Lifeboat Foundation

Uranus’s upper atmosphere has been cooling for decades—and now scientists have shown why. Observations from Earth have shown Uranus’ upper atmosphere has been cooling for decades, with no clear explanation.

Now, a team led by Imperial College London scientists has determined that unpredictable long-term changes in the solar wind —the stream of particles and energy coming from the sun—are behind the drop.

The team predict Uranus’ upper atmosphere should continue to get colder or reverse the trend and become hotter again depending on how the solar wind changes over the coming years.

All-electric aircraft developer BETA Technologies has shared another important milestone in bringing its first two vessels to market. Most recently, BETA’s founder, CEO, and test pilot Kyle Clark took the production version of its ALIA eCTOL up for its first flight, as seen in the video below.

BETA Technologies is a fully integrated electric aircraft and systems developer based in Vermont. Three years ago, it debuted its first electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, the ALIA–250. That BETA vessel has since been renamed the ALIA VTOL and completed a piloted test flight transitioning mid-air this past April.

In addition to the ALIA VTOL, BETA has also been developing an electric conventional takeoff and landing (eCTOL) plane called the ALIA CTOL. To date, it has flown tens of thousands of test miles en route to evaluation flights for FAA certification. That aircraft is targeting full approval for commercial operations by 2025.

“This paper shows a fun way to make carbon-neutral fuels and chemicals,” said Dr. Curtis P. Berlinguette. “We’ll need plastic on Mars one day, and this technology shows one way we can make it there.”

Can we use the planetary environment of Mars to help power a future colony on the Red Planet? This is what a recent study published in Device hopes to address as a team of researchers investigated how current thermoelectric generators—which can operate in a myriad of environments—on Mars could convert carbon dioxide (CO₂) into fuel and other chemicals that can be used for a future Mars colony. This study holds the potential to help scientists, engineers, and the public better understand how a future Mars colony could be managed and operated without constant need for resupply from Earth.

“This is a harsh environment where large temperature differences could be leveraged to not only generate power with thermoelectric generators, but to convert the abundant CO₂ in Mars’ atmosphere into useful products that could supply a colony,” said Dr. Abhishek Soni, who is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and lead author of the study.

Continue reading “Harnessing Earth’s and Mars’ Temperature Extremes for CO2 Conversion into Fuels” »

Researchers created a single-step device using redox electrodialysis and electrosorption to capture and destroy diverse PFAS chemicals, aiming to address contamination in water and industrial wastewater.

A study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is the first to introduce an electrochemical method capable of capturing, concentrating, and destroying diverse PFAS chemicals—including the increasingly common ultra-short-chain PFAS—in water, all in a single process. This breakthrough holds promise for tackling the mounting industrial challenge of PFAS contamination, especially within semiconductor manufacturing.

A previous U. of I. study showed that short-and long-chain PFAS can be removed from water using electrochemically driven adsorption, referred to as electrosorption, but this method is ineffective for ultra-short-chain molecules because of their small size and different chemical properties. The new study, led by Illinois chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Xiao Su, combines a desalination filtration technology, called redox electrodialysis, with electrosorption in a single device to address the problems associated with capturing the complete PFAS size spectrum.

Existing perovskite solar cells, which have the problem of not being able to utilize approximately 52% of total solar energy, have been developed by a Korean research team as an innovative technology that maximizes near-infrared light capture performance while greatly improving power conversion efficiency. This greatly increases the possibility of commercializing next-generation solar cells and is expected to contribute to important technological advancements in the global solar cell market.

The research team of Professor Jung-Yong Lee of the School of Electrical Engineering at KAIST (President Kwang-Hyung Lee) and Professor Woojae Kim of the Department of Chemistry at Yonsei University announced on October 31st that they have developed a high-efficiency and high-stability organic-inorganic hybrid solar cell production technology that maximizes near-infrared light capture beyond the existing visible light range.

The research team suggested and advanced a hybrid next-generation device structure with organic photo-semiconductors that complements perovskite materials limited to visible light absorption and expands the absorption range to near-infrared.

Scientists have discovered how to convert wastewater into biofuel to cut plane emissions by 70% — creating a new sustainable version of aviation fuel using biomass and agricultural waste.

Mimicking how plants convert sunlight into energy has long been a dream for scientists aiming to create renewable energy solutions. Artificial photosynthesis is a process that seeks to replicate nature’s method, using sunlight to drive chemical reactions that generate clean energy. However, creating synthetic systems that work as organically as natural photosynthesis has been a significant challenge until now.

In a paper published in Scientific Reports journal, the researchers report the potential of the lesser mealworm (the larvae of a darkling beetle species, known scientifically as Alphitobius), to consume plastic.

The icipe researchers tested the ability of the lesser mealworm to consume polystyrene, one of the major microplastics that is fast accumulating both in land and water bodies. Polystyrene waste comes from the commercial application of its most common form, styrofoam. This material is used in food storage containers, packaging of equipment, disposable plates and cups, and insulation in construction. Various methods, including chemical, thermal and mechanical, are used to recycle polystyrene. However, these approaches are expensive and they also produce toxic compounds that are harmful to human, environment and biodiversity.

“Our study showed that the mealworms can ingest close to 50% of the styrofoam. We aim to conduct further studies to understand the process through which mealworms consume polystyrene, and whether they gain any nutritional benefits from the material,” says Evalyne Ndotono, an icipe PhD scholar.

Continue reading “Can the mealworm be the answer to Africa’s plastic waste problem?” »

“The first involved integrating the hole-selective materials and the perovskite layers, to simplify the manufacturing process. The second involved replacing traditional organic materials, such as fullerene and bathocuproine, with tin oxide, an inorganic electron transport layer, in a process known as the atomic layer deposition method,” per PV’s description.

Labspeak aside, the big takeaway is that the changes resulted in a 25% efficiency, meaning the cells can turn a quarter of the sunlight hitting them into energy. What’s more, they maintained 95% of their efficiency after 2,000 hours of operation, per the report.

Continue reading “Scientists make solar breakthrough that could majorly impact future of energy: ‘A critical step’” »