Plants

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Meet the divers trying to figure out how deep humans can go Two hundred thirty meters into one of the deepest underwater caves on Earth, Richard “Harry” Harris knew that not far ahead of him was a 15-meter drop leading to a place no human being had seen before. Getting there had taken two helicopters, three weeks of test dives, two tons of…

If you, like me, are unsure how a power plant can be virtual, my colleague June Kim just published an insightful article explaining the technology and how it works. For this week’s newsletter, I took the chance to ask her some more questions about VPPs. It turns out the technology has a particularly good synergy with the EV industry, which is why the Chinese government has started to invest in VPPs.  “VPPs are basically just aggregations of distributed energy resources that can balance electricity on the grid,” June…

The blue color of blueberries comes from tiny structures in their wax coating, not from pigments in the fruit skin, according to a University of Bristol study. This discovery opens up possibilities for sustainable and biocompatible colorants and coatings inspired by nature.Researchers at the University of Bristol have discovered that tiny external structures within the wax coating of blueberries are responsible for their blue color.This applies to lots of fruits that are the same color including damsons, sloes, and…

The proposals are in addition to a INR 22,516-crore chip assembly plant being set up by US-based memory chip maker Micron in Gujarat.Two full-fledged semiconductor fabrication plants are going to come up in India very soon entailing multi-billion dollar investment besides several chip assembly and packaging units, Minister of Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said. In an interview with PTI, the minister confirmed that the two projects include a USD 8 billion…

A team of South Korean researchers at Yonsei University have that’s quite literally filled with beef. The lab-grown rice grains were infused with cow muscle and fat cells, so they are one part plant and one part meat. The rice is also an appetizing shade of bright pink, which tends to happen when flesh enters the picture.The team hopes to eventually offer a cheaper and more sustainable source of protein with a much lower carbon footprint than actual beef. It’ll also save time for those who enjoy a nice beef bowl over…

An ancient bone dating back thousands of years is the first solid evidence that humans in Europe were collecting and storing a powerful and dangerous drug.Deliberately hollowed out and plugged with birch tar, the bone – originally from a sheep or goat – was found to contain a large number of seeds of a plant called black henbane (Hyoscyamus niger).A trio of researchers from Germany and the Netherlands have argued the plant material was being kept for a specific purpose.In even small doses, black henbane, common…

Liquid samples of different algal species investigated in the study, all stored in the Culture Collection of Algae at Göttingen University. Credit: Tatyana DarienkoOKA research team at Göttingen University is leading an investigation into the emergence of multicellularity.Of all the organisms that photosynthesize, land plants have the most complex bodies. How did this morphology emerge? A team of scientists led by the University of Göttingen has taken a deep dive into the evolutionary history of morphological complexity…

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out. The news: In the biggest mass-market AI launch yet, Google is rolling out Gemini, its family of large language models, across almost all its products, from Android to the iOS Google app to Gmail to Docs and more. A new subscription plan will also give users access to Gemini Ultra, the most powerful…

The government has received four proposals for setting up semiconductor manufacturing plants and 13 for chip assemblies unit, Parliament was informed on Wednesday. The proposals are in addition to a Rs 22,516-crore chip assembly plant being set up by US-based memory chip maker Micron, minister of state for electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said in a written reply in the Lok Sabha."Four proposals have been received for setting up semiconductor fabs and additional 13 proposals have been received for setting up…

One significant difference is VPPs’ ability to shape consumers’ energy use in real time. Unlike conventional power plants, VPPs can communicate with distributed energy resources and allow grid operators to control the demand from end users. For example, smart thermostats linked to air conditioning units can adjust home temperatures and manage how much electricity the units consume. On hot summer days these thermostats can pre-cool homes before peak hours, when air conditioning usage surges. Staggering cooling times can…