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Archive for the ‘sustainability’ category: Page 98

Dec 4, 2023

Flying electric car Doroni H1 is now airworthy, says FAA

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Receiving the FAA’s Airworthiness Certification is not just a milestone for our company, but a leap forward for the entire field of personal air mobility.


Doroni Aerospace.

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Dec 4, 2023

New research links world record holding material to hydrogen generation

Posted by in categories: nanotechnology, physics, solar power, sustainability

With a hydrogen production rate of 139 millimoles per hour and per gram of catalyst, the material holds the world record for green hydrogen production with sunlight.


Scharfsinn86/iStock.

Professor Emiliano Cortés, a leading figure in experimental physics and energy conversion at LMU, and Dr. Matías Herrán, a postdoc researcher at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, delved into the intricate world of nanotechnology to develop high-performance nanostructures that could revolutionize solar energy utilization.

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Dec 2, 2023

AI-system boosts microgrid efficiency for rapid power outage recovery

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, solar power, sustainability

During power outages, microgrids leverage local renewable sources like rooftop solar panels and small wind turbines for efficient power restoration.


UC-Santa Cruz.

Addressing this common challenge, a research team from the University of California — Santa Cruz led by assistant professor Yu Zhang is employing innovative methods to enhance power systems’ efficiency, dependability, and robustness. For this, they have devised an artificial intelligence (AI) centered strategy to intelligently manage microgrids intelligently, ensuring effective power restoration in the event of outages.

Dec 2, 2023

Michigan welcomes US’s first wireless charging roadway for EVs

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

The wireless-charging roadway is expected to boost the adoption and convenience of electric vehicles, which are increasing in popularity in the United States.


Electreon.

MDOT and Electreon initiative.

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Dec 2, 2023

New study finds bots and fraud farms responsible for 73% of web traffic

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

The report found that bot attacks increased by 167 percent in the first half of the year, with a staggering 291 percent increase in intelligent bots.


Eakarat Buanoi/iStock.

73 percent of all web and app traffic was malicious in Q3 2023.

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Dec 1, 2023

Advancing Power Resilience: UC Santa Cruz’s AI Innovation in Microgrid Technology

Posted by in categories: information science, policy, robotics/AI, sustainability

A recent study published in IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems discusses how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to control microgrids in the event of a long-term power outage caused by natural disasters or human error. This study was conducted by a team of researchers at UC Santa Cruz and holds the potential to improve power restoration techniques, which are traditionally controlled by local utility companies. One benefit of microgrids is they can function to power a small area, such as a town, until the primary utility source comes back online.

“Nowadays, microgrids are really the thing that both people in industry and in academia are focusing on for the future power distribution systems,” said Dr. Yu Zhang, who is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Santa Cruz and co-author on the study.

For the study, the researchers used an AI-based approach to develop a novel method where microgrids could draw power from renewable energy sources while being disconnected from the primary utility source, known as “islanding mode”, but can also function while being connected to the source, as well. This new method, which they refer to as constrained policy optimization (CPO), uses a machine learning algorithm that learns from outside input, such as real-time changes in environmental or power conditions, and makes the best-informed decisions on what to do next.

Dec 1, 2023

Ocean Conservation Unveiled: The Scuba Diver’s Perspective on MPAs in California

Posted by in category: sustainability

“People come from around the state and around the world to dive the Channel Islands, drawn by playful sea lions, underwater cathedrals of emerald kelp forests and giant sea bass weighing four times more than the divers themselves,” said Molly Morse.


Can marine protected areas (MPAs) have a positive effect on the scuba diving industry? This is something a recent study published in Marine Policy hopes to find out as a team of researchers led by the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) highlighted the potential benefits that MPAs could have on ecotourism in California’s Channel Islands, specifically for scuba divers.

For the study, the researchers used data collected between 2016 and 2022 from an onboard vessel location system known as Automatic Identification System (AIS)—which boat captains use during scuba diving tours—and interviewed for-hire vessel captains with the goal of ascertaining the location of these ecotours with respect to MPAs and their corresponding borders of protection. In the end, the team found that the ecotours vessels favored MPAs for their activities, specifically for lobster fishing and scuba diving, and that 38 percent of the most popular ecotourism diving locations were within MPAs, with 45 percent of diving activities occurring within MPAs, as well.

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Dec 1, 2023

Materials-predicting AI from DeepMind could revolutionize electronics, batteries, and solar cells

Posted by in categories: robotics/AI, solar power, sustainability

Company releases database with hundreds of thousands of potential new materials.

Dec 1, 2023

Detroit’s newest road can charge electric cars as they travel on it

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Detroit is now home to the country’s first stretch of road that can wirelessly charge an electric vehicle (EV), whether it’s parked or moving.

Why it matters: Wireless charging on an electrified roadway could remove one of the biggest hassles of owning an EV: the need to stop and plug in regularly.

Dec 1, 2023

How one national lab is getting its supercomputers ready for the AI age

Posted by in categories: government, robotics/AI, supercomputing, sustainability

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — At Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the government-funded science research facility nestled between Tennessee’s Great Smoky Mountains and Cumberland Plateau that is perhaps best known for its role in the Manhattan Project, two supercomputers are currently rattling away, speedily making calculations meant to help tackle some of the biggest problems facing humanity.

You wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at them. A supercomputer called Summit mostly comprises hundreds of black cabinets filled with cords, flashing lights and powerful graphics processing units, or GPUs. The sound of tens of thousands of spinning disks on the computer’s file systems, and air cooling technology for ancillary equipment, make the device sound somewhat like a wind turbine — and, at least to the naked eye, the contraption doesn’t look much different from any other corporate data center. Its next-door neighbor, Frontier, is set up in a similar manner across the hall, though it’s a little quieter and the cabinets have a different design.

Yet inside those arrays of cabinets are powerful specialty chips and components capable of, collectively, training some of the largest AI models known. Frontier is currently the world’s fastest supercomputer, and Summit is the world’s seventh-fastest supercomputer, according to rankings published earlier this month. Now, as the Biden administration boosts its focus on artificial intelligence and touts a new executive order for the technology, there’s growing interest in using these supercomputers to their full AI potential.