Greener

NASA will invest $425 million to help Boeing develop a demonstrator aircraft for its Transonic Truss-Braced Wing design, which the space agency hopes will improve the fuel efficiency of commercial aviation.In a press conference yesterday, NASA officials said a flight test of the aircraft is planned for 2028.“It’s our goal that NASA’s partnership with Boeing to produce and test a full-scale demonstrator will help lead to future commercial airliners that are more fuel efficient, with benefits to the environment, the…

Australian mining company Fortescue has taken delivery of a 1.4-MWh prototype battery that's heading for a 240-tonne electric mining haul truck developed in partnership with Liebherr, and will begin testing later in the year.The monster battery was developed by a 50-strong engineering team at the UK's Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE), which was acquired by Fortescue in March last year.The battery has now arrived at Fortescue's workshop in Perth, and is actually made up of eight individually cooled sub packs, each…

Wirelessly powered electronics developed by KAUST researchers could help to make internet of things technology more environmentally friendly. Credit: © 2022 KAUST; Heno HwangWirelessly powered large-area electronics could enable a cheaper and greener internet of things.Emerging forms of thin-film device technologies that rely on alternative semiconductor materials, such as printable organics, nanocarbon allotropes, and metal oxides, could contribute to a more economically and environmentally sustainable internet of things…

KAUST scientists are using artificial intelligence and machine learning models to design more efficient fuels with less carbon dioxide emissions. Credit: Shutterstock An inverse mixture-design approach based on machine learning can teach computers to create mixtures from a set of target properties. Developed by KAUST, this could help find high-performance transport fuels that burn efficiently while releasing little carbon…

Wartime contamination is happening indirectly as well, Denisov says. During normal operations, coal mines in Donbas, for instance, have to pump water out to keep from flooding. But when the war interrupted that, rising water levels corrupted local stocks of groundwater. That’s not to mention the extensive damage to water infrastructure itself, which has cut off supplies to millions of Ukrainians.Less obviously, the war has put pressure on the government to reverse some of the past years’ environmental gains. Ukrainians…

Ethereum has completed its much-anticipated "Merge" to a far more energy efficient method of minting new coins, the cryptocurrency's co-founder Vitalik Buterin tweeted. Ether coins will no longer be minted by "proof-of-work" that uses powerful computers to solve cryptographic tasks. Instead, they'll be created using "proof-of-stake" methods that require users called validators to stake coins for the chance to approve transactions and earn a small reward.  Until today, mining Ethereum has required powerful banks of…

How, where and why is Spitsbergen greening up? An ETH and WSL research team wants to find answers to this question. Credit: ETH Zurich A research team from ETH Zurich and WSL traveled to Spitsbergen this summer to take a closer look at the phenomenon of Arctic greening. Project manager Sebastian Dötterl discusses research in the face of polar bears, strikes and war.…

As useful as refrigerators and air conditioners are, the gases they use as refrigerants can leak into the atmosphere and become major contributors to climate change. Now engineers at Harvard have demonstrated a new prototype cooling device that uses a solid-state material as a refrigerant.Devices like fridges and AC units get their cooling power from cycles of phase changes in a material. In its gaseous form, the refrigerant, usually a hydroflurocarbon (HFC), will absorb heat from its surroundings, thus cooling a room or…

The new Arizona Azure region doesn't just use solar panels for energy; it uses less carbon-intensive solar panels built on the same kind of production line as flat screen TVs, using cadmium telluride – mining by-products that would otherwise end up in waste heaps.Microsoft is offsetting energy use in its data centre with renewable energy from the 150MW Sun Streams 2 solar plant. Solar energy, even with batteries to extend availability into the evenings, aren't yet ready to power a data centre for the full 24 hours, but…

Ola Electric may unveil a new colour scheme for their scooters on Independence day. While confirmation and details of the development are still awaited, the company’s CEO Bhavish Aggarwal in a tweet on Sunday said that Ola Electric will be unveiling their “greenest EV” on August 15. Speculations are rife that the electric two-wheeler manufacturer is likely to unveil an updated green colour option for its S1 Pro Electric scooters. Previously, Ola had introduced a Gerua colour option for the scooter during the festival of…