Lifeboat Foundation

Is there enough space for all the wind turbines and solar panels to provide all our energy needs? What happens when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow? Won’t renewables destabilise the grid and cause blackouts?

In a review paper last year in the high-ranking journal Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, researcher Benjamin Heard and colleagues presented their case against 100 percent renewable electrical systems. They doubted the feasibility of many of the recent scenarios for high shares of renewable energy, questioning everything from whether renewables-based systems can survive extreme weather events with low sun and low wind, to the ability to keep the grid stable with so much variable generation.

Now, scientists have hit back with their response to the points raised by Heard and colleagues. The researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and collaborators have analysed hundreds of studies to answer each of the apparent issues. They demonstrate that there are no roadblocks to a 100 percent renewable future.

Important new study to track — “The team will start recruiting the first of 1,000 low-income mothers next week…Of that 1,000, roughly half will be randomly selected to receive an unconditional $333 a month, while the others will form a control group that will receive $20. The money, which is completely unconditional, will be loaded onto a pre-paid debit card every month for 40 months, on the date of the child’s birthday. The hypothesis is that this steady stream of payments will make a positive difference in the cognitive and emotional development of the children whose mothers receive it”

___ Does growing up poor harm brain development? (The Economist): “Plenty of evidence suggests that growing up poor, living through these kinds of scrapes, has a detrimental impact on child development. Children from rich families tend to have better language and memory skills than those from poor families. More.

Money might not buy love, but it can buy better health. And, to live as long as possible, the world’s wealthy are willing to pay up.

The wealthy are willing to pay for a longer life. The successor to income inequality is longevity inequality.

Scientists pride themselves on being keen observers, but many seem to have trouble spotting the problems right under their noses. Those who run labs have a much rosier picture of the dynamics in their research groups than do many staff members working in the trenches, according to a Nature survey of more than 3,200 scientists. The results suggest that a lack of training in lab and personnel management is one of the strongest contributors to an unhealthy lab culture.

A Nature survey of 3,200 scientists reveals the tensions bubbling in research groups around the world.

VR companies around the world are planning to offer live views of the Earth from space within the next few years.

Stuart Clark

Continue reading “Space tourism for the people: become a virtual reality astronaut” »

Magpie Bridge relay satellite will communicate with lunar lander to be deployed later in the year.

Stuart Clark

Government officials, business leaders and academics attending China’s second World Intelligence Congress, abbreviated WIC 2018, envisioned people’s liberation from labor with the help of artificial intelligence.

With the theme “The Age of Intelligence: New Progress, New Trends, New Efforts,” the three-day event began in north China’s Tianjin municipality on Wednesday.

Lin Nianxiu, deputy director of China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), said at the opening of the congress that the aspirations to make machines more intelligent and liberate human beings from as much labor as possible have been major impetuses driving worldwide technological advances and industrial innovation.

The world is a big place, but it’s gotten smaller with the advent of technologies that put people from across the globe in the palm of one’s hand. And as the world has shrunk, it has also demanded that things happen ever faster—including the time it takes to charge an electronic device.

A cross-campus collaboration led by Ulrich Wiesner, professor of engineering in the at Cornell University, addresses this demand with a novel energy storage device architecture that has the potential for lightning-quick charges.

The group’s idea: Instead of having the batteries’ anode and cathode on either side of a nonconducting separator, intertwine the components in a self-assembling, 3D gyroidal structure, with thousands of nanoscale pores filled with the elements necessary for energy storage and delivery.

The effects of the short-lived explosion were limited, but scientists warned there may be more to come.