TULTECH :: Blog

Completion of Workshop on Water Recling Simulation and Modelling: Unlocking the Future of Water Management

Tue, 19 Mar 2024 22:05:00 +0200

We are thrilled to announce the successful completion of our recent Workshop on Water Recycling Simulation and Modelling, which took place on March 15, 2024, in an online format. This workshop brought together participants from around the globe to explore innovative solutions for water management challenges. We extend our heartfelt thanks to our esteemed instructors, Professor Kourosh Behzadian, Dr. Amir M. Fathollahi-Fard, and Mohammad Gheibi, for their invaluable contributions and expertise shared during the workshop sessions. Their insights and guidance played a crucial role in enriching the learning experience for all participants. We also express our gratitude to all the participants who joined us for this enriching event. Your active engagement and insightful contributions made the workshop a resounding success. For those who were unable to attend or wish to revisit the workshop presentations, we are pleased to announce that recorded videos of the conference presentations are now available on the workshop page. Click HERE to access the post-workshop materials, such as recorded video and presentation files. We look forward to continuing our efforts to explore innovative solutions for water management challenges and to furthering collaboration and knowledge exchange in this important field. Thank you to everyone who participated in making this workshop a success. Warm regards,

IJITIS Journal Meeting and SWOT Analysis at TULTECH

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 21:26:00 +0200

Greetings, TULTECH community! In our continued pursuit of excellence, a pivotal meeting was recently held to discuss the progress and future direction of the International Journal of Innovative Technology and Interdisciplinary Sciences (IJITIS). The meeting, graced by esteemed participants, provided a platform to conduct a comprehensive SWOT analysis. Participants: Prof. Dr. Dimitrios A. Karras: Editor in Chief Assoc. Prof. Dr. Klodian Dhoska: IJITIS Journal Manager and Head of Publishing Department Mohammad Gheibi: Head of Research and Development at TULTECH Alireza Aldaghi: IJITIS Associate Editor Reza Moezzi: Head of Integration and Event Management at TULTECH SWOT Analysis Highlights: Strengths: Distinguished Editorial Team: The wealth of expertise and knowledge within the editorial team is a cornerstone of IJITIS. Quality Manuscripts: The journal has consistently attracted high-quality submissions, contributing to its academic standing. Global Reach: IJITIS has successfully extended its reach to a global audience. Weaknesses: Citation Metrics: Efforts to enhance citation metrics are underway to meet the requirements for indexing in prestigious databases. Editorial Board Engagement: Strategies are being devised to increase engagement and contributions from editorial board members. Opportunities: International Collaborations: Exploring opportunities for collaboration with international institutions to further elevate the journal's standing. Special Issues: The potential for organizing special issues in collaboration with major conferences is being explored. Threats: Citation Culture: Encouraging authors to cite IJITIS papers is identified as an ongoing challenge. Indexation Criteria: Addressing the criteria set by indexing databases for successful inclusion. This meeting served as a moment of reflection, highlighting the achievements and areas for improvement. The commitment of the IJITIS team and TULTECH towards academic excellence is unwavering. We eagerly anticipate the next phase of growth and development. Stay tuned for more updates on IJITIS and TULTECH's journey towards fostering innovation and interdisciplinary sciences!

A Milestone Meeting for EIL: Shaping the Future of Environmental Industry Letters

Fri, 15 Dec 2023 21:31:00 +0200

Dear TULTECH Community, We are delighted to share news of a momentous event – the inaugural general meeting of the Environmental Industry Letters (EIL) journal. This session brought together key figures from TULTECH and EIL, setting the stage for exciting developments ahead. EIL envisions becoming a global hub for cutting-edge environmental research. Our mission is to publish high-quality articles that drive positive change in the industry. As we navigate towards major indexations, our commitment to excellence remains unwavering. Stay tuned for more updates on EIL's journey towards becoming a leading force in environmental research. Best, The TULTECH Team

Mohammad Gheibi Selected as co-Chair of EGU 2024 Conference

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 18:48:00 +0200

We are delighted to share some remarkable news from our own TULTECH family. For the second consecutive year, our very own Eng. Mohammad Gheibi, the Head of the Research and Development Department, has been chosen to lead the prestigious EGU 2024 Conference in a specific field. EGU is one of the most significant events in the European geoscience community. This remarkable achievement speaks volumes about Mohammad's dedication, expertise, and the profound impact he continues to make in the world of geoscience. It is not only a recognition of his remarkable capabilities but also a testament to the caliber of individuals that TULTECH attracts and nurtures. The European Geoscience Union (EGU) Conference is an internationally acclaimed platform where the brightest minds in the field convene to share knowledge, insights, and advancements in geoscience. Mohammad's selection as the Chair for this prestigious event is a testament to his exceptional leadership skills, unwavering commitment to the field, and passion for advancing the understanding of our planet's dynamics. We extend our heartfelt congratulations to Mohammad Gheibi for this remarkable achievement. It reflects his dedication to his field and the level of excellence we strive for at TULTECH. Thank you, Mohammad, for your positive contribution and dedication and for making all of us at TULTECH proud. We are excited about the journey ahead and are eager to see the transformative impact you will make. Warmest regards, TULTECH Association

Universe composed of water? Large exoplanet's environment contains methane and atmospheric carbon dioxide.

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 20:36:00 +0300

Hubble Space Telescope observations provided the first look at this habitable-zone exoplanet, revealing details about its atmosphere that led to further research that fundamentally altered our understanding of the system. K2-18 b is located in the constellation Leo, 120 light-years from Earth, and orbits the cold dwarf star K2-18 within the habitable zone. K2-18 b is one of the many exoplanets that are completely unique to our solar system because of its intermediate size between that of Earth and Neptune. Due to the lack of analogous nearby planets, the nature of these'sub-Neptunes'' atmospheres is a hotly contested topic among astronomers. Some scientists have high hopes for finding signs of life on exoplanets, and the possibility that sub-Neptune K2-18 b is a Hycean exoplanet is interesting. Nikku Madhusudhan, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge and lead author of the publication revealing these results, said, "Our findings underscore the importance of considering diverse habitable environments in the search for life elsewhere." The larger Hycean worlds are much more suitable to atmospheric observations, although smaller rocky planets have traditionally been the primary focus of the hunt for life on exoplanets. Methane and carbon dioxide are plentiful, whereas ammonia is scarce, lending credence to the idea that K2-18 b has a water ocean beneath its hydrogen-rich atmosphere. These preliminary Webb observations may have also shown the presence of a chemical known as dimethyl sulphide (DMS). Only living things on Earth are capable of making this. Phytoplankton in marine areas are responsible for releasing the vast majority of DMS into Earth's atmosphere. Scientist Savvas Constantinou of Cambridge University noted that their findings were based on only two observations of K2-18 b, but that many more were on the way. Accordingly, "this means our work here is but an early demonstration of what Webb can observe in habitable-zone exoplanets." The team's findings will be published in the Letters section of The Astrophysical Journal. To further confirm these findings and shed new light on the environmental conditions on K2-18 b, the team plans to perform follow-up research using the telescope's MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) spectrograph. If life were found on a habitable exoplanet, "it would transform our understanding of our place in the universe," Madhusudhan said. According to the authors, "our findings are a promising step towards a deeper understanding of Hycean worlds in this quest." Source: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Centre contributed the materials used in this blog post. Editing for clarity and length may occur.

Honoring Prof. Trieu Minh Vu: A Remarkable Journey at TULTECH

Sat, 16 Sep 2023 15:46:00 +0300

In the world of academia and research, certain individuals leave an indelible mark not only on the institutions they serve but also on the hearts and minds of those they work with. Prof. Trieu Minh Vu is undeniably one of those individuals. As we bid farewell to his tenure at TULTECH, we reflect on his extraordinary contributions and wish him the very best in his future endeavors. A Distinguished Career: Prof. Trieu Minh Vu's journey at TULTECH was marked by excellence and unwavering dedication. He served as the manager of TULTECH Association, overseeing critical aspects of our organization. Simultaneously, he held the esteemed position of Senior Researcher at the Technical University of Liberec, a testament to his prowess in the field of research. His academic journey was nothing short of remarkable. Prof. Trieu Minh Vu was a full professor at the Department of Mechatronics at the Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia. His academic pursuits led him to obtain a Ph.D. degree in Mechatronics from the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), specializing in model predictive control. A Global Scholar: Prof. Trieu Minh Vu's influence spanned continents. He traversed academic landscapes in Vietnam, Thailand, Germany, Malaysia, Czechia, and Estonia, leaving his mark in each place he ventured. His global perspective enriched the academic environments he graced and fostered international collaboration. A Prolific Researcher: Prof. Trieu Minh Vu's contributions to the field of advanced control techniques are well-documented. He authored over fifty ISI indexed research papers with more than 1200 citations in the field, wich is a testament to his commitment to advancing knowledge and technology. His work has undoubtedly had a lasting impact on the world of mechatronics and control systems. A Distinguished Senior Member: His achievements were further recognized by his appointment as a Senior Member of IEEE/CSS, and IFAC as the two prestigious honor in the world of engineering and technology. A Grateful Farewell: As we bid farewell to Prof. Trieu Minh Vu, we do so with deep gratitude for his unwavering commitment, dedication, and the wealth of knowledge he brought to TULTECH. His contributions have not only shaped our institution but have also inspired countless individuals within our community. Wishing Prof. Trieu Minh Vu a Bright Future: We extend our warmest wishes to Prof. Trieu Minh Vu as he embarks on a new chapter in his journey. May the future bring him continued success, fulfillment, and the opportunity to touch the lives of many more with his wisdom and expertise. In parting, we say thank you, Prof. Trieu Minh Vu, for your exceptional contributions to TULTECH and the broader academic world. Your legacy will continue to inspire us, and your presence will be deeply missed. With heartfelt thanks and best wishes

Psychologists have shown that GPT-3 has the same level of reasoning ability as a college student

Fri, 04 Aug 2023 20:12:36 +0300

Summary: Standardised test-like logic problems were no match for the artificial intelligence language model GPT-3, which performed as well as college students. The experiment's authors argue that their findings raise the question of whether the technology is emulating human thinking or employing a novel cognitive mechanism. To get an answer, you'd need to go inside the code that powers GPT-3 and other AI programmes. UCLA psychologists have shown that the AI language model GPT-3 does as well as college freshmen when presented with the types of reasoning difficulties normally seen in IQ testing and standardised exams like the SAT. Nature Human Behaviour has published the study. However, the authors of the publication state that the research prompts the following question: Is GPT-3 employing a fundamentally different form of cognitive process, or is it just a result of its large language training dataset that makes it behave like a human brain? Since OpenAI, the business that developed GPT-3, is protecting its secretive inner workings, the scientists at UCLA cannot definitively comment on the nature of GPT-3's reasoning skills. They also note that despite GPT-3's impressive performance in some areas of reasoning, the widely used AI tool still falls short in others. "It's important to emphasise that this system has major limitations," said Taylor Webb, the study's first author and a postdoctoral researcher in psychology at UCLA. Forty first-year students at UCLA were given the identical issues to tackle by the researchers. According to the study's principal author and UCLA psychology professor Hongjing Lu: "Surprisingly, not only did GPT-3 do about as well as humans but it made similar mistakes as well." GPT-3 was successful at solving 80% of the questions, which is above the average score of slightly around 60% for human participants and within the range of the top human scores. The only way to find out is to gain access to the programme and the data used to train the software, and then to give the software tests that it hasn't already been given, which is a daunting task. They claimed it would be the next stage in determining the proper direction for AI. Webb said that "having the backend to GPT models would be very useful for AI and cognitive researchers." To paraphrase, "We're just doing inputs and getting outputs, and it's not as decisive as we'd like it to be." source: sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/07/230731110750.htm

The Alzheimer's medication donanemab highly effective at early stages

Wed, 19 Jul 2023 21:36:53 +0300

Summary: Donanemab is an investigational Alzheimer's drug that showed promise in a new clinical trial. It decreased disease progression in patients with early stage Alzheimer's compared to a placebo. However, it was less effective in those with more advanced disease or a genetic risk factor. Donanemab targets amyloid plaques in the brain, which are thought to cause damage in Alzheimer's. It cleared about 90% of amyloid in the trial. The drug can cause a side effect called ARIA, which can lead to brain bleeding and seizures in some cases. ARIA occurred in about 25% of patients in the trial. Patients who started donanemab with low tau protein levels in the brain saw slower decline compared to placebo over 76 weeks. But the drug didn't help those with high tau levels. Experts are encouraged but note challenges remain regarding side effects, determining which patients will benefit most, and costs of screening and treatment. When used early in the course of Alzheimer's disease, an investigational medication can decrease the illness's progression. Donanemab, a monoclonal antibody, did not alleviate symptoms. However, compared to 29% of those who took a placebo, 47% of those who began taking it in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease showed no disease development after a year. People who are farther advanced in the condition or who have a common genetic variant that increases the risk of the disease do not benefit from the medication as much. Reisa Sperling, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, calls the results "very encouraging," especially given that they are comparable to those of a medicine called lecanemab. It confirms to me that we are moving in the correct direction. The results of the 1,736-person trial were presented today at the Alzheimer's Association International Conference (AAIC) in Amsterdam by Eli Lilly, the company that makes Donanemab, and they were later published1 in JAMA. Eli Lilly is based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Researchers continued to have concerns about the drug's safety and effectiveness in particular groups despite the company's partial results being revealed in May. tackable target Donanemab is a monoclonal antibody that, like many others in the newest generation of Alzheimer's medications, targets amyloid, a sticky substance that causes neuronal damage in dementia patients' brains. A disorder known as amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA), which can occasionally result in life-threatening brain haemorrhage and convulsions, can be brought on by donanemab, lecanemab, and the associated medication aducanumab. In the phase III experiment conducted by Eli Lilly, about one-quarter of the subjects experienced ARIA, and three of them passed away as a result. Participants in the study who have the genetic variant APOE4, which increases the risk of Alzheimer's, were more likely to have ARIA. Donanemab was less effective for participants with APOE4 than it was for those without the mutation, according to the whole data. Additionally, the medication is significantly more effective in those who begin using it when their tau levels in the brain are low. Tau levels rise as Alzheimer's disease worsens, however its function in the condition is still unclear. Donanemab-treated patients with low or moderate levels of tau aged 35% more slowly over 76 weeks than placebo-treated patients. But whether they received donanemab or a placebo, individuals with high tau levels deteriorated at the same rate. Mark Mintun, vice-president of neuroscience research and development at Eli Lilly, stated during a press conference at the AAIC that although it is critical to create better tests to determine tau levels, he does not believe that doctors will need to consider a patient's tau levels before deciding whether to administer the medication. decreasing in rate Donanemab treatment delayed cognitive deterioration by as much as 60% in patients with relatively mild cognitive impairment. Around 90% of the total amyloid in the brain was also removed by the medication. When the subjects' levels of amyloid were at their lowest, the researchers switched them to a placebo. Those who took donanemab continued to deteriorate at a slower rate than those who first received a placebo in the year following the switch. According to Sperling's findings, patients with Alzheimer's have a better prognosis if they receive early diagnosis and treatment. Lecanemab and donanemab are being examined in clinical studies to see if they can stop the disease in patients before symptoms appear, according to the author. According to University College London's Bart DeStrooper, the discovery is historic. Everything in this trial indicates that we must stop amyloid from building up. DeStrooper points out that the medicine has only been tried in individuals with specific biological signs for Alzheimer's, and it may not work in persons without those indications. Geriatric psychiatrist Brent Forester worries about the potential side effects of donanemab and other medications when used in therapeutic settings. He works at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts. For instance, it's not obvious if doctors should follow the trial's protocol and stop treating patients after their brains are clear of amyloid. He predicts that both ARIA screening and determining who will benefit from treatment the most will be costly and challenging. source: nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02321-1

Climate change, causing oceans to become more green

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 00:15:20 +0300

Highlights; More than half of the world's oceans have become greener over the past 20 years, likely due to global warming. This was determined by analyzing 20 years of data on ocean color from NASA's Aqua satellite. The greening indicates increased phytoplankton and algae in the surface waters. Phytoplankton contain chlorophyll which makes the ocean appear greener. The tropical and subtropical waters between 40°S and 40°N latitude changed the most in color. These areas don't vary much seasonally, so long-term color changes are more visible. The observed ocean color changes matched those predicted by a model simulating effects of increased greenhouse gases. However, the causes are still uncertain. One hypothesis is that surface warming is increasing ocean stratification and reducing nutrient mixing, favoring smaller phytoplankton species and altering ecosystems. The findings highlight the need for hyperspectral monitoring of ocean color, like the upcoming NASA PACE mission, to better understand ecological impacts of color changes. In the last 20 years, more than half of the world's oceans have turned green, most likely as a result of global warming. Scientists expected to need many more years of data before they could detect signals of climate change in the colour of the oceans, so their discovery—reported today in Nature1—came as a surprise. According to lead author B. B. Cael, an ocean and climate scientist from the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK, "we are affecting the ecosystem in a way that we haven't seen before." The ocean's hue can change for a variety of causes, such as when nutrients rise from its depths and support massive phytoplankton blooms that are rich in the chlorophyll-containing green pigment. Scientists can determine how much chlorophyll is there and consequently how many living things like phytoplankton and algae are present by analysing the wavelengths of sunlight reflected off the ocean's surface. Theoretically, when ocean waters warm due to climate change, biological production should vary. However, because the amount of chlorophyll in surface waters can vary significantly from year to year, it can be difficult to distinguish between changes brought on by climate change and large-scale natural fluctuations. Up to 40 years of data were anticipated by scientists to identify any trends2. The fact that different satellites have recorded ocean colour in different ways over time, making it impossible to combine the data, is another complicated element. The MODIS sensor on NASA's Aqua satellite, which was deployed in 2002 and is currently orbiting the Earth well past its predicted six-year lifetime, was chosen by Cael's team to be the source of data analysis. Instead than focusing only on the one wavelength used to detect chlorophyll, the researchers examined seven distinct wavelengths of ocean light for patterns. For a very long time, Cael has believed that using the entire colour spectrum will improve things. The researchers were able to detect long-term changes in ocean colour using two decades of MODIS data. 56% of the world's ocean surface showed noticeable changes, primarily in the regions between latitudes 40° S and 40° N. Because the areas don't suffer harsh seasons, these tropical and subtropical waters often don't vary greatly in hue throughout the year; therefore, tiny long-term changes are more noticeable there, according to Cael. The measured light's wavelength affects the colour change's intensity. The seas are generally turning greener with time. The researchers compared the data to the outcomes of a model3 that simulated how marine ecosystems may react to rising amounts of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to see if the shifts could be connected to climate change. The model's predictions and the observed changes agreed. various green hues What is causing the waters to grow greener is the question at hand. Because the regions where the colour change was seen do not coincide with places where temperatures have usually increased, Cael believes that it is unlikely to be a direct result of rising sea surface temperatures. The distribution of nutrients in the water may play a role in the change, as one theory suggests. The stratification of the ocean's upper layers increases with warming surface waters, making it more difficult for nutrients to climb to the surface. Smaller phytoplankton have a higher chance of surviving when there are fewer nutrients, therefore changes in nutrient levels may cause changes in the ecosystem, which will be reflected in variations in the overall colour of the water. The finding raises anticipation for NASA's Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, and Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite, which is set to launch on its next major mission to track ocean colour. PACE, which is scheduled to launch in January 2024, has the ability to monitor ocean colour in many more wavelengths than any other satellite to date, a feature known as "hyperspectral." Ivona Cetini, an oceanographer at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, who works on PACE, believes that all of this "definitely confirms the need for global hyperspectral missions like PACE." In the coming years, the spacecraft "should allow us to understand the ecological implications of the observed trends in ocean ecosystem structure." source: www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02262-9

Microplastics contamination in lakes and reservoirs , the subject of a global investigation.

Thu, 13 Jul 2023 12:16:48 +0300

Summary: Every year, 14 million tonnes of plastic make their way into the ocean. But it's hardly the only body of water where plastic poses a serious threat. Ted Harris, associate research professor at the Kansas Biological Survey & Centre for Ecological Research at the University of Kansas, said, "We discovered microplastics in every lake we studied. "You may see some of these lakes as crystal-clear, picturesque holiday locations. However, we found that these locations were ideal illustrations of the connection between plastics and people. In the multinational Global Lake Ecological Observatory Network (GLEON), which studies processes and occurrences in freshwater ecosystems, Harris is one of 79 researchers. Their most recent study, "Plastic debris in lakes and reservoirs," shows that freshwater habitats have larger quantities of plastic than do so-called "garbage patches" in the ocean. The article appears in the journal Nature. Harris tested two Kansas lakes as well as the Reservoir at the KU Field Station for his part, working with Rebecca Kessler, a former student and recent KU graduate. We had to drag a net with a few microscopic holes for around two minutes before collecting the microplastic samples and transmitting them to the lead researchers, according to Kessler. The Inland Water Ecology and Management research group at the University of Milano-Bicocca in Italy (led by Barbara Leoni and Veronica Nava) created and oversaw the study project. The researchers took surface water samples from 38 lakes and reservoirs that were spread out along gradients of limnological characteristics and geographic location. All lakes and reservoirs that were being analysed have plastic garbage found. According to this report, there are more plastics the more people there are, Harris said. "Places like Clinton Lake have relatively low levels of microplastics because, despite the abundance of animals and trees, there aren't as many people living there as there are in places like Lake Tahoe. Even though some of these lakes appear to be pure and gorgeous, there is where the microplastics originate. According to Harris, many of the plastics come from items as seemingly unremarkable as T-shirts. Microplastics spread all over as a result of people swimming and wearing clothing that contains microplastic fibres, he claimed. According to the GLEON study, lakes and reservoirs in densely populated and urbanised locations as well as those with higher deposition areas, lengthy water retention times, and high levels of anthropogenic influence are particularly prone to plastic pollution. Harris said that she knew little about the differences between large plastics and microplastics when the study first began. "You always think of the huge bottles and whatnot when this document says 'concentrations as much or worse than the garbage patch,' but you're not thinking of all that little stuff. Despite not having a large waste patch, Lake Tahoe is one of the lakes most severely affected by microplastic pollution. With the human eye, you can't really see those plastics, but when you look through a 40,000x scope, you can see tiny, jagged shards and other particles that are at least as small as algae. The goal of this initiative was in part for Harris and Kessler to draw attention to a section of the United States that is frequently ignored. "In this study, there's one dot in the middle of the country, and that's our sample," he declared. "There is a sizable portion of land in Iowa, Missouri, and Colorado that is covered by water bodies, but we frequently leave them out of such comprehensive worldwide studies. Therefore, it was crucial for me to locate Kansas on a map in order to understand and interpret these variations in our lakes. Since 2013, Harris has been employed by KU, where he does aquatic ecology-related research. Kessler earned a degree in ecological, evolutionary, and organismal biology from KU in 2022. The main finding of our research, according to Kessler, is that microplastics are present in all lakes. There are varying concentrations, of course. But they can be found everywhere. The interaction of people with lakes is the main source of these microplastics. source: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/07/230712124616.htm

Unused Energy, an Easy Fuel for NFTs

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 17:56:47 +0300

Summary: Researchers from Cornell Engineering have discovered that underutilised solar, wind, and hydroelectric electricity in the United States might sustain the exponential rise of transactions involving non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Fengqi You are the corresponding author of "Climate Concerns and the Future of Non-Fungible Tokens: Leveraging Environmental Benefits of the Ethereum Merge," which appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on July 10. You are the Roxanne E. and Michael J. Zak Professor in Energy Systems Engineering at Cornell Engineering. Apoorv Lal, a graduate student in chemical and biomolecular engineering and a part of the You Research Group, is You's co-author. Processing NFT transactions, which has quadrupled over the past five years, used to be quite energy-intensive, but a recent move to a more energy-efficient algorithm has made it more sustainable. However, the researchers predicted that the anticipated surge in yearly NFT activity will more than offset those savings. Due to a shortage of storage capacity, excess renewable energy pushes grid operators to reduce output. That untapped potential for energy production would be utilised by your suggestion. You said, "It's the same concept as a car sitting in someone's garage." "They may give it to someone for carsharing if it's not being driven. In our situation, underutilised wind, solar, and hydropower resources could be put to excellent use. Technology-wise, we show it's absolutely viable because these power sources are already there, he said, "but of course, this would be up to the industry and policymakers." Their main discovery was that the increased NFT processing activity might be partially supplied by underutilised or unused current power sources. An exponential rise in NFT transactions might be powered by 50 megawatts of untapped hydropower from U.S. dams that are now not being utilised to produce electricity or by 15% of untapped wind and solar energy from sources in Texas. Although NFT transactions and other blockchain technologies provide a high level of security in a range of applications, the amount of energy needed to complete each transaction is troublesome in a warming planet. People were initially mainly concerned with how useful these applications were, according to Lal. But while the use of enormous amounts of energy lies at the core of all these applications, they eventually began to understand the effects on energy and the environment. According to the authors, if no steps are taken to make NFT transaction processing more environmentally friendly, their yearly emissions will amount to 0.37 megatons of carbon dioxide, which is about similar to the CO2 emissions from 1 million one-way flights for a passenger travelling from New York to London. The Ethereum blockchain responded to the request for more environmentally friendly trade in September 2022 by switching from a computationally-intensive proof of work (PoW) algorithm to a proof of stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. After the changeover, referred to as the Ethereum Merge, energy consumption significantly dropped. However, an exponential increase in recorded NFT transactions would result in more validators working on the network, according to the authors. An exponential rise in NFT transactions might require as much energy as 100,000 American households by the end of this decade. Therefore, even if individual NFT transactions use substantially less energy, the cumulative effect of more validators using fossil fuel-dominated grids will increase the associated carbon debt. You stated that by the end of this decade, the carbon created by NFT transactions might be nearly equal to the carbon produced annually by a 600 megawatt coal-fired power station. The viability of two hydroelectric energy carriers, green hydrogen and green ammonia (more energy-dense than hydrogen), was assessed by the authors. They noted that these energy carriers' cost savings depend on a variety of variables, including the distances travelled and the proportion of available renewable energy sources that are used. According to the authors, retrofitting these current power sources could be difficult but would still be beneficial for the environment and energy carriers. NFT processing consumes a lot of power, therefore this turns out to be an excellent approach to benefit from these restrictions, You said. You are a co-director of the Cornell University AI for Science Institute and a senior faculty fellow at the Cornell Atkinson Centre for Sustainability. source: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/07/230710180443.htm

Clean, sustainable fuel produced from plastic garbage

Sat, 08 Jul 2023 22:38:58 +0300

Summary: Researchers have shown how carbon dioxide from industrial operations or even straight from the air can be gathered and converted into sustainable, clean fuels using only solar energy. The University of Cambridge researchers created a solar-powered reactor that transforms collected CO2 and plastic waste into renewable fuels and other useful chemical compounds. In experiments, CO2 was transformed into syngas, an essential component of sustainable liquid fuels, and plastic bottles into glycolic acid, a substance used extensively in the cosmetics sector. However, in contrast to past testing of their solar fuels technique, the team used CO2 from actual sources, including industrial exhaust or ambient air. The CO2 was concentrated and captured by researchers, who then used it to create sustainable fuel. The findings, which were published in the journal Joule, represent another significant step towards the creation of clean fuels to power the economy without the need for environmentally harmful oil and gas extraction, even though advancements must be made before this technology can be deployed on an industrial scale. The Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry's research team, led by Professor Erwin Reisner, has been employing artificial leaves for several years to create sustainable, net-zero carbon fuels that are inspired by photosynthesis, the process by which plants turn light into food. Using only solar energy, these artificial leaves transform CO2 and water into fuels. They have employed pure, concentrated CO2 from a cylinder in their solar-powered trials up to this point, but for the technology to be useful, it must be able to actively capture CO2 from industrial processes or straight from the air. But since CO2 is simply one of many different kinds of molecules in the air we breathe, it will be extremely difficult to develop a system that is discriminating enough to convert highly diluted CO2. Reisner added, "We need to entirely eliminate fossil fuels in order to build a truly circular economy. We're not just interested in decarbonization, but de-fossilization. "In the short term, this technology could reduce carbon emissions by capturing them from industry and converting them into something useful, but in the long run, we need to completely eliminate fossil fuels and capture CO2 from the atmosphere." The carbon capture and storage (CCS) process, in which CO2 is trapped, pumped underground, and then stored, served as inspiration for the researchers. According to Reisner, CCS is a technology that is well-liked by the fossil fuel industry as a means of lowering carbon emissions while maintaining oil and gas exploration. But if we had carbon capture and utilisation rather than carbon capture and storage, we could utilise CO2 instead of burying it underground with unknowable long-term effects and do away with the need for fossil fuels. The researchers modified their solar-powered device so that it can convert CO2 and polymers into fuel and chemicals using just solar energy, and it now operates with flue gas or directly from the air. The CO2 is trapped when air is bubbled through a system containing an alkaline solution, while the nitrogen and oxygen that are also present in the air harmlessly bubble out. The CO2 from air in solution can be concentrated by the researchers using this bubbling method, making it more manageable. An anode and a photocathode are both parts of the integrated system. In the first of the system's two compartments, trapped CO2 solution is transformed into syngas, a straightforward fuel. On the other hand, using simply sunlight, plastics are transformed into valuable compounds. The plastic component, according to co-first author Dr. Motiar Rahaman, is a key component of this system. The chemistry is more challenging when CO2 from the air is captured and used. However, when plastic garbage is introduced to the system, it contributes electrons to the CO2. The CO2 is transformed into syngas, which is a straightforward fuel, and the plastic decomposes to glycolic acid, which is widely utilised in the cosmetics industry. According to co-first author Dr. Sayan Kar, "This solar-powered system takes two harmful waste products -- plastic and carbon emissions -- and converts them into something truly useful." Rahaman added, "We can catch CO2 from the air and generate clean fuel from it, instead of storing it underground, like in CCS. We can remove the fossil fuel industry from the fuel production process in this way, which should help us prevent catastrophic climate change. The fact that we can efficiently extract CO2 from the air and turn it into something useful is unique, according to Kar. It's gratifying to realise we can complete the task utilising simply sunshine. To demonstrate the advantages of integrating direct air capture with CO2 utilisation as a path to a zero-carbon future, scientists are now developing a bench-top demonstrator device with better efficiency and usability. source: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230619120149.htm

Researchers create a cancer vaccine that will both treat and prevent brain cancer.

Thu, 06 Jul 2023 12:32:19 +0300

Summary: Researchers are using a novel technique to transform cancer cells into effective anti-cancer medicines. Researchers have created a new cell therapy approach to eliminate established tumours and induce long-term immunity, training the immune system to prevent cancer from recurring, in the most recent research from the lab of Khalid Shah, MS, PhD, at Brigham and Women's Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system. A sophisticated mouse model of the lethal brain disease glioblastoma was used by the research team to test its dual-action, cancer-killing vaccination, with encouraging findings. Results are released in the journal Science Translational Medicine. "Our team has pursued a simple idea: to take cancer cells and transform them into cancer killers and vaccines," explained corresponding author Khalid Shah, MS, PhD, director of the Centre for Stem Cell and Translational Immunotherapy (CSTI), vice chair of research in the Department of Neurosurgery at the Brigham, and faculty at Harvard Medical School and Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI). We are repurposing cancer cells through gene engineering to create a treatment that kills tumour cells and activates the immune system to eliminate initial tumours and prevent cancer. Many labs are actively researching cancer vaccinations, but Shah and his colleagues' strategy is unique. The team repurposes living tumour cells since they have an uncommon property, as opposed to employing inactivated tumour cells. Living tumour cells will travel long distances throughout the brain to reunite with their partner tumour cells, much like homing pigeons returning to their nest. Shah's team generated living tumour cells using the gene editing technique CRISPR-Cas9 and repurposed them to release a tumour cell killing agent in order to take advantage of this special trait. Additionally, in order to prime the immune system for a sustained anti-tumor response, the altered tumour cells were created to express characteristics that would make them simple for the immune system to recognise, tag, and recall. In order to imitate the human immunological microenvironment, the team tested its repurposed CRISPR-enhanced and reverse-engineered therapeutic tumour cells (ThTC) in a variety of mouse strains, including one that had bone marrow, liver, and thymus cells from humans. In addition, the cancer cell has a two-layered safety switch that, when activated, can eliminate ThTCs if necessary. These models demonstrated the safety, applicability, and efficacy of this dual-action cell therapy, providing a path towards treatment. Shah's team purposefully selected this model and used human cells to facilitate the translation of their findings for patient settings, even if more research and development are required. Even though the work we conduct at the Centre is quite complex, we never lose sight of the patient, according to Shah. Our objective is to adopt a novel but implementable strategy in order to create a therapeutic, cancer-killing vaccine that will ultimately have a long-lasting effect on medicine. Shah and colleagues point out that this therapeutic approach can be used to treat a wider variety of solid tumours and that more research into its potential uses is necessary. Disclosures: Shah is a shareholder in and a director of AMASA Therapeutics, a business that is working to develop cancer treatments using stem cells. source: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/01/230104154302.htm

AI discovers flora's hidden characteristics to aid save species

Tue, 04 Jul 2023 18:52:35 +0300

Summary:To research and mitigate the effects of climate change on flora, scientists from UNSW and the Sydney Botanic Gardens have trained AI to access data from millions of plant specimens maintained in herbaria around the world. Associate Professor Will Cornwell, the study's principal author, adds that herbarium collections are incredible "time capsules of plant specimens." It's no longer feasible to go through items manually because the National Herbarium of New South Wales alone receives over 8000 new specimens every year. Contrary to regularly observed interspecies tendencies, the team's analysis of over 3000 leaf samples using a new machine learning technique revealed that within a single species, leaf size did not increase in warmer climes. This study, which was published in the American Journal of Botany, shows that factors other than climate have a significant impact on the size of leaves within a plant species. It also shows how AI can be used to transform static specimen collections and quickly and efficiently document the effects of climate change. Herbarium collections are now available online. Herbaria, or botanical libraries, are collections of plant specimens that date back to at least the 16th century. "In the past, collecting plants to store in a herbarium was a worthwhile scientific endeavour. Every record has a date, location, collector, and potential species identification, according to A/Prof. Cornwell, a researcher from the School of BEES and a part of the UNSW Data Science Hub. A few years ago, there was a push to migrate these collections online in order to improve scientific collaboration. "The herbarium collections were kept secure in little boxes at certain locations, but today's world is extremely digital. There was an effort to scan the specimens to create high resolution digital reproductions of them in order to share information about all of the great specimens with the scientists who are now dispersed throughout the world. Over 1 million plant specimens from the National Herbarium of New South Wales were converted into high-resolution digital photographs as part of the largest herbarium imaging project ever carried out at the Sydney Botanic Gardens. "The digitization effort took more than two years, and soon after it was finished, Dr. Jason Bragg, one of the researchers, called me from the Sydney Botanic Gardens. He was interested in finding out how we could use some of these high-resolution digital photographs of the Herbarium specimens to apply machine learning. "I was excited to work with A/Prof. Cornwell in developing models to detect leaves in the plant images, and then to use those big datasets to study relationships between leaf size and climate," said Dr. Bragg. Leaf sizes are measured using "computer vision". Dr. Bragg at the Sydney Botanic Gardens and Brendan Wilde, a UNSW honours student, worked with A/Prof. Cornwell to develop an algorithm that could automatically identify and gauge the size of leaves in scanned herbarium samples of two plant genera: Syzygium (commonly known as lillipillies, brush cherries, or satinas), and Ficus (a genus with about 850 species of woody trees, shrubs, and vines). Convolutional neural networks, sometimes referred to as computer vision, are a subset of artificial intelligence, according to A/Prof. Cornwell. In essence, the procedure teaches the AI to perceive and recognise a plant's parts the same way a human would. To educate the computer that this is a leaf, this is a stalk, and this is a flower, "we had to build a training data set," says A/Prof. Cornwell. Therefore, we simply trained the computer to find the leaves and measure their size. "Numerous people have measured the size of leaves, therefore the practise is not new. However, a recent improvement is the speed at which these specimens may be analysed and their unique properties recorded. A deviation from regularly occurring patterns In the realm of botany, it is a generalisation to say that plants have larger leaves in wetter regions, such as tropical rainforests, as opposed to drier climates, like deserts. And we observe that pattern in leaves amongst species all throughout the world, according to A/Prof. Cornwell. "The first test we ran was to see if we could recreate that relationship using the machine-learned data, and we were successful. Do we observe the same phenomena inside species today that we have access to so much more data than we did in the past? For Syzygium and Ficus plants, the machine learning method was created, tested, and used to investigate the link between leaf size and climate within and among species. The team's findings from this experiment were unexpected: while this pattern may be seen between various plant species, it is not consistently shown within a single species around the world. This is most likely due of a distinct mechanism known as gene flow that takes place within species. Localised plant adaptation is weakened by this process, which might also prevent species-specific relationships between leaf size and climate from forming. Using AI to forecast future responses to climate change Although not pixel perfect, the machine learning method utilised here to identify and quantify leaves provided levels of accuracy acceptable for investigating relationships between leaf attributes and climate. But because the world is changing so quickly and there is so much data, A/Prof. Cornwell argues that these machine learning techniques can be used to effectively document the effects of climate change. Additionally, the machine learning algorithms can be trained to spot tendencies that human researchers might not see right away. This could result in new understandings of plant evolution and adaptations as well as forecasts of how plants would react to upcoming climate change consequences. source: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230620113755.htm

Enhanced 3D vision helped a four-legged robot navigate bumpy terrain

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 17:51:18 +0300

Summary: A novel model has been created by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, that teaches four-legged robots to see in three dimensions more clearly. The development made it possible for a robot to easily and autonomously navigate difficult terrain, including rocky ground, stairways, and paths with gaps. The scientists will present their findings at the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR), which will be held in Vancouver, Canada, from June 18 to June 22, 2023. According to research senior author Xiaolong Wang, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, "by giving the robot a better understanding of its surroundings in 3D, it can be deployed in more complex environments in the real world." A forward-facing depth camera is mounted on the robot's head. A downward tilt of the camera offers it a clear view of both the area in front of it and the ground below it. The researchers created a model that converts 2D photos from the camera into 3D space in order to enhance the robot's 3D vision. It accomplishes this by examining a brief video sequence made up of the current frame and a few prior frames, then separating 3D data from each 2D frame. This gives details regarding the robot's leg movements, including joint angle, joint velocity, and height above the ground. To figure out the 3D transformation among the past and the present, the model compares data from the prior frames with data from the current frame. All of this data is combined by the model, enabling it to synthesise earlier frames based on the current frame. The model compares the synthesised frames to the frames that the camera has already recorded as the robot moves. The model knows it has learned the right representation of the 3D scene if they are a good match. If not, it makes adjustments until it is perfect. The mobility of the robot is managed using the 3D model. The robot can remember what it has seen and the previous motions its legs have made by synthesising visual information from the past and using that knowledge to guide its current actions. According to Wang, "Our method enables the robot to create a short-term memory of its 3D surroundings so that it can act better." The new study expands on the team's earlier research, which created algorithms to enable a four-legged robot to walk and run on uneven ground while avoiding obstacles. Proprioception is a sensory system that includes the senses of movement, direction, speed, location, and touch. The innovation here is that the researchers demonstrate that the robot can now navigate more difficult terrain than before by enhancing its 3D perception (and integrating it with proprioception). What's exciting, according to Wang, is that we have created a single model that can manage several demanding conditions. This is because the robot is now more adaptable to a variety of settings because to our improved grasp of the 3D environment. The strategy does have certain drawbacks, though. Wang points out that their current design does not direct the robot towards a particular objective or location. When deployed, the robot simply walks in a straight line, dodging obstacles by moving on to another straight line. He claimed that "the robot does not control exactly where it goes." "We would like to add more planning strategies and finish the navigation pipeline in future work," the statement continued. The title of the study is "Neural Volumetric Memory for Visual Locomotion Control." Ruihan Yang, from UC San Diego, and Ge Yang, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, are co-authors. The National Science Foundation (CCF-2112665, IIS-2240014, 1730158, and ACI-1541349), an Amazon Research Award, and contributions from Qualcomm all contributed to the funding of this work. source: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230612200423.htm

Creating an Innovative, Solid, Air Working Battery

Fri, 30 Jun 2023 18:52:56 +0300

Summary: Typically, negative electrodes in batteries are made of active materials like metals. Rechargeable metal-air batteries with oxygen-reducing positive electrodes have recently used redox-active organic compounds, such as quinone- and amine-based molecules, as negative electrodes. Here, the redox reactions involve protons and hydroxide ions. These batteries operate well and are almost at their theoretical maximum capacity. Furthermore, using redox-active organic molecules in rechargeable air batteries eliminates issues with metals, such as the development of "dendrites," which have an adverse effect on battery performance and the environment. These batteries, like metal-based batteries, use liquid electrolytes, which raise serious safety issues due to their high electrical resistance, leaching effects, and flammability. Now, a team of Japanese researchers has created an all-solid-state rechargeable air battery (SSAB) and examined its capacity and endurance in a new study that was published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition on May 2, 2023. Professors Kenichi Oyaizu and Kenji Miyatake, both from Waseda University and the University of Yamanashi, co-authored the paper under the direction of Professor Kenji Miyatake. Due to their stable and reversible redox reactions in acidic environments, the researchers selected the chemical 2,5-dihydroxy-1,4-benzoquinone (DHBQ) and its polymer poly(2,5-dihydroxy-1,4-benzoquinone-3,6-methylene) (PDBM) as active materials for the negative electrode. They also used Nafion, a proton-conductive polymer, as the solid electrolyte in place of traditional liquid electrolytes. To the best of my knowledge, no solid polymer electrolyte and organic electrode air batteries exist. After the SSAB was installed, the researchers experimentally evaluated its cyclability, rate characteristics, and charge-discharge performance. They discovered that the SSAB does not degrade in the presence of water and oxygen, in contrast to conventional air batteries, which use a metallic negative electrode and an organic liquid electrolyte. A superior negative electrode was created by substituting the redox-active chemical DHBQ with its polymeric analog, PDBM. At a constant current density of 1 mAcm-2, the SSAB-PDBM had a per-gram-discharge capacity of 176.1 mAh, compared to the SSAB-DHBQ's 29.7 mAh. The researchers also discovered that the SSAB-PDBM's coulombic efficiency was 84% at 4 C rate and gradually declined to 66% at 101 C rate. After 30 cycles, the SSAB-PDBM's discharge capacity dropped to 44%, but the researchers were able to significantly increase it to 78% by adding more proton-conductive polymer to the negative electrode. The performance and durability of the PDBM-based electrode were enhanced by the addition of Nafion, according to electron microscopic images. This study reveals the successful operation of an SSAB made up of an oxygen-reducing, diffusion-type positive electrode, a solid electrolyte made of a proton-conductive polymer, and redox-active organic molecules as the negative electrode. The researchers are hoping that it will open the door for more development. According to Miyatake, "This technology can increase the battery life of small electronic devices like smartphones and eventually help realize a carbon-free society." source: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230612114704.htm

How water pumping change the Earth's surface?

Wed, 28 Jun 2023 19:37:01 +0300

Summary: A recent study found that the Earth tilted about 80 centimeters (31.5 inches) east between 1993 and 2010 due to human activity in extracting water out of the earth and transporting it to other locations. Scientists previously calculated that between 1993 and 2010, humanity pumped 2,150 gigatons of groundwater, or more than 6 millimeters (0.24 inches), of sea level increase, based on climate models. It's challenging to verify that estimate, though. One method involves using the Earth's rotating pole, which is where the planet revolves. When the Earth's rotational pole's position varies with respect to the crust, a mechanism known as polar motion causes it to shift. The distribution of mass on the globe is influenced by the amount of water present. The Earth spins a little bit differently as water is shifted around, similar to adding a tiny amount of weight to a spinning top. "Earth's rotational pole actually changes a lot," said Ki-Weon Seo, a geophysicist at Seoul National University and the study's principal investigator. According to our research, the redistribution of groundwater is the climate-related factor that most significantly affects the rotational pole's drift. In 2016, it was found that water might alter how the Earth rotated, but up until now, the precise role of groundwater in these rotational shifts had not been studied. In the current study, scientists used computer simulations to simulate the reported changes in the drift of the Earth's rotational pole and the movement of water, initially simply taking into account ice sheets and glaciers and then including several scenarios of groundwater redistribution. Only after the researchers included 2150 gigatons of groundwater redistribution did the model match the observed pole drift. Without it, the model was off by 78.5 cm (31 inches), or 4.3 cm (1.7 inches) of drift annually. Seo stated, "I'm quite happy to identify the mysterious source of the spinning pole drift. The pumping of groundwater is another source of sea-level rise, which worries and surprises me as a father and an inhabitant of Earth. According to Surendra Adhikari, a research scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who was not engaged in this study, "This is a nice contribution and an important documentation for sure." The 2016 paper on the effects of water redistribution on rotational drift was published by Adhikari. They have measured the significance of groundwater pumping on polar motion and the result was positive. How much groundwater could alter polar drift depends on where it is; water redistributing from the midlatitudes has a greater effect on the rotational pole. The two midlatitude regions of western North America and northwest India had the greatest water redistribution throughout the research period. Theoretically, efforts by nations to reduce groundwater depletion rates, particularly in those vulnerable areas, could affect the change in drift, but only if such conservation measures are maintained for decades, according to Seo. Seasons are not likely to vary as a result of changes brought on by groundwater pumping because the rotational pole often shifts by several meters over the course of about a year. Adhikari noted that polar drift can affect the climate on geologic time spans. The next stage of this investigation might involve looking back in time. Understanding fluctuations in continent-scale water storage can be accomplished by keeping an eye on changes to the Earth's rotational pole, according to Seo. There are polar motion records dating back to the late 19th century. Therefore, we may be able to utilize those statistics to understand changes in continental water storage during the past 100 years. Has the warmer climate led to any changes in the hydrological regime? Polar motion might have the solution. source: www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/06/230615183147.htm

More than half of the lakes around the world are loosing water

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 00:08:23 +0300

Summary: A recent study found that 53 percent of the greatest freshwater lakes on earth are in decline and are now retaining less water than they did thirty years ago. The study measured changes in water levels in roughly 2,000 of the largest lakes and reservoirs in the globe using satellite measurements spanning decades. It was discovered that human consumption, sedimentation, and climate change are to blame. However, the lead author, former CIRES visiting fellow and current climate fellow Fangfang Yao, claimed the news is not wholly bad. With this novel technique for observing patterns in lake water storage and the causes behind them, scientists can inform communities and water managers on how to better safeguard vital water sources and significant local ecosystems. According to a variety of satellites and models, this is the first thorough analysis of the trends and factors influencing global lake water storage fluctuation, Yao added. The environmental catastrophes affecting some of the greatest bodies of water on Earth, such the drying up of the Aral Sea between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, inspired him to conduct the research. In order to assess changes in water levels in over 2,000 of the largest lakes and reservoirs on Earth, which account for 95% of all lake water storage, he and colleagues from the University of Colorado Boulder, Kansas State University, France, and Saudi Arabia developed a system. To measure and identify trends in lake storage globally, the researchers coupled models with observations gathered over three decades from a variety of satellites. Freshwater lakes and reservoirs are an important resource for both people and Earth ecosystems since they store 87 percent of the world's freshwater. Lakes are less closely inspected than rivers, but they nonetheless supply more people with water than rivers do. Although they are valuable, long-term patterns and fluctuations in water levels have mostly remained a mystery up until now. According to co-author and CIRES fellow Balaji Rajagopalan, "We have pretty good information on iconic lakes like the Caspian Sea, Aral Sea, and Salton Sea, but if you want to say something on a global scale, you need reliable estimates of lake levels and volume." By using this innovative approach, "we are able to provide insights into global lake level changes with a broader perspective," the researchers write. In order to survey the area of 1,972 of the largest lakes on Earth for the current paper, the scientists used 250,000 lake-area pictures taken by satellites between 1992 and 2020. They used long-term water levels to lessen any ambiguity and collected water levels from nine satellite altimeters. They used most recent water measurements taken by more modern sensors on satellites for lakes lacking a long-term level record. Scientists were able to reassemble the volume of lakes that date back decades by fusing more recent level observations with longer-term area measurements. The findings were startling: 53% of lakes worldwide saw a decrease in water storage. The size of the United States' largest reservoir, Lake Meads, is used by the authors to compare this loss to. The researchers made use of recent developments in water use and climate modeling to explain patterns in natural lakes. According to Yao, the global net decline in natural lake volume and water losses in about 100 large lakes were primarily caused by climate change and human water consumption. And many of the impacts of human activity and climate change on lake water losses were previously unrecognized, such as the desiccation of Lake Mar Chiquita in Argentina and Lake Good-e-Zareh in Afghanistan. Both rainy and dry regions of the world are losing volume in their lakes. The losses in Arctic lakes and humid tropical lakes point to more pervasive drying trends than was previously thought. Yao and his coworkers evaluated reservoir storage trends as well. They discovered that significant water losses occurred in nearly two-thirds of the planet's large reservoirs. 24 percent of the world's lakes showed notable gains in water storage even while the majority of lakes are declining. In the Northern Great Plains of North America, the Inner Tibetan Plateau, and regions with new reservoirs like the Yangtze, Mekong, and Nile river basins, growing lakes are more common. According to the authors, around 2 billion people, or about one-quarter of the world's population, live in the basin of a drying lake, demonstrating the urgent need to incorporate human consumption, climate change, and sedimentation consequences into sustainable water resources management. According to Livneh, their research also sheds light on potential solutions. We can adjust and investigate new regulations to reduce large-scale decreases if human consumption is a significant contributing cause to the decline in lake water storage. In one of the lakes the team analyzed, Lake Sevan in Armenia, water storage has increased over the past 20 years, which the authors attribute to the implementation of water conservation rules beginning in the early 2000s.

Clean, sustainable fuels made 'from thin air' and plastic waste

Sun, 25 Jun 2023 23:52:07 +0300

Researchers have demonstrated how carbon dioxide can be captured from industrial processes -- or even directly from the air -- and transformed into clean, sustainable fuels using just the energy from the Sun. The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, developed a solar-powered reactor that converts captured CO2 and plastic waste into sustainable fuels and other valuable chemical products. In tests, CO2 was converted into syngas, a key building block for sustainable liquid fuels, and plastic bottles were converted into glycolic acid, which is widely used in the cosmetics industry. Unlike earlier tests of their solar fuels technology however, the team took CO2 from real-world sources -- such as industrial exhaust or the air itself. The researchers were able to capture and concentrate the CO2 and convert it into sustainable fuel. Although improvements are needed before this technology can be used at an industrial scale, the results, reported in the journal Joule, represent another important step toward the production of clean fuels to power the economy, without the need for environmentally destructive oil and gas extraction. For several years, Professor Erwin Reisner's research group, based in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, has been developing sustainable, net-zero carbon fuels inspired by photosynthesis -- the process by which plants convert sunlight into food -- using artificial leaves. These artificial leaves convert CO2 and water into fuels using just the power of the sun. To date, their solar-driven experiments have used pure, concentrated CO2 from a cylinder, but for the technology to be of practical use, it needs to be able to actively capture CO2 from industrial processes, or directly from the air. However, since CO2 is just one of many types of molecules in the air we breathe, making this technology selective enough to convert highly diluted CO2 is a huge technical challenge. "We're not just interested in decarbonisation, but de-fossilisation -- we need to completely eliminate fossil fuels in order to create a truly circular economy," said Reisner. "In the medium term, this technology could help reduce carbon emissions by capturing them from industry and turning them into something useful, but ultimately, we need to cut fossil fuels out of the equation entirely and capture CO2 from the air." The researchers took their inspiration from carbon capture and storage (CCS), where CO2 is captured and then pumped and stored underground. "CCS is a technology that's popular with the fossil fuel industry as a way to reduce carbon emissions while continuing oil and gas exploration," said Reisner. "But if instead of carbon capture and storage, we had carbon capture and utilisation, we could make something useful from CO2 instead of burying it underground, with unknown long-term consequences, and eliminate the use of fossil fuels." The researchers adapted their solar-driven technology so that it works with flue gas or directly from the air, converting CO2 and plastics into fuel and chemicals using only the power of the sun. By bubbling air through the system containing an alkaline solution, the CO2 selectively gets trapped, and the other gases present in air, such as nitrogen and oxygen, harmlessly bubble out. This bubbling process allows the researchers to concentrate the CO2 from air in solution, making it easier to work with. The integrated system contains a photocathode and an anode. The system has two compartments: on one side is captured CO2 solution that gets converted into syngas, a simple fuel. On the other plastics are converted into useful chemicals using only sunlight. "The plastic component is an important trick to this system," said co-first author Dr Motiar Rahaman. "Capturing and using CO2 from the air makes the chemistry more difficult. But, if we add plastic waste to the system, the plastic donates electrons to the CO2. The plastic breaks down to glycolic acid, which is widely used in the cosmetics industry, and the CO2 is converted into syngas, which is a simple fuel." "This solar-powered system takes two harmful waste products -- plastic and carbon emissions -- and converts them into something truly useful," said co-first author Dr Sayan Kar. "Instead of storing CO2 underground, like in CCS, we can capture it from the air and make clean fuel from it," said Rahaman. "This way, we can cut out the fossil fuel industry from the process of fuel production, which can hopefully help us avoid climate destruction." "The fact that we can effectively take CO2 from air and make something useful from it is special," said Kar. "It's satisfying to see that we can actually do it using only sunlight." The scientists are currently working on a bench-top demonstrator device with improved efficiency and practicality to highlight the benefits of coupling direct air capture with CO2 utilisation as a path to a zero-carbon future.