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Archive for the ‘sustainability’ category: Page 402

Dec 23, 2020

Thundrblades: Electric Skates Throttle Your Feet 25 MPH

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Get your cutoff jean shorts and wrist guards ready. Thundrblades introduces electric, carbon fiber, glow-in-the-dark inline skates.

Dec 23, 2020

Remarkable New Species of Snake Found Hidden in a Biodiversity Collection – Occupies Its Own Branch on Snake Tree of Life

Posted by in categories: habitats, sustainability

Waray Dwarf Burrowing Snake occupies its own branch on snake tree of life.

To be fair, the newly described Waray Dwarf Burrowing Snake (Levitonius mirus) is pretty great at hiding.

In its native habitat, Samar and Leyte islands in the Philippines, the snake spends most of its time burrowing underground, usually surfacing only after heavy rains in much the same way earthworms tend to wash up on suburban sidewalks after a downpour.

Dec 23, 2020

Apple plans to launch its first self-driving car in 2024

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, sustainability, transportation

Apple’s first passenger car could include its own breakthrough battery technology.


Apple is actively working on various automotive projects that could ultimately lead to an “Apple Car” and is targeting 2024 to produce a passenger vehicle.

Dec 22, 2020

Just one rotation of GE’s ‘haliade-X’ could power a house for two days

Posted by in category: sustainability

over the past few years, general electric (GE) has been developing the ‘haliade-X’ — the world’s most powerful offshore wind turbine. GE says that just one rotation of the turbine, which stands at a total height of 260 meters (853 ft), could power a UK household for more than two days. the haliade-X features a 13 MW or 12 MW capacity, 220-meter (722 ft) rotor, a 107-meter (351 ft) blade, and digital capabilities that help customers perform remote diagnostics, improve time management (less time at sea), and optimize operations.

Dec 22, 2020

Tiny Turbine Catches Big City Wind

Posted by in categories: energy, food, sustainability

Can we morph cities into energy farms? We sure can now! This turbine catches wind from any direction and generates clean energy, even in dense urban areas!

Dec 22, 2020

Diamonds are not just for jewelry anymore

Posted by in categories: chemistry, sustainability, transportation

When it comes to the semiconductor industry, silicon has reigned as king in the electronics field, but it is coming to the end of its physical limits.

To more effectively power the , locomotives and even , Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists are turning to diamond as an ultra-wide bandgap semiconductor.

Diamond has been shown to have superior carrier mobility, break down electric field and thermal conductivity, the most important properties to power . It became especially desirable after the development of a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process for growth of high-quality single crystals.

Dec 22, 2020

US Energy Dept. Hearts Silicon for Next-Gen EV Batteries

Posted by in categories: energy, policy, sustainability, transportation

There they go again. Just a few months ago the US Department of Energy tapped a startup called Group14 Technologies for a multi-million dollar R&D grant to usher in a new generation of high performance EV batteries, and now here comes Group14 with another $17 million in series B funding spearheaded by the South Korean battery expert SK Materials. If you guessed that means scaling up production for the mass market, you’re right on the money. The bigger question is why the Energy Department is determined to support the US electric vehicle industry, considering that White House policy has been aimed at supporting the US oil industry. Any guesses?

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.

Continue reading “Exclusive: Apple targets car production by 2024 and eyes ‘next level’ battery technology” »

Dec 21, 2020

New nanomaterial helps obtain hydrogen from a liquid energy carrier, in a key step toward a stable and clean fuel source

Posted by in categories: chemistry, economics, nanotechnology, particle physics, sustainability, transportation

Hydrogen is a sustainable source of clean energy that avoids toxic emissions and can add value to multiple sectors in the economy including transportation, power generation, metals manufacturing, among others. Technologies for storing and transporting hydrogen bridge the gap between sustainable energy production and fuel use, and therefore are an essential component of a viable hydrogen economy. But traditional means of storage and transportation are expensive and susceptible to contamination. As a result, researchers are searching for alternative techniques that are reliable, low-cost and simple. More-efficient hydrogen delivery systems would benefit many applications such as stationary power, portable power, and mobile vehicle industries.

Now, as reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers have designed and synthesized an effective material for speeding up one of the limiting steps in extracting from alcohols. The material, a , is made from tiny clusters of nickel anchored on a 2-D substrate. The team led by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s (Berkeley Lab) Molecular Foundry found that the catalyst could cleanly and efficiently accelerate the reaction that removes hydrogen atoms from a liquid chemical carrier. The material is robust and made from earth-abundant metals rather than existing options made from precious metals, and will help make hydrogen a viable energy source for a wide range of applications.

“We present here not merely a catalyst with higher activity than other nickel catalysts that we tested, for an important renewable energy fuel, but also a broader strategy toward using affordable metals in a broad range of reactions,” said Jeff Urban, the Inorganic Nanostructures Facility director at the Molecular Foundry who led the work. The research is part of the Hydrogen Materials Advanced Research Consortium (HyMARC), a consortium funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (EERE). Through this effort, five national laboratories work towards the goal to address the scientific gaps blocking the advancement of solid hydrogen storage materials. Outputs from this work will directly feed into EERE’s H2@Scale vision for affordable hydrogen production, storage, distribution and utilization across multiple sectors in the economy.

Dec 21, 2020

Inside JET: The world’s biggest nuclear fusion experiment | On Location

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, sustainability

Inside these walls, scientists have been trying for decades to create an unlimited source of energy, nuclear fusion. Welcome to JET, the world’s biggest nuclear fusion experiment.

Scientists argue that fusion could replace coal gas and nuclear fission in the energy mix alongside renewable energy, which can prove to be unreliable. If we can learn to control it, nuclear fusion could change life as we know it. But that’s a big if.

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