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Category: chemistry – Page 255

Battery-and carmakers are already spending billions of dollars on reducing the costs of manufacturing and recycling electric-vehicle (EV) batteries — spurred in part by government incentives and the expectation of forthcoming regulations. National research funders have also founded centres to study better ways to make and recycle batteries. Because it is still less expensive, in most instances, to mine metals than to recycle them, a key goal is to develop processes to recover valuable metals cheaply enough to compete with freshly mined ones. “The biggest talker is money,” says Jeffrey Spangenberger, a chemical engineer at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois, who manages a US federally funded lithium-ion battery-recycling initiative, called ReCell.

Reducing the use of scarce metals — and recycling them — will be key to the world’s transition to electric vehicles.

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Deep below the ground, radioactive elements disintegrate water molecules, producing ingredients that can fuel subterranean life. This process, known as radiolysis, has sustained bacteria in isolated, water-filled cracks and rock pores on Earth for millions to billions of years. Now a study published in Astrobiology contends that radiolysis could have powered microbial life in the Martian subsurface.

Dust storms, cosmic rays and solar winds ravage the Red Planet’s surface. But belowground, some life might find refuge. “The environment with the best chance of habitability on Mars is the subsurface,” says Jesse Tarnas, a planetary scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the new study’s lead author. Examining the Martian underground could help scientists learn whether life could have survived there—and the best subsurface samples available today are Martian meteorites that have crash-landed on Earth.

Tarnas and his colleagues evaluated the grain sizes, mineral makeup and radioactive element abundance in Martian meteorites and estimated the Martian crust’s porosity using satellite and rover data. They plugged these attributes into a computer model that simulated radiolysis to see how efficiently the process would have generated hydrogen gas and sulfates: chemical ingredients that can power the metabolism of underground bacteria. The researchers report that if water was present, radiolysis in the Martian subsurface could have sustained microbial communities for billions of years—and perhaps still could today.

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NASA has selected two missions, dubbed DAVINCI+ and VERITAS, to study the “lost habitable” world of Venus. Each mission will receive approximately $500 million for development and both are expected to launch between 2,028 and 2030.

It had long been thought there was no life on Venus, due to its extremely high temperatures. But late last year, scientists studying the planet’s atmosphere announced the surprising (and somewhat controversial) discovery of phosphine. On Earth, this chemical is produced primarily by living organisms.

The news sparked renewed interest in Earth’s “twin,” prompting NASA to plan state-of-the-art missions to look more closely at the planetary environment of Venus—which could hint at life-bearing conditions.

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This work proves that stability of C60 is a geometrical property of the thermodynamics of the system: a significant methodological advance since a detailed treatment of the energetics may be avoidable. This approach may be fruitful, not only for fullerenes but also for general problems of molecular stability and in other applications of conformational chemistry. For the non-chiral C60, C384, and the weakly-chiral C28, C76 and C380 (of these, C380 and C384 are classed as “unspirallable”), Schlegel projections are used to show that these fullerenes can all be represented by pairs of spirals counter-propagating in anti-parallel (C2) symmetry. For C60, the high symmetry is used to construct an analytical approximation for the spherical double-spirals, shown mathematically to be Maximum Entropy (MaxEnt) using the formalism of Quantitative Geometrical Thermodynamics (QGT). Therefore C60 is necessarily stable. This MaxEnt stability criterion is general, depending only on the geometry and not the kinematics of the system. The sense and degree of chirality for C76 and C380 is also quantified using a Shannon entropy-based fragmentation metric.

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Laser mining would allow for a no explosive option and not need huge machines increasing output as well. Also lasers could make more precise cuts rather than blades which would never get dull.

The application of the “Graduated Optical Colimator” (GOC) for the mining industry consists of a one-kilowatt optical power fiber laser to selectively spall igneous geological formations containing narrow veins of precious metals.

Merger said the prototype addresses key issues like mining using less explosives, chemicals and waste.

Continue reading “Laser mining – the light at the end of the tunnel?” | >

Engineers at the University of Pennsylvania have found a new way to build and package microbatteries that drastically improve energy and power density even at the smallest sizes. They developed a new kind of current collector and cathode that increases the fraction of materials that store energy while simultaneously serving as a protective shell. This reduces the need for non-conductive packaging that normally protects a battery’s sensitive internal chemicals.

It weighs the same as two grains of rice but has the energy density of a much larger, heavier battery.

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A 21st Century Mystery School — “Creating New Paradigms In Wellness And Wisdom Never Seen Before, And Never More Needed Than Now” — Dr. Dennis McKenna, Founder, McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy.

Dr. Dennis McKenna is an American ethnopharmacologist, research pharmacognosist, lecturer, author, and Founder of the McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy (www.mckenna.academy).

Dr. McKenna is a founding board member and the director of ethnopharmacology at the Heffter Research Institute, a non-profit organization concerned with the investigation of the potential therapeutic uses of psychedelic medicines. He also serves on the Advisory Board of the American Botanical Council; as Founder and Executive Director for the Institute for Natural Products Research; as an Independent Research Consultant to the Phytomedicine and Nutraceutical Industry; was formerly on the Editorial Board of Phytomedicine, International Journal of Phytotherapy and Phytopharmacology; and is an adjunct professor in the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota.

Continue reading “Dr. Dennis McKenna — Founder, McKenna Academy of Natural Philosophy — A 21st Century Mystery School” | >

Since 1,988 and formation of the Posthuman Movement, and articles by early adopters like Max Moore were a sign our message was being received — although I always argued on various Extropian & Transhuman bulletin boards & Yahoo groups &c that “Trans” was a redundant middle and we should move straight to Posthuman, now armed with the new MVT knowledge (also figures on the CDR). There will be a new edition of World Philosophy, the first this millennium, to coincided with various Posthuman University events later this year. Here is the text:

THE EXTROPIAN PRINCIPLES V. 2.01 August 7 1992.

Max More Executive Director, Extropy Institute.

1. BOUNDLESS EXPANSION — Seeking more intelligence, wisdom, and.
personal power, an unlimited lifespan, and removal of natural, social.
biological, and psychological limits to self-actualization and self-realization. Overcoming limits on our personal and social.
progress and possibilities. Expansion into the universe and infinite existence.

2. SELF-TRANSFORMATION — A commitment to continual moral.

Continue reading “This 1,992 paper was included on best-selling CDR World Philosophy compilation (before internet) and I claim some credit for circulated it and popularising the “Transhuman sidetrack”” | >