## GENERAL FUSION (VANCOUVER) • JUN 16, 2021.

# General Fusion to build its Fusion Demonstration Plant in the UK, at the UKAEA Culham Campus.

*Unlike conventional nuclear power, which involves fission or splitting atoms, the emerging fusion technology promises clean energy where the only emission would be helium, and importantly, no radioactive waste.*

New partnership between General Fusion and UKAEA is a landmark collaboration in the development of fusion, a technology for the world’s low-carbon future.

VANCOUVER, Canada and LONDON, United Kingdom (17th June 2021 BST): The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) and General Fusion have announced an agreement under which General Fusion will build and operate its Fusion Demonstration Plant (FDP) at UKAEA’s Culham Campus. General Fusion will enter into a long-term lease with UKAEA following construction of a new facility at Culham to host the FDP. The FDP will demonstrate General Fusion’s proprietary Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) technology, paving the way for the company’s subsequent commercial pilot plant. General Fusion will benefit from the cluster of fusion supply chain activities in the UK, centered on UKAEA’s globally recognized expertise and presence in the field.

Amanda Solloway, Science Minister for UK Government said: “This new plant by General Fusion is a huge boost for our plans to develop a fusion industry in the UK, and I’m thrilled that Culham will be home to such a cutting-edge and potentially transformative project. Fusion energy has great potential as a source of limitless, low-carbon energy, and today’s announcement is a clear vote of confidence in the region and the UK’s status as a global science superpower.”

The Fusion Demonstration Plant at Culham is the culmination of more than a decade of advances in General Fusion’s technology, and represents a major milestone on the company’s path to commercialization. The Fusion Demonstration Plant will verify that General Fusion’s MTF technology can create fusion conditions in a practical and cost-effective manner at power plant relevant scales, as well as refine the economics of fusion energy production, leading to the subsequent design of a commercial fusion pilot plant. Construction is anticipated to begin in 2022, with operations beginning approximately three years later.

General Fusion and UKAEA intend to collaborate on a range of fusion energy technologies for power plant design and operation.

“Coming to Culham gives us the opportunity to benefit from UKAEA’s expertise,” stated Christofer Mowry, CEO, General Fusion. “By locating at this campus, General Fusion expands our market presence beyond North America into Europe, broadening our global network of government, institutional, and industrial partners. This is incredibly exciting news for not only General Fusion, but also the global effort to develop practical fusion energy.”

The Culham Campus, the home of the UK’s national fusion research programme, is owned and managed by UKAEA, widely recognized as a world leader in fusion energy development and innovation.

“This is a great development for UKAEA, very much in line with our mission to lead the development of sustainable fusion energy, and builds on our long heritage of hosting major fusion facilities such as the Joint European Torus,” said Ian Chapman, CEO of UKAEA.

###

About General Fusion.

General Fusion’s mission is to pursue the commercialization of fusion energy based on its proprietary Magnetized Target Fusion technology. The company is based in Vancouver, Canada, with locations in Washington, D.C., and London, U.K. The company was established in 2002 and is funded by a global syndicate of leading energy venture capital firms, industry leaders, and technology pioneers. General Fusion’s partnership with the UKAEA coincides with an expansion of the company’s global headquarters and research facilities in Vancouver, Canada, and a growing presence in the United States.

Twitter: @GeneralFusion More information: www.generalfusion.com.

Thank you to general fusion, folkstone design inc. & zoomers of the sunshine coast BC

#Fusion #ClimateChange #Vancouver #BC #UK #UKAEA

## FUTURE TENSE RN ABC (AUDIO 29 MIN) • JUN 27, 2021.

# Some foresight about.
the future of foresight.

*Trying to predict the future is a timeless and time-consuming pursuit.*

Artificial Intelligence is increasingly being enlisted to the cause, but so too are “super-forecasters” — a new coterie of individuals with remarkable predictive powers.

But what are their limits and what does their rise say about the still popular notion of collective intelligence — the wisdom of the crowd?

Future Tense looks at the changing role of humans in forecasting.

GUESTS

Associate Professor Oguz A. Acar — City University of London.

Dr Steven Rieber — Program Manager, IARPA, Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (US)

Professor michael horowitz — director, perry world house, university of pennsylvania.

Bruce Muirhead — CEO, Mindhive.

Camilla Grindheim Larsen — researcher and consultant, Bergen Public Library (Norway)

Duration: 29min 6sec.

Broadcast: Sun 27 Jun 2021, 12:30pm.

SEE ALSO

Mind Hive.

https://www.web.mindhive.org.

Thanks too folkstone design inc. & zoomers of the sunshine coast BC

#Forecasting #AI #Humans #MindHive.

Trying to predict the future is a timeless and time-consuming pursuit. Artificial Intelligence is increasingly being enlisted to the cause, but so too are “super-forecasters” – a new coterie of individuals with remarkable predictive powers. But what are their limits and what does their rise say about the still popular notion of collective intelligence – the wisdom of the crowd? Future Tense looks at the changing role of humans in forecasting.

“Scientists are meant to know what’s going on, but in this particular case, we are deeply confused.”

## JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY • JUN 4, 2021.

# *A lovely single step bio-inspired process with some interesting complex benefits particularly for humans on Mars.*

*by holly ober, university of california — riverside*

A team led by UC Riverside engineers has developed a catalyst to remove a dangerous chemical from water on Earth that could also make Martian soil safer for agriculture and help produce oxygen for human Mars explorers.

Perchlorate, a negative ion consisting of one chlorine atom bonded to four oxygen atoms, occurs naturally in some soils on Earth, and is especially abundant in Martian soil. As a powerful oxidizer, perchlorate is also manufactured and used in solid rocket fuel, fireworks, munitions, airbag initiators for vehicles, matches and signal flares. It is a byproduct in some disinfectants and herbicides.

Because of its ubiquity in both soil and industrial goods, perchlorate is a common water contaminant that causes certain thyroid disorders. Perchlorate bioaccumulates in plant tissues and a large amount of perchlorate found in Martian soil could make food grown there unsafe to eat, limiting the potential for human settlements on Mars. Perchlorate in Martian dust could also be hazardous to explorers. Current methods of removing perchlorate from water require either harsh conditions or a multistep enzymatic process to lower the oxidation state of the chlorine element into the harmless chloride ion.

Doctoral student Changxu Ren and Jinyong Liu, an assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering at UC Riverside’s Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering, took inspiration from nature to reduce perchlorate in water at ambient pressure and temperature in one simple step.

Ren and Liu noted anaerobic microbes use molybdenum in their enzymes to reduce perchlorate and harvest energy in oxygen-starved environments.

“Previous efforts in constructing a chemical molybdenum catalyst for perchlorate reduction have not been successful,” Liu said. “Many other metal catalysts either require harsh conditions or are not compatible with water.”

The researchers tried to emulate the complicated microbial perchlorate reduction process with a simplified approach. They found by simply mixing a common fertilizer called sodium molybdate, a common organic ligand called bipyridine to bind the molybdenum, and a common hydrogen-activating catalyst called palladium on carbon, they produced a powerful catalyst that quickly and efficiently broke down the perchlorate in water using hydrogen gas at room temperature with no combustion involved.

“This catalyst is much more active than any other chemical catalyst reported to date and reduces more than 99.99% of the perchlorate into chloride regardless of the initial perchlorate concentration,” Ren said.

The new catalyst reduces perchlorate in a wide concentration range, from less than 1 milligram per liter to 10 grams per liter. This makes it suitable for use in various scenarios, including remediating contaminated groundwater, treating heavily contaminated wastewater from explosives manufacturing, and making Mars habitable.

“A convenient catalytic reduction system may help harvest oxygen gas from perchlorate washed from the Martian soil when the catalyst is coupled with other processes,” Liu said.

## ORIGINAL PAPER

Changxu Ren et al, **A Bioinspired Molybdenum Catalyst for Aqueous Perchlorate Reduction**, Journal of the American Chemical Society (2021). DOI: 10.1021/jacs.1c00595

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/jacs.1c00595

Thanks to Zoomers of the Sunshine Coast BC, Bio — A.I., Sunshine Coast Climate Action Network & Folkstone Design Inc.

#Perchlorate #Mars #Oxygen #CatalyticReduction #WasteWater #Fuel #Food #SpaceX #ElonMusk #Mars #EnvironmentalMediation #Environment.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY • JUN 3, 2021
Culture drives human evolution more than genetics

I wonder about the thought that only humans do this, and perhaps that somehow culture is separate in some way from biological evolution enmeshed with the rest of the planet?
by University of Maine

Culture is an under-appreciated factor in human evolution, Waring says. Like genes, culture helps people adjust to their environment and meet the challenges of survival and reproduction. Culture, however, does so more effectively than genes because the transfer of knowledge is faster and more flexible than the inheritance of genes, according to Waring and Wood.

Waring and Wood say culture is also special in one important way: it is strongly group-oriented. Factors like conformity, social identity and shared norms and institutions—factors that have no genetic equivalent—make cultural evolution very group-oriented, according to researchers. Therefore, competition between culturally organized groups propels adaptations such as new cooperative norms and social systems that help groups survive better together.

According to researchers, “culturally organized groups appear to solve adaptive problems more readily than individuals, through the compounding value of social learning and cultural transmission in groups.” Cultural adaptations may also occur faster in larger groups than in small ones.

With groups primarily driving culture and culture now fueling human evolution more than genetics, Waring and Wood found that evolution itself has become more group-oriented.

“In the very long term, we suggest that humans are evolving from individual genetic organisms to cultural groups which function as superorganisms, similar to ant colonies and beehives,” Waring says. “The ‘society as organism’ metaphor is not so metaphorical after all.

ORIGINAL PAPER

Timothy M. Waring et al, Long-term gene–culture coevolution and the human evolutionary transition, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2021). DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.0538
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/…/10…/rspb.2021.0538
Thanks to Zoomers of the Sunshine Coast BC & Folkstone Design Inc.
#CulturalEvolution

In a new study, University of Maine researchers found that culture helps humans adapt to their environment and overcome challenges better and faster than genetics.

After conducting an extensive review of the literature and evidence of long-term human evolution, scientists Tim Waring and Zach Wood concluded that humans are experiencing a special evolutionary transition in which the importance of culture, such as learned knowledge, practices and skills, is surpassing the value of genes as the primary driver of human evolution.

Culture is an under-appreciated factor in human evolution, Waring says. Like genes, culture helps people adjust to their environment and meet the challenges of survival and reproduction. Culture, however, does so more effectively than genes because the transfer of knowledge is faster and more flexible than the inheritance of genes, according to Waring and Wood.

## MATHEMATICS • MAY 24, 2021

# *Noise is commonly discarded, but identifying patterns in noise can be very useful.*

*Generalize the Hearst exponent by adding more coefficients in order to get a more complete description of the changing data. This makes it possible to find patterns in the data that are usually considered noise and were previously impossible to analyze.*

*The development of this mathematical apparatus can solve the issue of parameterisation and analysis of processes for which there is no exact mathematical description. This opens up enormous prospects in describing, analyzing and forecasting complex systems.*

*by moscow institute of physics and technology*

One of the metrics used in economics and natural sciences in time series analysis is the Hurst exponent. It suggests whether the trend present in the data will persist: for example, whether values will continue to increase, or whether growth will turn to decline. This assumption holds for many natural processes and is explained by the inertia of natural systems. For example, lake level change, which is consistent with predictions derived from analysis of the Hurst exponent value, is determined not only by the current amount of water, but also by evaporation rates, precipitation, snowmelt, etc. All of the above is a time-consuming process.

Thanks to folkstone design inc. & zoomers of the sunshine coast BC

**Relevant Stories**

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpEBFr960dwZqR-9HtCWIcQ

## ORIGINAL PAPER

Raoul Nigmatullin et al, **Generalized Hurst Hypothesis: Description of Time-Series in Communication Systems**, Mathematics (2021). DOI: 10.3390/math9040381

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/9/4/381

#ComplexSystems #forecasting #Noise #GeneralizedHurstHypothesis.

A team of scientists from MIPT and Kazan National Research Technical University is developing a mathematical apparatus that could lead to a breakthrough in network security. The results of the work have been published in the journal Mathematics.

Complex systems, such as network traffic or living organisms, do not have deterministic physical laws to accurately describe them and predict future behavior. In this case, an important role is played by correlation analysis, which describes the behavior of the system in terms of sets of statistical parameters.

Such complex systems are described by trendless sequences, often defined as long-term time series or “noise”. They are fluctuations produced by a combination of different sources and are among the most difficult data to analyze and extract reliable, stable information.

## SCIENCE ADVANCES • MAY 24, 2021 # *by Vienna University of Technology*

In everyday life, phase transitions usually have to do with temperature changes--for example, when an ice cube gets warmer and melts. But there are also different kinds of phase transitions, depending on other parameters such as magnetic field. In order to understand the quantum properties of materials, phase transitions are particularly interesting when they occur directly at the absolute zero point of temperature. These transitions are called "quantum phase transitions" or a "quantum critical points."

Such a quantum critical point has now been discovered by an Austrian-American research team in a novel material, and in an unusually pristine form. The properties of this material are now being further investigated.

It is suspected that the material could be a so-called Weyl-Kondo semimetal, which is considered to have great potential for quantum technology due to special quantum states (so-called topological states). If this proves to be true, a key for the targeted development of topological quantum materials would have been found.

This surprising result is probably related to the fact that the behavior of electrons in this material has some special features. "It is a highly correlated electron system. This means that the electrons interact strongly with each other, and that you cannot explain their behavior by looking at the electrons individually.

If there are only relatively few free electrons, as is the case in a semimetal, then the Kondo effect is unstable. This could be the reason for the quantum critical behavior of the material: the system fluctuates between a state with and a state without the Kondo effect, and this has the effect of a phase transition at zero temperature.

**Quantum fluctuations could lead to Weyl particles**

The main reason why the result is of such central importance is that it is suspected to be closely connected to the phenomenon of “Weyl fermions.” In solids, Weyl fermions can appear in the form of quasiparticles–i.e. as collective excitations such as waves in a pond. According to theoretical predictions, such Weyl fermions should exist in this material.

We suspect that the quantum criticality we observed favors the occurrence of such Weyl fermions,” says Silke Bühler-Paschen. “Quantum critical fluctuations could therefore have a stabilizing effect on Weyl fermions, in a similar way to quantum critical fluctuations in high-temperature superconductors holding superconducting Cooper pairs together.

It seems to us that certain quantum effects–namely quantum critical fluctuations, the Kondo effect and Weyl fermions–are tightly intertwined in the newly discovered material and, together, give rise to exotic Weyl-Kondo states. These are ‘topological’ states of great stability that, unlike other quantum states, cannot be easily destroyed by external disturbances. This makes them particularly interesting for quantum computers.

Thanks to folkstone design inc. & zoomers of the sunshine coast BC

**Relevant Stories**

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpEBFr960dwZqR-9HtCWIcQ

## ORIGINAL PAPER

Wesley T. Fuhrman et al, **Pristine quantum criticality in a Kondo semimetal**, Science Advances (2021). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abf9134

https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/21/eabf9134

#WeylKondoStates #KondoEffect #QuantumComputers.