will serve as support power to the hydrogen fuel cells onboard, which act as the vessel’s main propulsion power.

Bioengineered bacteria to eat plastic in seawater:3 Which in large quantities can eat all the plastic in the ocean:3 Yay face_with_colon_three

Poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) is a highly recyclable plastic that has been extensively used and manufactured. Like other plastics, PET resists natural degradation, thus accumulating in the environment. Several recycling strategies have been applied to PET, but these tend to result in downcycled products that eventually end up in landfills. This accumulation of landfilled PET waste contributes to the formation of microplastics, which pose a serious threat to marine life and ecosystems, and potentially to human health. To address this issue, our project leveraged synthetic biology to develop a whole-cell biocatalyst capable of depolymerizing PET in seawater environments by using the fast-growing, nonpathogenic, moderate halophile Vibrio natriegens. By leveraging a two-enzyme system—comprising a chimera of IsPETase and IsMHETase from Ideonella sakaiensis —displayed on V. natriegens, we constructed whole-cell catalysts that depolymerize PET and convert it into its monomers in salt-containing media and at a temperature of 30°C.

Newly emerging Chinese electric truck maker Windrose has claimed an Australian record for a public fast charge of more than 500 kilowatt hours as it topped up its massive batteries on its flagship heavy electric truck on a drive from Melbourne to Sydney.

The Windrose electric truck features a 729 kWh battery, and at a brief glance appears to be a Tesla Semi look-alike, with streamlined features and a driver’s seat placed in the middle of the cabin. The company claims a range of more than 670 kms, fully loaded to 49 tonnes, and hopes to enter commercial production next year.

The truck made an appearance at the All Energy show in Melbourne last week, before being taken around to show its wares to some major Australian logistics companies,. It then made the trip up the Hume Highway to Sydney on Sunday for another series of demonstrations.

Here’s Malur Narayan of Latimer AI sharing about removing bias, and setting a standard for identifying and measuring it in artificial intelligence systems, and LLM’s.

Malur is a tech leader in AI / ML, mobile, quantum, and is an advocate of tech for good, and responsible AI.

Continue reading “Malur Narayan Shares About A Large Language Model Trained with Diverse Histories & Inclusive Voices” »

The consumer-facing side of electric vehicles paints a limited picture of what’s happening in the broader automotive industry. But when you glance behind the scenes, things start appearing far clearer, to a point where it’s pretty evident that the future of road transport is battery-powered. A big part of what’s happening backstage is making those batteries right here, on American soil.

Korean battery maker LG Energy Solution announced recently that it reached an agreement with Ford to move production of the Ford Mustang Mach-E’s batteries from Poland to Michigan starting next year. Instead, the LGES Poland factory will prioritize producing batteries for Ford’s commercial vans sold in the U.K. and the European Union.

Additive manufacturing (AM) has revolutionized many industries and holds the promise to affect many more in the not too distant future. While people are most familiar with the 3D printers that function much like inkjet printers, another type of AM offers advantages using a different approach: building objects with light one layer at a time.

Can water be harvested from the air to help mitigate water scarcity across the globe? This is what a recent study published in Technologies hopes to address as a team of researchers from The Ohio State University have developed a novel device that can provide faster and more efficient methods for harvesting water from the air compared to longstanding devices, also called atmospheric water harvesting (AWH). This study holds the potential to help regions around the world mitigate the need for access to clean drinking water, as approximately 2 billion people suffer from lack of clean drinking water in their respective regions.

“You can survive three minutes without air, three weeks without food, but only three days without water,” said Dr. John LaRocco, who is a research scientist in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at The Ohio State University and lead author of the study. “But with it, you can begin to solve a lot of problems, like national security, mental health or sanitation, just by improving the accessibility of clean drinking water.”

For the device, the researchers designed a nickel titanium-based dehumidifier with temperature-sensitive materials, resulting in harvesting greater amounts of water at 0.18 milliliters per watts per hour compared to 0.16 milliliters per watts per hour for traditional harvesters after 30 minutes. Additionally, the temperature-sensitive materials help regulate the amount of heat used during the harvesting process, resulting in approximately half the power needed to use the harvester. Finally, the reduced size of the harvester provides mobility to be used anywhere in the world, whereas traditional harvesters tend to be large and require significant amounts of energy to operate.

While wind and solar energy are the two most viable clean alternatives to the dirty energy sources that power most of our society, the energy that can be harvested from ocean waves also has a lot of potential as an infinitely renewable source.

However, the technology is still developing, and a new research tool may play a big part in helping it get there, Interesting Engineering reported.

Continue reading “Scientists create revolutionary tool to help power over 20 million homes: ‘Developers can spend more of their time building better devices’” »