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Category: sustainability

Another possibility for an alternative to traditional plastics?

A substance made by solitary bees.

Sometimes the answers to life’s most complicated questions are hidden in the smallest details. That’s a truth Veronica Harwood-Stevenson discovered when she found there might be a way to create a sustainable alternative to plastic products by mimicking a natural substance produced by bees.

You have probably encountered your fair share of honey bees and bumble bees in your life, but fewer people know about solitary bees — a name for the 20,000+ species of bees that live on their own apart from a hive or colony.

These bees do not produce honey or wax, but they do make a material to waterproof their nests and protect their larvae from the environment that has shown resistance to heat, naked flames, acids, bases, and solvents.

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Fluids with zero viscosity seemingly defy the laws of physics and they have endless applications. But they’ve been hard to make, until now. The secret? Bacteria!

Scientists’ Crazy Plan to Power Solar Panels With E. Coli — https://youtu.be/_XZGrZ3DeLg

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Swarming Bacteria Create an ‘Impossible’ Superfluid.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/swarming-bacteria-create-an-impossible-superfluid-20180726/
“Researchers explore a loophole that extracts useful energy from a fluid’s seemingly random motion. The secret? Sugar and asymmetry.”

More info about E. Coli
https://www.foodsafety.gov/poisoning/causes/bacteriaviruses/ecoli/index.html
“E. coli is the name of a type of bacteria that lives in your intestines and in the intestines of animals. Although most types of E. coli are harmless, some types can make you sick.”

Swimming bacteria work together to go with the flow
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-bacteria.html
“This shows us that microscopic bacterial activity can be converted into macroscopic useful mechanical power. In other words, it is possible to make bacteria work together and use that to power larger devices.”
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In what may be the most exciting news of the week, University of Texas at Austin researchers have engineered a solar-powered device that absorbs moisture from the air and turns it into clean water.

SEE ALSO: 5 WELL ENGINEERED WATER PURIFICATION SYSTEMS COMBATING THE GLOBAL WATER CRISIS

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Spiders, mushrooms and algae may help build the next Hilfiger, Levi and Chanel.

Organisms are the great designers of our planet, producing materials in distinct patterns to serve a specific function. Bees produce hexagonal honeycombs to store honey, spiders weave symmetrical webs to capture prey, and nautiluses form a logarithmic spiral shell to protect their insides. Synthetic biologists, ever inspired by nature, are leveraging these unique abilities, harnessing nature’s potential to revolutionize apparel by guiding structural assemblies at the molecular level.

Here are three examples of innovative companies — in Tokyo, New York, and Berkeley — that are letting nature show the way to better, more sustainable materials in a quest to alter the fashion and apparel industries forever.

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By 2050, two-thirds of us wil be living in cities, so architects are taking inspiration from nature to build more sustainable skylines.

How Eyes Evolved to See the World Differently

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The Wood Innovation and Design Centre
https://www.unbc.ca/engineering-graduate-program/wood-innovation-and-design-centre

Tokyo to build world’s tallest timber tower
https://www.cnn.com/style/article/wooden-skyscrapers-timber-trend-catching-fire-duplicate-2/index.html
“The 70-story tower will be a hybrid structure made from 90% wooden materials. A steel vibration-control framework will underpin the design — an important feature in a city where earthquakes are frequent.”

A Lusher and Greener Singapore (URA and NParks Introduce Schemes to Promote Skyrise Greenery)
https://www.nparks.gov.sg/news/2009/4/a-lusher-and-greener-singapore-ura-and-nparks-introduce-schemes-to-promote-skyrise-greenery
“The greening of Singapore will literally move to greater heights with the launch of URA’s programme, LUSH. NParks is also introducing a pilot incentive scheme to encourage existing building owners to green up their rooftops.”

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Aside from harvesting solar, wind, and hydrogen energy to produce electricity, many energy experts believe that developing compact fusion facilities can give humankind a stable and sustainable source of power that can last forever.

Jon Menard, a physicist from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), has reportedly examined the possibility of expediting the development of compact fusion facilities to generate safe, clean, and limitless energy.

In his study, Menard looked into the concept of creating a compact tokamak powered by high-temperature superconducting magnets.

It appears that this kind of magnet can generate the higher magnetic fields needed to produce and sustain fusion reactions.

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WASHINGTON: The annual Templeton Prize, which recognizes outstanding contributions to “affirming life’s spiritual dimension,” was awarded Tuesday to Brazilian Marcelo Gleiser-a theoretical physicist dedicated to demonstrating science and religion are not enemies. A physics and astronomy professor whose specializations include cosmology, 60-year-old Gleiser was born in Rio de Janeiro, and has been in the United States since 1986. An agnostic, he doesn’t believe in God-but refuses to write off the possibility of God’s existence completely.

“Atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method,” Gleiser said Monday from Dartmouth College, the New Hampshire university where he has taught since 1991. “Atheism is a belief in non-belief. So you categorically deny something you have no evidence against.” “I’ll keep an open mind because I understand that human knowledge is limited,” he added. The prize is funded by the John Templeton Foundation-a philanthropic organization named after the American Presbyterian who made his fortune on Wall Street, and who set on “seeking proofs of divine agency in every branch of science”, as The Economist put it.

Gleiser joins Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama and dissident Soviet author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as recipients of the prize, first awarded in 1973. At £1.1 million, the prize money well surpasses that of the Nobels. The physicist focuses on making complex subjects accessible. He has written on climate change, Einstein, hurricanes, black holes, the human conscience-tracing the links between the sciences and the humanities, including philosophy.

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There’s an energy revolution happening in villages and towns across Africa — off-grid solar energy is becoming a viable alternative to traditional electricity systems. In a bold talk about a true leapfrog moment, Amar Inamdar introduces us to proud owners of off-grid solar kits — and explains how this technology has the opportunity to meet two extraordinary goals: energy access for all and a low-carbon future. “Every household a proud producer as well as consumer of energy,” Inamdar says. “That’s the democracy of energy.” (Followed by a brief Q&A with TED Curator Chris Anderson)

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Climate change is a sprawling, complex problem. But there is an astonishingly simple way to make a difference: plant more trees. Trees scrub pollution from the air, reduce erosion, improve water quality, provide homes for animals and insects, and enhance our lives in countless other ways.

It turns out that ecosystem restoration is also an emerging business opportunity. A new report from the World Resources Institute and the Nature Conservancy says governments around the world have committed to reviving nearly 400 million acres of wilderness — an area larger than South Africa. As countries push to regrow forests, startups are dreaming up new, faster ways to plant trees. For some innovators, like NASA veteran Dr. Lauren Fletcher, that means using drones.

Fletcher said his conversion from stargazer to eco-warrior was driven by his worry about climate change, which has been dramatically worsened by deforestation. To tackle the problem, he created BioCarbon Engineering, which he describes as an ecosystem restoration company. Working with colleagues, he came up with a 30-pound unmanned aerial vehicle nicknamed “Robin.” It can fly over the most rugged landscapes on earth, planting trees in precise locations at the rate of 120 per minute.

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Unmanned systems’ global inroads are including European agriculture. GNSS for precision guidance of tractors and harvesters is already in place. More recent innovations include fully driverless and smart systems, while drones remain poised to fly.

The experience of one Dutch company is instructive. Precision Makers is an up-and- coming manufacturer of automated farm systems. The company delivers two main products. One, a conversion kit called X-Pert, turns existing mowers and tractors into driverless machines. The other is a fully robotized, unmanned vehicle called Greenbot. Both systems enable automated precision operations, but while one has been successful in terms of sales, the other has not.

Precision Makers Business Development Director, Allard Martinet, told Inside Unmanned Systems, “Sales of our X-Pert conversion system have been very good. We started in 2008, first converting the Toro golf course mower, and then we expanded that into solutions for other vehicles. Today, there are more than 150 X-Pert converted vehicles running.”

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