Leading

 

Jump Rope

 

Solar Power Global Leader is CHINA

© Getty Images


China, the world’s largest carbon emitter, is on the cusp of a clean energy transition as new solar power becomes cheaper than coal throughout most of the country, according to a new study.

By 2023, China will have the capacity to deploy solar power nationwide at the same price as coal, and currently has that ability in three-quarters of the country, according to a joint study from Harvard, Tsinghua, Nankai and Renmin universities.

“Today subsidy-free solar power has become cheaper than coal power in most parts of China” in a trajectory spreading across the country, study coauthor Xi Lu said in a statement.

While the country is a long way from tapping that theoretical potential, the new research highlights “a crucial energy transition point” at which solar becomes a “cheaper alternative to coal-fired electricity and a more grid-compatible option,” said co-author Michael McElroy.

By 2060, the study found, China will have the capacity to meet 43 percent of its power needs with solar energy that costs less than 2.5 cents per kilowatt hour — less than half of China’s 2019 price for coal energy, and less than a quarter the current average U.S. energy cost.

That projection is much faster than previous studies, which researchers say failed to account for the way that China’s growing solar sector — which now represents a third of total global solar production — has benefited from technical advances and economies of scale.

The report comes ahead of the global climate summit in Scotland next month, where China’s plans to transition away from coal will be a major factor in the world’s ability to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

One key accelerant of China’s solar growth is the “cost of capital:” how much solar developers have to pay in interest or dividends to secure funding for new projects.

This number plummeted 63 percent in China between 2011 and 2018, even as government subsidies fell away, researchers said.  READ MORE...

Cat Friendly

 

Detecting High Cholesterol

Cholesterol is an essential substance for the organism, however, when levels in the blood are too high, it can be a health problem. That is why it is appropriate to control its values on a regular basis.

Among other things, cholesterol is one of the most important lipids or fats found in the body. It is key for the formation of organ cell membranes and is also used as ‘raw material for the synthesis of sex and thyroid hormones; among other things.

Thus, when cholesterol levels accumulate in the blood they can be a major problem and constitute a risk factor for the development of different cardiovascular diseases, and can even lead to death.

Hypercholesterolemia is the term used to define high blood cholesterol values. Thus, the Spanish Heart Foundation warns that, as a general rule, having high cholesterol levels does not manifest itself through any symptoms.

In other words, to determine the existence of hypercholesterolemia it will be necessary to perform a blood test that shows the values of cholesterol and triglycerides.

In this regard, Dr. Carlos Morillas, head of the Endocrinology and Nutrition Section of the Hospital Universitario Dr Peset (Valencia, Spain), explains that «an analysis should be made with 12 hours of fasting in all persons over 40 years of age, or in case of presenting high cardiovascular risk at any age (less relevant fasting for LDL, but important for triglyceride values); and then a second check analysis in which secondary causes of this increase in cholesterol will be ruled out».

This is the only way to accurately determine the existence of high cholesterol levels and, if so, to establish a treatment to reduce them as soon as possible.
Reducing levels


In this sense, to reduce cholesterol levels, Dr. Morilla advocates establishing a healthy diet, such as the Mediterranean diet. That is, one that is low in saturated fats, cholesterol and trans fats.

Likewise, in this new dietary plan it will be advisable to limit the consumption of processed foods and red meat; at the same time it is advisable to increase the intake of fruits, vegetables and fish. Physical exercise is key to increasing HDL (good) cholesterol.  READ MORE...

Babysitting

 

Practical Fusion Reactors

Matthew Wolford inspects the Electra argon- fluoride (ArF) laser US Navy/Jonathan Steffen


The US Naval Research Laboratory (AFL) is developing an Argon Fluoride (ArF) laser that may one day make fusion power a practical commercial technology. The wide-bandwidth ultraviolet laser is designed to have the shortest laser wavelength that can scale up to power a self-sustaining fusion reaction.


To call fusion energy a game changing technology is like saying that fire might one day find a practical application. In fact, the ability to generate clean energy from hydrogen in any desired quantity over any foreseeable timescale would fundamentally alter civilization in ways we can't imagine.

The problem is fusion power is like the proverbial rabbit pie recipe that begins with, "First, catch your rabbit." Though we can recreate the conditions found inside the Sun to produce fusion reactions on Earth, these are relegated to hydrogen bombs and laboratory experiments where it takes more energy to create the fusion reaction than we can get out of it – though recent experiments are getting much closer to turning that around.

The Nike laser lens array focusing 44 krypton-fluoride (KrF) laser beams onto targets NRL

The goal for the past 75 years has been to produce temperatures in excess of 100 million degrees C (180 million degrees F) and the pressure needed to ignite the fusion reaction and generate enough surplus energy to sustain it. That in itself would be a major achievement, but the technology also has to be able to sustain the reaction indefinitely, while also being cheap enough and the reactor small enough for it to be practical.  READ MORE...

Guitar Man

 

Slaves

 

Stuck

 

Following...

Time to Unite

 

Halloween

Heart Cath Results

Yesterday, I went down to UT Medical Center, Heart and Lung Bldg. to have a heart cath procedure performed because my recent stress test indicated that I had a blockage...

I had to arrive at 5:30 am for a 7:00 am procedure and was not actually taken into the operating room until 7:30 am but was back in recovery before 8:15 am because the cardiac surgeon FOUND NOTHING...

• NO BLOCKAGE in any artery
• NO PROBLEMS with any of my 5 stents

However, they used my wrist to get to the heart instead of my groin and my wrist became a little swollen and the incision site bled a little more than it sould have, so instead of being released at 11:00 am, I was not released until 2:00 pm...

I am able to use my right hand now (24 hours later) but I cannot lift anything over 5 lbs for another 5 days...

All-in-all, yesterday was a good day...  as far as my health is concerned...  It is nice to know that with other bodily functions changing with age, my repaired heart arteries are still in good shape...

Elephant Prankster

Denver's Job Fair

Denver's airport held a job fair to plug its huge labor shortage. An exec said he'd hoped 5,000 people would come — but only 100 showed up.

Concessions International, which participated in the job fair at the Denver airport over the weekend, wanted to hire at least 38 workers, but only two people applied, a local ABC affiliate reported. Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

Only about 100 people turned up to a job fair on Saturday aimed at plugging Denver International Airport's huge labor shortage, Denver's ABC affiliate reported.

Dennis Deslongchamp, the president of the Denver Concessionaires Association, told KMGH that organizers had hoped for about 5,000 people at the fair, which he called a "very lofty goal."

Organizers had wanted to fill about 1,000 jobs at the airport, but only about 100 people came to the four-hour fair, Deslongchamp told the outlet.

Derik Mortenson, the director of operations at Concessions International, said the organizers "were expecting the masses to come knocking on our door."  READ MORE...

Water Canal

 

Constructor Theory

Constructor Theory is a new approach to formulating fundamental laws in physics. Instead of describing the world in terms of trajectories, initial conditions and dynamical laws, in constructor theory laws are about which physical transformations are possible and which are impossible, and why. 

This powerful switch has the potential to bring all sorts of interesting fields, currently regarded as inherently approximative, into fundamental physics. These include the theories of information, knowledge, thermodynamics, and life.

Flung Around

 

Space Mining

FEOM FORBES.COM - Jamie Carter

16 Psyche, the large metallic asteroid ideal for space mining. GETTY

We know the age of private space travel is here, but what about the wider commercial space industry? “Space mining” has been talked-up in recent years, but the hype-cycle has peaked with the realization that the technology to fetch rare-Earth metals from distant asteroids is some way off.


That’s not stopped NASA’s plans to launch, in 2022, its “Psyche” mission to a large metallic asteroid called 16 Psyche that’s thought to be largely metallic—and so ideal for space mining.

However, the NASA plans to merely orbit and document 16 Psyche, and in any case won’t reach the asteroid—situated in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter—until 2026.

Now researchers have uncovered two metal-rich near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) that could one day be mined for iron, nickel and cobalt could for use on Earth or in space.

They’re reckoned to be 85% metal and one is thought to contain enough iron, nickel and cobalt to exceed Earth’s reserves.

Published in the Planetary Science Journal, the paper documents the examination of two asteroids, 1986 DA and 2016 ED85, whose light appears to be similar to asteroid 16 Psyche.