Lifeboat Foundation

Watch Giant Flow Batteries Could Power Your City In The Future, an Earth video from Seeker.

Scientists have discovered a new material that could hold the key to unlocking the potential of hydrogen powered vehicles.

As the world looks towards a gradual move away from fossil fuel powered cars and trucks, greener alternative technologies are being explored, such as electric battery powered vehicles.

Another ‘green’ technology with great potential is hydrogen power. However, a major obstacle has been the size, complexity, and expense of the fuel systems—until now.

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As the number of electronics devices increases around the world, finding effective methods of recycling electronic waste (e-waste) is a growing concern. About 50 million tons of e-waste is generated each year and only 20% of that is recycled. Most of the remaining 80% ends up in a landfill where it can become an environmental problem. Currently, e-waste recycling involves mechanical crushers and chemical baths, which are expensive, and manual labor, which can cause significant health and environmental problems when not performed properly. Thus, researchers from Kumamoto University, Japan have been using pulsed power (pulsed electric discharges) to develop a cleaner and more efficient recycling method.

Pulsed power has been shown to be successful in processing various waste materials, from concrete to waste water. To test its ability to be used in e-waste recycling, researchers examined its effectiveness in separating components found in one of the most prolific types of e-waste, CD ROMs. In previous work, they showed that complete separation of metal from plastic occurred using 30 pulses at about 35 J/pulse (At the current price of electricity in Tokyo, this amount of energy costs about 0.4 Yen for recycling 100 CD ROMs). To examine the mechanism of material separation using this method, researchers performed further analyses by observing the plasma discharge with a high-speed camera, by taking schlieren visualizations to assess the shock wave, and using shadowgraph images to measure fragment motion.

Images at the early stage of electrical discharge showed two distinct light emissions: blue-white and orange. These indicated excitation of aluminum and upper protective plastic materials respectively. After the plasma dissipated, fragments of metal and plastic could be seen flying away from the CD ROM sample.

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In conventional holography a photographic film can record the interference pattern of monochromatic light scattered from the object to be imaged with a reference beam of un-scattered light. Scientists can then illuminate the developed image with a replica of the reference beam to create a virtual image of the original object. Holography was originally proposed by the physicist Dennis Gabor in 1948 to improve the resolution of an electron microscope, demonstrated using light optics. A hologram can be formed by capturing the phase and amplitude distribution of a signal by superimposing it with a known reference. The original concept was followed by holography with electrons, and after the invention of lasers optical holography became a popular technique for 3D imaging macroscopic objects, information encryption and microscopy imaging.

However, extending holograms to the ultrafast domain currently remains a challenge with electrons, although developing the technique would allow the highest possible combined spatiotemporal resolution for advanced imaging applications in condensed matter physics. In a recent study now published in Science Advances, Ivan Madan and an interdisciplinary research team in the departments of Ultrafast Microscopy and Electron Scattering, Physics, Science and Technology in Switzerland, the U.K. and Spain, detailed the development of a hologram using local electromagnetic fields. The scientists obtained the electromagnetic holograms with combined attosecond/nanometer resolution in an ultrafast transmission electron microscope (UEM).

In the new method, the scientists relied on electromagnetic fields to split an electron wave function in a quantum coherent superposition of different energy states. The technique deviated from the conventional method, where the signal of interest and reference spatially separated and recombined to reconstruct the amplitude and phase of a signal of interest to subsequently form a hologram. The principle can be extended to any kind of detection configuration involving a periodic signal capable of undergoing interference, including sound waves, X-rays or femtosecond pulse waveforms.

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Charging almost instantly and offering massive power density, Nawa’s innovative ultracapacitors are ready to make a mark across industries from automotive to power tools and aviation. And after raising more than US$10 million, this French company is going into mass production.

S4 Energy Solutions cofounder Jeff Surma has one way to solve our garbage mess: Atomize it with an 18,000-degree plasma arc.

To clean up the aviation industry, NASA-funded scientists are working to develop an all-electric aircraft powered by cryogenically-liquified hydrogen fuel.

The University of Illinois scientists behind the project nailed down $6 million over three years from NASA to develop the tech, according to a university-published press release — tech that could, if the project pans out, revolutionize the aviation industry.

Antonin Tuynman: Where we see complexity, we see high informational content, organised in a complex way which often involves hierarchical levels. The diversity in highly complex systems might at first glance seem a chaotic mixed bag and hodgepodge; it is not. The diversified apparent mishmash is not a sign of apparent chaos, where you’d expect high thermodynamic entropy. It is not the stifling rigidity of a perfect order either. Complexity is an intricate architecture of stacked and intertwined hierarchical levels, with multifarious information exchanges between them. In fact Complexity selects the best of Order and Chaos. This seemingly ordered chaos or chaotic order, brings us the gift of the ability to ever introduce new variations. An ability to regenerate, copy, multiply and spread itself. An ability to induce ever changing patterns to adapt itself to the circumstances. An ability of recursive self-modification. Also knowhttps://www.ecstadelic.net/top-stories/the-entropic-enigma-o…amorphosis #OuroborosCode

The mighty worm Ouroboros had lost trace of its path and didn’t know its whereabouts. Nor did it know where it was going. In fact it didn’t know anything anymore, as it had drunk from the Lethe, Hades’ river flowing though Hypnos’ caves. Drinking from Lethe, forgetfulness and daughter of Eris, Goddess of Strife and Discord, made one lose all memory of past existence.

Disoriented Ouroboros started turning, and by continuing to turn, it finally found a trail of what seemed to be a path. A tasty object lay there, waiting to be eaten, and as Ouroboros bit it, a painful jolt of energy shot through its body awakening all the memories it had forgotten. Abruptly Ouroboros awoke from its dreamtime of daze and stupor and recognized itself as the ever effulgent Consciousness, Creator of Macrocosm and Microcosm.

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