We are not alone in our concerns related to the current paywalling of science. Earlier this year, researchers at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York decided that this problem deserves the attention of decision makers and the general public, and they started producing a documentary in order to reveal the flaws of the existing system of scientific publications and to propose solutions. This documentary is Paywall: The Business of Scholarship.
The producer of the documentary, journalist and filmmaker Jason Schmitt, contacted university representatives, university and public libraries, open access publishing houses, and researchers around the globe to ask them if they have ever hit paywalls and how paywalls affected their professional activities.
Sections of cities all over the world are being demolished to meet increasing demand for transport infrastructure. The process of building new roads, harbour crossings, metro systems and light rail lines seems unending. Large-scale construction includes loss of public space, housing and backyards.
Historic suburbs, such as Sydney’s Haberfield, have suffered. And then there’s the issue of cost blow-outs and traffic gridlock. There are rumblings, too, about environmental impacts and equity of access. But there is actually one public transport option that can mitigate many of these concerns: cable cars.
Cable cars now grace many urban skylines, including some of the world’s most populous, congested and poorest cities, such as Colombia’s city of Medellin, but also the US city of Portland. These cities have integrated cable cars with existing transport networks. The newer versions are cheap, quick to build and solar generating. Perhaps it’s time for Australia to start looking skyward for solutions.
Germany helped make solar power cheap. As of June this year, it boasts 1 million homes that have installed rooftop solar panels. That means the country produces a lot of renewable energy—sometimes more than it can use.
At such times, German grid operators have had to pay neighboring countries or grids to use the excess electricity. Since the beginning of this year, German grids have accumulated 194 hours (paywall) with negative power prices.
Now Germany is turning to energy storage as a solution to the problem of excess electricity. On Aug. 28, an energy ministry official attended the commissioning (link in German) of the 100,000th home to install a battery-storage system that’s connected to the grid.
With threats of sea level rise, storm surge and other natural disasters, researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science are turning to nature to protect humans from nature. They are developing innovative ways to guard coastlines and prevent scouring and erosion from waves and storms using bioinspired materials that mimic mangrove trees found along shores, rivers and estuaries in the tropics and subtropics. Growing from a tangle of roots that twist their way out of the mud, mangrove trees naturally protect shorelines, shelter coastal ecosystem habitats and provide important water filtration. In many cases, these roots trap sediments flowing down rivers and off the land, helping to stabilize the coastline.
Certain mangrove root systems even have the ability to dissipate tidal energy through unique hydrological flows and divert the energy of water in different directions reducing risk of coastal damage. Yet, to date, few studies have examined the fluid dynamics such as flow structure and drag force on mangrove roots.
For a study, published in the American Physical Society’s journal, Physical Review Fluids, researchers singled out the red mangrove tree (Rhizophora mangle) from more than 80 different species of mangroves, because of its robust network of roots that can withstand extreme environmental conditions. The red mangrove provided the researchers with an ideal model for bioinspired shoreline applications.
A sapphire-colored dye called methylene blue is a common ingredient in wastewater from textile mills.
But University at Buffalo scientists think it may be possible to give this industrial pollutant a second life. In a new study, they show that the dye, when dissolved in water, is good at storing and releasing energy on cue.
This makes the compound a promising candidate material for redox flow batteries—large, rechargeable liquid-based batteries that could enable future wind farms and solar homes to stockpile electricity for calm or rainy days.
The algorithm is saving about $10 million as part of an effort to replace the city’s water infrastructure.
To catch you up: In 2014, Flint began getting water from Flint River rather than the Detroit water system. Mistreatment of the new water supply, combined with old lead pipes, created contaminated water for residents.
Solving the problem: Records that could be used to figure out which houses might be affected by corroded old pipes were missing or incomplete. So the city turned to AI. Using 71 different pieces of information—like the age or value of the home—Georgia Tech researchers developed an algorithm that predicted whether or not a home was connected to lead pipes.
The habitat is designed to form one module of NASA’s proposed Deep Space Gateway, a miniature space station that would orbit the moon and serve as a way station for lunar missions or journeys deeper into the cosmos.
Lockheed’s prototype is the refurbished Donatello cargo container that was originally designed to fit inside the space shuttle’s cargo bay and ferry supplies to and from the ISS. Donatello never flew in space, but its two sister modules made several trips aboard the shuttle. One, dubbed Leonardo, is now a permanent “space closet” attached to the space station.
Lockheed is one of six companies awarded a combined $65-million contract from NASA to design a deep-space habitat as part of the agency’s Next Space Technologies for Exploration Partnerships (NextSTEP) program, which aims to foster commercial developments for space exploration.
Moon-mining enthusiasts were particularly gleeful this week when researchers claimed that they had found definitive evidence that water ice exists on the surface of the Moon. There’s even more water ice than we thought up there, too, and we know exactly where a lot of it is. That may make it even easier to mine this water in the future.
Long before this discovery, researchers have been eager to scoop up any water that may be lurking on the lunar surface. It’s a resource that could be incredibly valuable for future long-term missions on the Moon since water is essential for life to function here on Earth. It could be recycled inside a lunar habitat or used for drinking water or bathing. It could also be used to help plants grow on the Moon, which are needed to nourish future lunar inhabitants.
A massive cylindrical habitat may one day house up to four astronauts as they make the trek to deep space.
Lockheed Martin gave a first look at what one of these habitats might look like Thursday at the Kennedy Space Center, where the aerospace giant is under contract with NASA to build a prototype of the living quarters.
Lockheed is one of six contractors—the others are Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp.‘s Space Systems, Orbital ATK, NanoRacks and Bigelow Aerospace—that NASA awarded a combined $65 million to build a habitat prototype by the end of the year. The agency will then review the proposals to reach a better understanding of the systems and interfaces that need to be in place to facilitate living in deep space.
An adjustable shading system that adapts itself independently over the course of the day, without sensors or motors and largely maintenance-free? It really is possible: an ETH doctoral student at the Institute for Building Materials has developed an alternative to motor-driven sunshades.
It gets hot in the city in summer, and buildings in direct sunlight get particularly warm. At night, it can then be difficult to get rid of that accumulated heat. These days, many people dream of efficient air conditioning. Chiara Vailati had a different dream: after completing her studies in Italy, the civil engineer pursued the idea of creating an adjustable and autonomous sunshade for houses, to reduce the amount of heat that enters a building and therefore the need for cooling. She had high requirements: “I wanted the system to be made of environmentally friendly materials, use very little energy and have low installation and maintenance costs,” remembers Vailati.
Vailati has since been able to realise her idea: during her doctoral project with Professor Ingo Burgert at ETH Zurich’s Institute for Building Materials, she designed an innovative shading system. Anyone who is now picturing a fully automatic high-tech shading with sensors, actuators and complex controls is a long way off the mark. Vailati’s prototype may be high-tech, but it is still refreshingly modest. The system uses shade-producing wooden planks and requires no sensors or motors – or even electricity. However, it does still change to suit to the weather conditions: the planks move autonomously. Multiple pairs of planks aligned in parallel create a kind of roof that opens and closes itself. The construction can be placed, for example, horizontally over a window on a building’s façade.
