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How a ‘Solar Battery’ Could Bring Electricity to Rural Areas

Thu, 2018-09-27 21:44 — Kathy Gilbeaux

New solar flow battery with a 14.1 percent efficiency. Photo: David Tenenbaum, UW-Madison

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Chem - 14.1% Efficient Monolithically Integrated Solar Flow Battery

theverge.com - by Angela Chen - September 27, 2018

Solar energy is becoming more and more popular as prices drop, yet a home powered by the Sun isn’t free from the grid because solar panels don’t store energy for later. Now, researchers have refined a device that can both harvest and store solar energy, and they hope it will one day bring electricity to rural and underdeveloped areas.

The problem of energy storage has led to many creative solutions, like giant batteries. For a paper published today in the journal Chem, scientists trying to improve the solar cells themselves developed an integrated battery that works in three different ways.

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Super Cheap Earth Element to Advance New Battery Tech to the Industry

Thu, 2018-09-20 07:08 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Purdue researcher Jialiang Tang helped resolve charging issues in sodium-ion batteries that have prevented the technology from advancing to industry testing and use. Credit: Purdue University Marketing and Media

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Ultrasound-assisted synthesis of sodium powder as electrode additive to improve cycling performance of sodium-ion batteries

phys.org - by Kayla Wiles - September 19, 2018

Most of today's batteries are made up of rare lithium mined from the mountains of South America. If the world depletes this source, then battery production could stagnate.

Sodium is a very cheap and earth-abundant alternative to using lithium-ion batteries that is also known to turn purple and combust if exposed to water—even just water in the air.

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Study Shows High Post-Epidemic Seroprevalence of Zika Virus in Nicaragua

Sun, 2018-09-02 22:56 — Kathy Gilbeaux

CLICK HERE - STUDY - PNAS - Seroprevalence, risk factor, and spatial analyses of Zika virus infection after the 2016 epidemic in Managua, Nicaragua

sph.berkeley.edu - August 30, 2018

Almost half of the population of Managua, Nicaragua, is infected with Zika virus, according to a study by UC Berkeley School of Public Health researchers. Eva Harris, professor of Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology at the School of Public Health and director of the UC Berkeley Center for Global Public Health, led the research, which was published August 27 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Knowing that 50 percent of the population was infected in only a three-month period during the epidemic is important because it means that another epidemic of that size and ferocity in the near future is very unlikely,” says Harris.

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West Antarctic Ice Melt Poses Unique Threat to U.S.

Fri, 2018-06-15 21:52 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Sea level rise contributions from ice melt in different areas, including Greenland (a), West Antarctica (b), East Antarctica (c) and median of global glaciers (d). Values are ratios of regional sea level change to global mean sea level change. Adapted from Kopp et al. 2015.

axios.com - by Andrew Freedman - June 14, 2018

News of Antarctica's accelerating ice melt garnered worldwide headlines yesterday, as scientists revealed that 3 trillion tons of ice has been lost to the sea since 1992 — mostly from the thawing West Antarctic Ice Sheet and Antarctic Peninsula.

Why it matters: The location of the ice melt is important for determining the future of coastal communities, according to climate scientists. And, due to West Antarctica melting, it turns out that the U.S. coastline will be hit extra hard . . .

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Antarctic ice loss has tripled in a decade. If that continues, we are in serious trouble.

Wed, 2018-06-13 17:42 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Scientists warns time is running out to save the Antarctic and its unique ecosystem, with potentially dire consequences for the world. Photograph: Daniel Beltrá/Greenpeace

CLICK HERE - IMBIE - ANALYSIS - Mass balance of the Antarctic Ice Sheet from 1992 to 2017

washingtonpost.com - by Chris Mooney - June 13, 2018

Antarctica’s ice sheet is melting at a rapidly increasing rate, now pouring more than 200 billion tons of ice into the ocean annually and raising sea levels a half-millimeter every year, a team of 80 scientists reported Wednesday.

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Hurricanes Are Lingering Longer. That Makes Them More Dangerous.

Wed, 2018-06-06 22:59 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Hurricane Harvey over the Gulf of Mexico in August 2017. The storm stalled over Texas and dropped nearly 50 inches of rain in some places. Credit NOAA/NASA GOES Project

CLICK HERE - STUDY - A global slowdown of tropical-cyclone translation speed

A new study shows that storms are staying in one place longer, much like Hurricane Harvey did last year.

nytimes.com - by Kendra Pierre-Louis - June 6, 2018

. . . A study published Wednesday in the journal Nature focuses on what is known as translation speed, which measures how quickly a storm is moving over an area, say, from Miami to the Florida Panhandle. Between 1949 and 2016, tropical cyclone translation speeds declined 10 percent worldwide, the study says. The storms, in effect, are sticking around places for a longer period of time.

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How Storms, Missteps and an Ailing Grid Left Puerto Rico in the Dark

Mon, 2018-05-07 10:25 — Kathy Gilbeaux

A transmission tower and downed lines in the mountainous terrain of eastern Puerto Rico. Workers from the island and throughout the United States have worked to restore power after Hurricanes Irma and Maria last September.

It took months to restore electricity in Puerto Rico after hurricanes dealt a one-two punch. Many homes are still without power, and the system’s future is far from certain.

nytimes.com - by JAMES GLANZ and FRANCES ROBLES - Photographs by TODD HEISLER - May 6, 2018

. . . After Maria and the hurricane that preceded it, called Irma, Puerto Rico all but slipped from the modern era . . .

. . . an examination of the power grid’s reconstruction — based on a review of hundreds of documents and interviews with dozens of public officials, utility experts and citizens across the island — shows how a series of decisions by federal and Puerto Rican authorities together sent the effort reeling on a course that would take months to correct. The human and economic damage wrought by all that time without power may be irreparable.

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