Lifeboat Foundation

Nature is ever-changing. Season after season, it grows and reshapes, constantly offering new things to see, explore, and connect with. In its perpetual state of evolution, nature serves as an endless source of inspiration for anyone looking to further their craft.

In the five-part content series Tasting Wild, acclaimed chef Melissa King (winner of Top Chef: Los Angeles All-Stars Season 17) teams up with National Geographic photographers and experts to experience nature’s creative power firsthand. Traveling to some of the most remote and unspoiled areas in the United States by way of the first-ever MAZDA CX-50, King pushes her boundaries to find inspiration, connect with the land, and fuel her creativity.

While we may struggle with the production of electricity and green power now, a recent discovery by the University of Massachusetts in Amherst has discovered something quite amazing. One day, in the not far away future-we may have the ability to create electricity from thin air.

Well, technically we already do, but let me explain how this happened and what that means for us. The study was published in the journal Nature in February 2020. The title is “Power generation from ambient humidity using protein nanowires” and through this study, the researchers stumbled upon something quite amazing.

The project was started by electrical engineering student Xiaomeng Liu, who works in the lab with the study author Jun Yao, discovered a prototype that he had been working on and began doing something he didn’t expect. Even when he wasn’t running the machine, he was picking up on power output. “We were initially very perplexed,” Yao says.

E-scooters are all the rage in Türkiye, as their sales and number of companies renting them soared in recent years. Yet, they have several cons, like long charging times and possible pollution from the uncontrolled disposal of discarded batteries. Four Turkish engineers hope a new scooter, working on hydrogen power, may overcome these problems.

“Hebunk,” devised by entrepreneurs working at a technology park at Istanbul Technical University, boasts a fast charging time, just five minutes, and can travel for 60 kilometers (37.28 miles) with a single charge, which roughly costs about 9 cents (TL 1.8).

The scooter, which is not too different from e-scooters in appearance, was developed in one year by the entrepreneurs’ HydroBorPEM Fuel Cell Technologies, now based at a technology park in Istanbul’s Yıldız Technical University.

Ice buildup on powerlines and electric towers brought the northern US and southern Canada to a standstill during the Great Ice Storm of 1998, leaving many in the cold and dark for days and even weeks. Whether it is on wind turbines, electric towers, drones, or airplane wings, dealing with ice buildup typically depends on techniques that are time consuming, costly and/or use a lot of energy, along with various chemicals. But, by looking to nature, McGill researchers believe that they have found a promising new way of dealing with the problem. Their inspiration came from the wings of Gentoo penguins who swim in the ice-cold waters of the south polar region, with pelts that remain ice-free even when the outer surface temperature is well below freezing.

We initially explored the qualities of the lotus leaf, which is very good at shedding water but proved less effective at shedding ice,” said Anne Kietzig, who has been looking for a solution for close to a decade. She is an associate professor in Chemical Engineering at McGill and the director of the Biomimetic Surface Engineering Laboratory. “It was only when we started investigating the qualities of penguin feathers that we discovered a material found in nature that was able to shed both water and ice.”

It all started in 2019 when the team’s lab lights went out for one night.

Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) stumbled upon a discovery that could forever revolutionize how we acquire hydrogen from water, according to a press release from the institution published on Thursday.

Just_Super/iStock.

Continue reading “‘Accidental power trip’ leads scientists to discover new way of generating hydrogen” »

It is the first coal carrier to be powered by hard sail wind power propulsion technology.

The world’s first partly wind-powered bulk carrier ship sailed to the Port of Newcastle on its maiden voyage this week. The Japanese shipping company Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL), which delivered the 100,422 dwt (dead-weight tonnage) bulker on October 7, 2022, sailed to Newcastle on Monday, reported Offshore Energy.

The Japanese shipping company Mitsui O.S.K. Lines (MOL), which delivered the 100,422 dwt (dead-weight tonnage) bulker on October 7, 2022, sailed to Newcastle on Monday, reported Offshore Energy.

Continue reading “‘Wind Challenger’: World’s first partially wind-powered cargo ship successfully sailed” »

Prof. Zhang Tao’s group at the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), in collaboration with Prof. Hou Yang from Zhejiang University and Prof. Xiao Jianping from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of CAS, proposed a novel two-dimensional (2D) nanoconfinement strategy to strongly enhance the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) activity of low-conductivity metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Results were published in Nature Communications.

The development of high-efficiency electrocatalysts for the electrochemical conversion of water to generate environmentally friendly and sustainable hydrogen energy has drawn tremendous attention for decades.

Despite the crucial role the OER plays in water splitting, OER at the anode requires a relatively high thermodynamic potential to accelerate water splitting kinetics. Thanks to the large surface area, tunable porosity, diverse compositions and metal centers, MOFs have emerged as promising candidates for efficient OER electrocatalysts. However, the intrinsically poor conductivity of the most MOFs seriously impede their catalytic activity.

The race to create a solid-state battery that could compete with today’s lithium-ion cells is heating up. In the past few years, there’s been a lot of R&D around solid electrolytes that promise to be safer and more powerful. In this video, we visit Sakuú, a company that doesn’t just want to make solid-state batteries, they also want to 3D-print them.

0:00 Intro.
0:29 Battery basics feat. a potato.
1:29 Lithium-ion batteries 101
2:18 What is a solid-state battery?
3:28 Intro to Sakuú
4:00 Why 3D-printing?
5:35 3D-printing prototype.
6:25 Customized battery shapes.
7:34 Challenges of total reinvention.
8:09 Looking forward.

Continue reading “Is the future of solid-state batteries 3D-printed?” »

Electric equipment is desperately needed to keep the country from freezing.