Monthly Archives: August 2017

In BriefMalta, a project at Alphabet's "moonshot" factory, hasdeveloped a system that stores renewable energy in molten saltinstead of batteries. The project is now looking for partners totest the commercial viability of their system, which could helpclear one of the major hurdles to widespread clean energy adoption. Maximizing Renewables

Given the dramatic impact human-made carbon emissions are having on our planet, cleaner energy sources have become increasingly popular alternativesto their fossil fuel counterparts. Currently, solar and wind are the most widely used renewable energy sources, but both are dependent on certain conditions. The former can capture energy only during daylight hours, while the latter is more unpredictable,but often peaks at night.

As such, theres a mismatch between when solar and wind energy are available and when energy is needed. The world needs a way to maximize renewable energy usage, and thats whatMalta, a project currently brewing at Alphabet X, the moonshot factory by Googles parent company, is hoping to provide.

The goal of Alphabet X is to develop technologies that could someday make the world a radically better place. The organization follows a three-part blueprint for their moonshot projects that starts with identifying a huge problem and then providing a radical solution that could be implemented using a breakthrough technology.

For Malta, the idea was to find a way to maximize the use of energy generated from renewables. Theirradical solution is bridging the gap between renewable energy and grid-scale energy storage technologies using a breakthrough technology developed by Stanford physicist and Nobel laureate Robert Laughlin.

According to the projects website,this technology is still theoretical and involves storing electricity as either heat within molten salt or cold within a liquid similar to the antifreeze used in cars. They claim this energy could remain stored for up to weeks at a time.

Essentially, Malta is hoping todevelop clean and cost-effective energy storage devices, which is similar to the concept behind Teslas Powerpack. The difference between the Malta projects tech and the Powerpack is mostly whats inside. While Teslas energy storage device uses 16 individual battery pods, Maltas relies on molten salt or the antifreeze-like liquid.

Additionally, the tanks used to store the salt used by Maltas system could potentially last for up to 40 years, which the project claims is three or more times longer than other current storage options. That extended lifespan would make Maltaa cheaper alternative to other renewable energy storage devices.

After two years of developingand designing their system, the Malta team is now gearing up to test the commercial viability of their technology. The next step is to build a megawatt-scale prototype plant which would be large enough to prove the technology at commercial scale, according to their website.

We now have multiple ways to generate energy from renewables, but if we ever hope to fully transition away from traditional energy solutions, we need better storage devices. Though they are clearly betterfor the environment, renewables arent as consistent as fossil fuels, and that unreliability is a huge barrier to widespread adoption.

Storage systems like those proposed by Malta could collect the energy generated by renewables and ensure it is available to power grids whenever needed, putting us one step closer to a future completely free of fossil fuels.

Excerpt from:
Google's Parent Company Will Soon Compete With Tesla for Energy Storage Solutions - Futurism

In Brief New research shows how, by the year 2100, many regions in South Asia could become so hot that humans could no longer survive there. Climate Change

The consequences of climate change are not only real and imminent, but increasingly catastrophic. Currently, climate change is has been attributed to dangerously increasing temperatures, sea levels rising, the extinction of a variety of species, and much more. Without fierce opposition, the effects of climate change will only become more and more destructive. Natural disasters, mass flooding, food shortages and other crises are all possible (some already happening, in fact) if current trends continue. One part of the world may even become uninhabitable in our lifetime.

Elfatih Eltahir, a professor at MIT, recently published new research in the journal Science Advances that shows how, by the end of the century, areas in South Asia could be too hot for humans to survive there. In a Skype interview from Khartoum, Sudan with CBC News, Eltahir said, The risk of the impacts of climate change in that region could be quite severe.

Eltahir and his colleagues analyzed this projected situation under two conditions: a business-as-usual model and a model in which we increase our efforts to mitigate emissions.The team concluded that the business-as-usual model was not only most likely, but would yield unlivable conditions by the year 2100.

The effects of the projected heat waves will not fall over sparse landscapes that would be easily escapable. They will wash over the densely populated, agricultural areas of South Asia, directly threatening the lives of countless inhabitants who because many of the people living there live in poverty will be essentially trapped in the deadly conditions.

Climate change has already taken lives, and isnt slowing down. This deadly heat wave scenario would only be a piece of the puzzle in the year 2100. Where will the people of the agricultural regions of South Asia go if the rest of the planet is also facing the catastrophic effects of global warming? (That is, of course, if they are able to leave at all in future socioeconomic conditions.) The only way is forward, and the only way forward includes our best efforts against climate change.

Read the original here:
Study Asserts Climate Change Could Make South Asia Uninhabitable in Our Lifetime - Futurism

In BriefMost people are trichromats, possessing three types of conecells to see color with. A woman in northern England has four typesof working cone cells, which means she has the ability to see farmore colors than most of us can.

After more than 25 years of searching, neuroscientists in the UK recently announced that theyve discovered a woman who has an extra type of cone cell the receptor cells that detect color in her eyes.

According to estimates, that means she can see an incredible 99 million more colors than the rest of us, and the scientists think shes just one of a number of people with super-vision, which they call tetrachromats, living amongst us.

Most humans are trichromats, which means we have three types of cone cells in our eyes.

Each type of cone cell is thought to be able to distinguish around 100 shades, so when you factor in all the possible combinations of these three cone cells combined, it means we can distinguish around 1 million different colors.

Most people who are color blind only have two functioning types of cone cells, which is why they can only see around 10,000 shades and almost all other mammals, including dogs and New World monkeys, are also dichromats.

But theres one doctor in northern England who has four cone cell types, taking the potential number of colors she can distinguish up to 100 million colors most of us have never even dreamed of.

Identified only as cDa29, the scientists finally found this woman two years ago, but theyve been searching for more than 25 years and think there are more tetrachromats like her out there.

So how do you get a fourth type of cone cell?

The idea of tetrachromats was firstsuggested back in 1948by Dutch scientist HL de Vries, who discovered something interesting about the eyes of color blind people.

While color blind men only possess two normal cone cells and one mutant cone thats less sensitive to either green or red light, he showed that the mothers and daughters of color blind men had one mutant cone andthree normal cones.

That meant they had four types of cone cells, even though only three were working normally something that was unheard of before then.

Despite the significance of the finding, no one paid much attention to tetrachromats until the late 80s,when John Mollon from Cambridge Universitystarted searching for womenwho might have four functioning cone cells.

Assuming that color blind men pass this fourth cone cell onto their daughters, Mollon estimated that around12 percent of the female populationshould be tetrachromats.

But all of his tests showed that these women could only perceive the same colours as the rest of us which meant only three of their cone cell types were working, so they werent true tetrachromats.

Then, in 2007, neuroscientist Gabriele Jordan from Newcastle University in the UK, who had formerly worked alongside Mollon, decided to try a slightly different test to look for this super-vision.

She took 25 women who had a fourth type of cone cell, and put them in a dark room. Looking into a light device, three colored circles of light flashed before these womens eyes.

To a trichromat, they all looked the same, but Jordan hypothesized that a true tetrachromat would be able to tell them apart thanks to the extra subtlety afforded to her by her fourth cone.

Incredibly, one of the women tested, cDa29, was able to differentiate the three different colored circles in every single test.

I was jumping up and down,Jordan told Veronique Greenwood fromDiscovermagazine.

So if so many female children of color blind men have four cones, why have we only been able to find one true tetrachromat?

For starters, the team was only looking within the UK. But the bigger issue that Jordan thinks most true tetrachromats would never need to use their fourth cone cell type, and so would never realize they had special vision.

We now know tetrachromacy exists,she told Greenwood. But we dont know what allows someone to become functionally tetrachromatic, when most four-coned women arent.

Jay Neitz, a vision researcher at the University of Washington, who wasnt involved in the study,thinks that it might take practiceand specially designed hues to truly unlock the power of tetrachromats.

Most of the things that we see as colored are manufactured by people who are trying to make colors that work for trichromats,he said.It could be that our whole world is tuned to the world of the trichromat.

In other words, the colors we use are so limited that the fourth cone cell never gets a work out.

The research on cDa29 hasnt been peer-reviewed or published as yet, and Jordan is continuing her research and search for more tetrachromats.

Theres a lot more work to be done and Jordans results need to be replicated and verified. But if we can confirm that tetrachromats really do exist, it wont just teach us about the limitations of human senses, it could help scientists develop better artificial sensing devices, and also help us figure out more about how vision works.

One thing we might never be able to understand, sadly, is exactly what the world looks like through cDa29s eyes, seeing as its our brains that truly perceive color our cone cells just receive the data to be processed.

This private perception is what everybody is curious about,Jordan toldDiscover.I would love to see that.

Read more from the original source:
A UK Woman Has an Extra Cone Cell in Her Eyes and Can See More Colors - Futurism