Beyond science!

[eloic]

U.S. to announce fusion energy ‘breakthrough’

Scientists hit a key milestone in the quest to create abundant zero-carbon power through nuclear fusion. But they still have a long way to go.​

By Evan Halper and Pranshu Verma

December 11, 2022 at 9:29 p.m. EST

A target pellet inside a hohlraum capsule with laser beams entering through openings on either end, seen in an illustration. The beams compress and heat the target to the necessary conditions for nuclear fusion to occur. (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory/AP)


The Department of Energy plans to announce Tuesday that scientists have been able for the first time to produce a fusion reaction that creates a net energy gain — a major milestone in the decades-long, multibillion-dollar quest to develop a technology that provides unlimited, cheap, clean power.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/12/11/fusion-nuclear-energy-breakthrough/

 

[cheapchips]

Best way to look at NIFs results is probably as experimental results that are useful to those companies pursuing inertial fusion? A better/cheaper/electricity producing version of NIF isn't exactly waiting in the wings.

 

[WhiningKhan]

I find it amusing that still in this day and age, people notice they have discovered something when their equipment breaks up unexpectedly.

 

[eloic]

5 Cancer Vaccines to Watch in 2024​

Published: Nov 20, 2023 By Sruthi S. Balakrishnan

Pictured: Vaccine bottles/iStock, May Lim
Several cancer vaccine candidates are flying through clinical trials with promising results. Unlike traditional vaccines that aim to prevent a disease from occurring, therapeutic cancer vaccines train the patient’s immune system, enabling T cells to patrol the body for cancer cells and destroy them. Progress in personalized medicine has made it easier and much more affordable to sequence patient genomes, pull out unique cancer signatures and make vaccines encoding these neoantigens.
BioSpace compiled a list of five cancer vaccines in mid- to late-stage development and sought insights from two experienced researchers on their respective merits.

https://www.biospace.com/article/5-cancer-vaccines-to-watch-in-2024/

I love that, even if slow, there's progress in this field.

 

[eloic]

Here’s how scientists reached nuclear fusion ‘ignition’ for the first time​

The experiment, performed in 2022, also revealed a never-before-seen phenomenon

Here’s how scientists reached nuclear fusion ‘ignition’ for the first time

The first fusion experiment to produce an energy excess required meticulous planning and also revealed a long-predicted heating phenomenon.

www.sciencenews.org

 

[eloic]

SCIENTISTS FIND PLASTIC-EATING FUNGUS FEASTING ON GREAT PACIFIC GARBAGE PATCH​

NATURE REALLY PUTTING THE TEAM ON ITS BACK HERE.​

Chomp Chomp​

Does nature have to do everything itself?
An international cohort of marine scientists discovered an ocean-borne fungus chomping through plastic trash suspended in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, as detailed in a new study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment.

https://futurism.com/the-byte/plastic-eating-fungus-pacific-garbage-patch

 

[eloic]

Edible batteries, sensors and actuators unlock robots designed to be eaten​

By Paul McClure
June 17, 2024

Scientists have already made edible robotic components. The next challenge is integrating them together to create an entire robot snack that could be used in a wide range of applications, from delivering healthcare to monitoring the environment.​

Imagine ordering drone delivery for your takeout, and then, after eating your food, you eat the delivery drone for dessert. The first part has been happening for a while; the second – the edible robot – could be coming soon, according to scientists from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL).

Edible batteries, sensors and actuators unlock robots designed to be eaten

Scientists have already made edible robotic components. The next challenge is integrating them together to create an entire robot snack that could be used in a wide range of applications, from delivering healthcare to monitoring the environment.

newatlas.com

I didn't know this was a thing and it makes me feel confused. I feel rejection and a need to eat one of those things at the same time.

 

[eloic]

Recycling Plastic Is a Dangerous Waste of Time​

The recycling industry—and the world at large—has yet to fully reckon with a bombshell study that dropped last year.

Frank Celia
17 Jun 2024 · 17 min read

Photo by Killari Hotaru on Unsplash


By now, you probably know that plastic recycling is a scam. If not, this white paper lays out the case in devastating detail. To summarise, amid calls to reduce plastic garbage in the 1970s and ’80s, the petrochemical industry put forth recycling as a red herring to create the appearance of a solution while it continued to make as much plastic as it pleased. Multiple paper trails indicate that industry leaders knew from the start that recycling could never work at scale. And indeed, it hasn’t. Only about nine percent of plastic worldwide gets recycled, and the US manages only about six percent.

As bad as this is, the situation might actually be much worse. According to an emerging field of study, the facilities that recycle plastic have been spewing massive amounts of toxins called microplastics into local waterways, soil, and air for decades. In other words, the very industry created to solve the plastic-waste problem has only succeeded in making it worse, possibly exponentially so. While the study that kicked off this new field received some press coverage when it appeared last year, the far-ranging import of its findings has yet to be fully integrated into environmental science. If the research is even close to accurate, and to date it has not been substantively challenged, the implications for waste management policies across the globe will be game-changing.

Recycling Plastic Is a Dangerous Waste of Time

The recycling industry—and the world at large—has yet to fully reckon with a bombshell study that dropped last year.

quillette.com

Even if the article is biased (bits like "First, single-use accounts for only 50 percent—at most—of all plastic manufactured, so even if somehow all of it were banned, we’d still have a significant problem" where I was "hello, you seem to be complaining of getting rid of HALF of the problem..."), this came as a shock to me. I was aware that virtually every industrial process=pollution, including recycling, to a certain degree, but I didn't think of the microplastic issue that could arise precisely because of plastic recycling, and it all makes sense.

As an individual very concerned with these things, I've always been proud of recycling, alternatives to plastic, etc. However, I'm optimistic and I hope we can reverse this. First of all, we still need to find alternatives to plastic and then, if the only solution for discarded plastic is to burn it, we can come up with new ways to capture CO2 and other resulting gases, so that we could use carbon or whatever in other ways.