Lifeboat Foundation

Circa 2018

It may look like just another giant smokestack, but a 200-foot tower in the central Chinese city of Xi’an was built to pull deadly pollutants from the air rather than add more. And preliminary research shows the tower — which some are calling the world’s largest air purifier — has cut air pollution significantly across a broad swath of the surrounding area.

Given those findings, the researchers behind the project say they hope to build an even taller air-purifying tower in Xi’an, and possibly in other cities around China.

Continue reading “This skyscraper-sized air purifier is the world’s tallest” »

Buildings with this concrete can—in regions with a calm mediterranean climate—absorb CO2 and release oxygen with micro-algae and the other “pigmented microorganisms” that coat it. These vertical gardens boast aesthetic appeal, but the biological concrete’s beauty also lies in its clever design.

The concrete works in layers. The top layer absorbs and stores rainwater and grows the microorganisms underneath. A final layer of the concrete repels water to keep the internal structure safe. The top can also absorb solar radiation, which insulates the building and regulates temperatures for the people inside.

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is already making huge improvements to the efficiency and sustainability of global aquaculture, as this practical guide to some of the best systems currently available shows.

The X tractor is being presented in commemoration of Kubota’s 130th year in business.

According to agricultural machinery manufacturer Kubota, there are now fewer farmers in Japan, trying to manage increasingly large amounts of land. With that problem in mind, the company recently unveiled a concept for helping those farmers out – a driverless tractor.

Known as the X tractor (a play on “cross tractor”), the vehicle was designed as part of Kubota’s Agrirobo automated technology program. It made its public debut earlier this month, at an exhibition in the city of Kyoto.

Continue reading “Kubota unveils autonomous electric tractor in Japan” »

It doesn’t seem like all that long ago that even the idea of an electric Ferrari was controversial. Indeed, it was 2016 when then-Ferrari Chairman Sergio Marchionne said that, “with Ferrari, (an electric car) is almost an obscene concept,” before he finished up with, “you’d have to shoot me first.” Well, Sergio– times sure do change, don’t they? At least, that’s what a series of plans for an electric Ferrari from a leaked patent filing would seem to say about the matter!

In fairness to Marchionne, he would pass on before Ferrari built a pure electric car, succumbing as he did to cancer at the age of 66. Tragic as that was, what isn’t tragic is Ferrari joining the rest of the automotive universe in the 21st century with plans to build a for-real battery-powered Ferrari by 2025.

The push for Ferrari to finally go electric was, no doubt, accelerated by the success of the electric Porsche Taycan and, obviously, the rapid growth of Tesla (and, likely, the staggering growth of TSLA stock). With the launch of its first PHEV last year and recently announced plans to go “60% hybrid by 2022”, then, the step towards all-electric seems ready to happen.

University of California, Berkeley, scientists have created a blue light-emitting diode (LED) from a trendy new semiconductor material, halide perovskite, overcoming a major barrier to employing these cheap, easy-to-make materials in electronic devices.

In the process, however, the researchers discovered a fundamental property of halide perovskites that may prove a barrier to their widespread use as solar cells and transistors.

Alternatively, this unique property may open up a whole new world for perovskites far beyond that of today’s standard semiconductors.

Circa 2019 Event 201, hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, envisions a fast-spreading coronavirus with a devastating impact.

Back in 2001, it was a smallpox outbreak, set off by terrorists in U.S. shopping malls. This fall, it was a SARS-like virus, germinating quietly among pig farms in Brazil before spreading to every country in the world. With each fictional pandemic Johns Hopkins experts have designed, the takeaway lesson is the same: We are nowhere near prepared.

Continue reading “Pandemic simulation exercise spotlights massive preparedness gap” »

It’s pretty difficult to believe it at this point, but there are still groups of Tesla critics who insist that Gigafactory 3 is not really fully operational. A central part of this thesis is the allegation that Gigafactory 3 does not have a stamping press, which means that Tesla’s China team is only assembling cars in the Shanghai-based factory using pre-stamped panels from Fremont.

A recently released video from Tesla China has just decimated these allegations in a subtle but definitive manner. The clip was short, less than 30 seconds long, but it showed a busy stamping press operating in Gigafactory 3. The video was released in China, and shared on Twitter by Tesla enthusiast @JayinShanghai.