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Category: economics

Circa 2021

Decarbonisation of the iron and steel industry would require the use of innovative low-carbon production technologies. Use of 100% hydrogen in a shaft furnace (SF) to reduce iron ore has the potential to reduce emissions from iron and steel production significantly. In this work, results from the techno-economic assessment of a H2-SF connected to an electric arc furnace(EAF) for steel production are presented under two scenarios. In the first scenario H2 is produced from molten metal methane pyrolysis in an electrically heated liquid metal bubble column reactor. Grid connected low-temperature alkaline electrolyser was considered for H2 production in the second scenario. In both cases, 59.25 kgH2 was required for the production of one ton of liquid steel (tls). The specific energy consumption (SEC) for the methane pyrolysis based system was found to be 5.16 MWh/tls. The system used 1.51 MWh/tls of electricity, and required 263 kg/tls of methane, corresponding to an energy consumption of 3.65 MWh/tls. The water electrolysis based system consumed 3.96 MWh/tls of electricity, at an electrolyser efficiency of 50 KWh/kgH 2. Both systems have direct emissions of 129.4 kgCO2/tls. The indirect emissions are dependent on the source of natural gas, pellet making process and the grid-emission factor. Indirect emissions for the electrolysis based system could be negligible, if the electricity is generated from renewable energy sources. The levellized cost of production(LCOP) was found to be $631, and $669 respectively at a discount rate of 8%, for a plant-life of 20 years. The LCOP of a natural gas reforming based direct reduction steelmaking plant of operating under similar conditions was found to be $414. Uncertainty analysis was conducted for the NPV and IRR values.

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Aside from upturning the economics of the automobile industry, Tesla has also begun innovation efforts in how we receive our day-to-day electrical power services.

Indeed, the day you begin to pay Tesla your electricity bills may soon come if they continue their success. Welcome dear, today we will talk about Tesla’s battery farm installations in Australia and how they changed the lives of many Australian citizens.

Tesla’s ‘battery farm’ in South Australia is officially known as the Hornsdale Power Reserve. Its construction history begins with the local southern Australian government searching for plausible plans for the improvement of their electrical power grid with a battery design in the region.

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Few years ago, at the mention of space mission rivalry, the US and USSR comes to mind. However, things changed in 2003 when China launched the first human crewed mission space flight. We’ve always known the US and China to be rivals on so many economic and political grounds, but now, they’ve taken it one up to space.

What’s the whole point of the space mission rivalry? And most importantly, if the rivalry continues, how exactly will it affect both countries and the world at large? Well, we will find out in just a second.

While the United States’ status in the current world order requires no explanation, the People’s Republic of China’s rise to similar power warrants some examination. Following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 whose ideologically restricted Stalinist rule caused much devastation and economic malaise in Chinese society, a new ruling class sought to change things.

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The domino effect of the falling of Chinese companies is in full swing, as one after another, four Chinese real estate companies have toppled. As reported by Asia Nikkei, Modern Land China has become the latest developer from Asia’s largest economy to miss a dollar bond payment, underscoring the stress spreading across the sector, as the property balloon burst at the time when Beijing was at its most vulnerable. According to a filing on Tuesday with the Singapore stock exchange where the bond is traded, the corporation failed to pay interest and principal on a $250 million bond. This month, Fantasia Holdings, Sinic Holdings, and China Properties have all defaulted on offshore notes, while China Evergrande Group narrowly avoided defaulting last week by making a coupon payment on time.

As liquidity concerns intensify amid mounting maturities, as per reports, global rating agencies have already lowered the scores of a record 44 Chinese developers this month. Earlier, Modern Land dropped a plan to extend the bond’s repayment period, and trading in its stock and debt securities was delayed until the company made another announcement. The trade embargo is still in effect, according to the newest declaration. The fact that the Singapore stock exchange will also face the pressure of this fall, means that other countries are now going to suffer for the bad policies of Xi Jinping.

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The Chinese economy has been hit by a perfect storm. In the third quarter of the ongoing financial year, official Chinese data revealed that GDP growth stood at 4.9 percent, down from 7.9 percent in the previous quarter. This decline in GDP growth is directly eating into profits of big Chinese companies.

Rising prices and low consumer spending create a perfect storm in the Chinese economy:

There are two broad factors that are affecting business earnings in China-raw material inflation and low consumer spending.

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CEO Elon Musk posted an ancient Chinese poem on Weibo on Monday and this led his millions-strong followers on the social media platform to open up their wallets.

What Happened: Musk posted an 1800-year-old poem, called “The Quatrain of Seven Steps,” composed by Cao Zhi, the brother of the Emperor of Wei Cao Pi without any clear context.

Subsequently, Musk, who has 1.9 million followers on Weibo, began receiving donations from the users of the Chinese social media platform, reported CnEVPost.

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Rare diseases aren’t so rare. Collectively, up to 30 million Americans, many of them children, are born with one of the approximately 7,000 known rare diseases. Most of these millions of people also share a common genetic feature: their diseases are caused by an alteration in a single gene.

Many of these alterations could theoretically be targeted with therapies designed to correct or replace the faulty gene. But there have been significant obstacles in realizing this dream. The science of gene therapy has been making real progress, but pursuing promising approaches all the way to clinical trials and gaining approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is still very difficult. Another challenge is economic: for the rarest of these conditions (which is most of them), the market is so small that most companies have no financial incentive to pursue them.

To overcome these obstacles and provide hope for those with rare diseases, we need a new way of doing things. One way to do things differently—and more efficiently—is the recently launched Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium (BGTC). It is a bold partnership of NIH, the FDA, 10 pharmaceutical companies, and several non-profit organizations [1]. Its aim: optimize the gene therapy development process and help fill the significant unmet medical needs of people with rare diseases.

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A shift to digital life?

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EVE Online is a massively multiplayer online game that is probably best known for articles about massive space battles with tens of thousands of players, or stories about in-game con men screwing over their allies after years of friendship. BUT! EVE online is interesting for a bigger reason though that is often overlooked, and that is its amazingly realistic economy. In this video, we explore one of the player nation-states and see how crazy realistic the economy of a video game about spaceships can be.

This is not sponsored by the Imperium, EVE online, or its developer, CCP games (but they are more than welcome to send me a cheque!).

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Speaker:
James L. Burk.
Commander, MDRS Crew 261.
Executive Officer, MDRS Crew 197.
Director of IT & MarsVR, The Mars Society.
Former Senior Technical Project Manager, Microsoft.

Track Code: AM-2

Abstract:
James Burk will be the commander of MDRS Crew 261 composed of professional analog astronauts from the US, Canada, France and Belgium. As part of the preparation for MDRS Crew 261 (Dec 2021), our crew held a call for experiments across the space analog science community. We selected 10 experiments which run the gamut of the disciplines of medicine, chemisty, biology, robotics, sociology, psychology and human factors challenges for a human Mars mission. James will present our roster of experiments and our plan for executing them during our mission in December.

From the 24th Annual International Mars Society Convention, held as a Virtual Convention worldwide on the Internet from October 14–17, 2021. The four-day International Mars Society Convention, held every year since 1,998 brings together leading scientists, engineers, aerospace industry representatives, government policymakers and journalists to talk about the latest scientific discoveries, technological advances and political-economic developments that could help pave the way for a human mission to the planet Mars.

Conference Papers and some presentations will be available on www.MarsPapers.org.

For more information on the Mars Society, visit our website at www.MarsSociety.org.

#MarsSociety #MarsSocCon2021

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