Category: Science / Medical Information
Thanks to Zorba
I love Jim Hightower!
A couple of bits from Cosmos
for science!
Lithium-ion batteries made from wastewater phosphorus
Good news for some sustainability. Here’s a snippet:
“Engineers have found a way to turn phosphorus from city wastewater into parts for lithium-ion batteries.
“The Chinese researchers say that their method could be used to supply 35% of the phosphorus demand for their national lithium-ion battery industry.
“They’ve published their findings in Engineering.
“Phosphorus is a common component in the cathodes of lithium-ion batteries – specifically, lithium iron phosphate batteries, which represent about 60% of the lithium-ion market according to the researchers.
“As an important ingredient in fertilisers and industrial chemicals, mineral phosphorus is in high demand. Mining stocks of phosphorus are expected to be depleted in the next 50-100 years.
“But, point out the researchers, more than 250,000 tonnes of phosphorus pollutes Chinese wastewater every year, coming from food consumption and chemical waste. This is more phosphorus than the amount consumed each year to make batteries.” (snip)
“The researchers used their wastewater-derived mixture to build small lithium-ion batteries in the lab. These batteries could charge and discharge at the rates needed for electric vehicles and large-scale storage systems, and they kept 99.2% of their capacity after being charged and discharged 100 times.
“Batteries made with higher doses of the wastewater material performed better than batteries made with lower doses. The researchers believe that impurities from the sludge helped to stabilise the batteries, allowing them to perform better.
“’The amount of phosphorus recovered from municipal wastewater is projected to be sufficient to meet up to 35% of the phosphorus demand by the lithium-ion battery industry in China, enhancing the cost-effectiveness of phosphorus recovery and alleviating the global shortage of phosphorus resources to achieve both clean energy and sustainable development,’ conclude the researchers in their paper.”
=====
When it rains, it pours! This old idea looks set to be Australia’s future
“In the last few years, Australia has faced both flooding rains and some of the lowest rainfall on record. Now, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences have the data that explains why rain in Australia has seemed so unpredictable.
“The researchers have shown that human-induced climate warming is driving increases in rainfall variability over 75% of the Earth’s land, and they say the effects are especially prominent in Australia.
“The study looked at increases in rainfall variability, which can mean wetter wet periods and drier dry periods. They found that daily variability has increased by 1.2% per decade globally, and that humans are largely to blame.
“’The increase in rainfall variability is mainly due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, which have led to a warmer and more humid atmosphere,’ said Dr Zhang Wenxia, lead author of the study.
“’This means that even if the atmospheric circulation remains the same, the additional moisture in the air leads to more intense rain events and more drastic fluctuations between them.’
“Professor Steven Sherwood at the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre, who was not involved in the study, told the AusSMC that this means rainier rainy periods and drier dry periods.
“’This is going to increase as global warming continues, enhancing the chances of droughts and/or floods.’
“The paper identified Australia as being a particular hotspot for rainfall variability. Dr Milton Speer from the University of Technology Sydney said the paper’s findings are significant, and that other recent studies have had similar conclusions.” (snip-More)
It was the new moon at 6:13AM CDT today, 5:13 Eastern
Staying Cool: Helpful Hints From History
Take a look back at how others have survived—and thought about—the high heat of summer.
By: Matthew Wills July 28, 2024
In an episode of The Twilight Zone called “The Midnight Sun,” first broadcast in November 1961, the apocalyptic temperature of an Earth getting ever closer to the Sun is represented by a thermometer bursting at…130°F. On July 5, 2024, Palm Springs, California, reached 124°F, while the next day, Death Valley hit 128°F, amidst a shattering of triple-digit temperature records across the American West.
Benchmarks have shifted. In 1961, the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere was 318 parts per million by volume (ppmv). CO2 is a greenhouse gas, acting as atmospheric insulation, preventing heat radiation from dissipating into space. Last year, 2023, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was 421 ppmv. It continues to increase, not least as we battle the resulting heat by burning fossil fuels to stay cool. We’re in a global greenhouse, and the doors seem to be locked as we paradoxically produce more CO2 to stay cool in the face of heating caused by the production of more CO2.
Humans have long worked to beat the heat, especially in the tropics and in deserts. Their perfectly rational strategies—stay out of the midday sun, live underground, cover up completely—may once have been criticized by those from temperate zones, sometimes in racist terms, but more and more parts of the world are having to learn the lesson of those strategies.
What, after all, would it be like without air conditioning? Take a look at this Before Air-Conditioning piece in Scientific American’s “Hints for Keeping Cool.” Published in July 1858, the piece begins with a dietary suggestion: eat “fruits, vegetables, and farinaceous food, and the lighter kinds of meat.” In 1858, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was 286 ppmv. Seven years earlier, Dr. John Gorrie, striving to cool down his malaria and yellow fever patients in Florida, patented the first ice-making machine (1851, 285 ppmv).
The first modern, electrical air condition system dates to 1902 (297 ppmv), when inventor Willis Carrier cooled and dehumidified the Sackett-Wilhelms Lithographic & Publishing Company in Brooklyn, New York. The publishing company was most concerned about humidity warping their paper supplies. Carrier is still a going concern.
A little over a century after Scientific American’s helpful hints, The Science News-Letter’s “Keeping Cool in Summer Heat” (1961: 318 ppmv) wasn’t so very different.
“If you suffer from heat frustration when the mercury hits the 90’s, a little scientific knowledge of summer heat can help your body temperature and state of mind remain well within the comfort zone,” the editors claim.
These hints were essential for those without air conditioning, that wonder of the twentieth century. Try to imagine cars, theaters, restaurants, the suburbs, office towers, apartment blocks, malls, et cetera, without A/C. The post-World War II population growth across the Sun Belt, stretching from Southern California to North Carolina, would most likely not have been possible without it.
In his exploration of how A/C transformed the South, Raymond Arsenault quotes a Floridian circa 1982 (341 ppmv).
“I hate air conditioning,” the woman confirmed. “It’s a damnfool invention of the Yankees. If they don’t like it hot, they can move back up North where they belong.”
But most people—in the South and elsewhere—welcomed A/C with a passion. Arsenault notes that historians tended to shy away from writing about the transformative power of air-conditioning on the South because they were leery of falling into an old climate-is-destiny paradigm. In the first three decades of the twentieth century, the South’s climate was held responsible for everything from the Southern drawl to plantation slavery. Climate determinism faded by mid-century (1950: 311 ppmv), as the “long hot summers” of the Civil Rights years transitioned into the “New South,” supposedly post-racial but definitely all indoor-cooled.
Reblog from Janet Logan
Thank you, Janet! I was playing with a post about this, and you made my job easy!
A Prayer for Resistance. Please join, if you will.
“A MAN!”: Lies Spread Over Olympic Fight Between Algerian And Italian
One of the best examples of anti-trans being wrong, she was a born woman, and showing the bigotry towards trans people he debunks in this very short video. I love it. J. K. Rowling chimed in as she always does to hate on trans, yet again she was wrong this was an assigned at birth woman. These haters against trans people do not care about facts or science, they want their hate, bigotry, and their feelings to be what is normal in society. I won’t ever watch or read anything by Rowling ever again. She doesn’t care, she is very wealthy and very rich. But she also doesn’t care the harm she does innocent people with her hate. Hugs. Scottie
Lost continent crucial in evolution of penguin wings
August 1, 2024 Evrim Yazgin
I love penguins!
New analysis of New Zealand fossils first uncovered in 1987 shows how penguin wings evolved.
The wing fragments were found near the town of Duntroon on New Zealand’s South Island, nearly 1,000km southwest of the Auckland.
The fossils come from a species called Pakudyptes hakataramea. It lived during the late Oligocene (34–23 million years ago). P. hakataramea is described for the first time in a study published in the Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand today.
Worldwide, the latter part of the Oligocene was characterised by a drying of the climate. Forests which dominated the continents, including Australia, were beginning to recede. Grasslands and prairies expanded, seeing the evolution of grazing animals.
New Zealand today is believed to be the lost, ancient continent of Zealandia breaking through to the surface. Tens of millions of years ago, Zealandia’s rocky shores and surrounding waters were a hotbed of evolutionary development.
Among the ancient marine and coastal life found in New Zealand are dolphins, seals, crabs and ancestors of tropicbirds.
New Zealand has also thrown up ancient penguin fossils. This includes the largest ever penguin which lived 55 million years ago, stood as tall as a person and weighed a whopping 150kg.
In fact, New Zealand seems to have been teeming with giant penguins. (snip-More)
https://cosmosmagazine.com/history/palaeontology/penguin-wing-fossils-zealandia/
Followup article on Vivian Wilson
I was gonna snip it, but I couldn’t find a good place to stop, and then I was at the end. Here it is:
By David Ingram
Vivian Jenna Wilson, the transgender daughter of Elon Musk, said Thursday in her first interview that he was an absent father who was cruel to her as a child for being queer and feminine.
Wilson, 20, in an exclusive interview with NBC News, responded to comments Musk made Monday about her and her transgender identity. On social media and in an interview posted online, Musk said she was “not a girl” and was figuratively “dead,” and he alleged that he had been “tricked” into authorizing trans-related medical treatment for her when she was 16.
Wilson said that Musk hadn’t been tricked and that, after initially having hesitated, he knew what he was doing when he agreed to her treatment, which required consent from her parents.
Musk’s recent statements crossed a line, she said.
“I think he was under the assumption that I wasn’t going to say anything and I would just let this go unchallenged,” Wilson said in a phone interview. “Which I’m not going to do, because if you’re going to lie about me, like, blatantly to an audience of millions, I’m not just gonna let that slide.”
Wilson said that, for as long as she could remember, Musk hasn’t been a supportive father. She said he was rarely present in her life, leaving her and her siblings to be cared for by their mother or by nannies even though Musk had joint custody, and she said Musk berated her when he was present.
“He was cold,” she said. “He’s very quick to anger. He is uncaring and narcissistic.”
Wilson said that, when she was a child, Musk would harass her for exhibiting feminine traits and pressure her to appear more masculine, including by pushing her to deepen her voice as early as elementary school.
“I was in fourth grade. We went on this road trip that I didn’t know was actually just an advertisement for one of the cars — I don’t remember which one — and he was constantly yelling at me viciously because my voice was too high,” she said. “It was cruel.”
Musk didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Wilson and her twin brother were born to Musk’s first wife, author Justine Musk. The couple divorced in 2008, and Wilson said her parents shared custody between their homes in the Los Angeles area.
Musk, 53, is among the wealthiest people in the world through his stakes in Tesla, where he’s CEO, and in SpaceX, which he founded. He has also become a significant political figure, having endorsed former President Donald Trump this month for another term in the White House. Musk has 12 children, including Wilson.
Now a college student studying languages, Wilson has never granted an interview before and has largely stayed out of public view. She did, however, attract attention in 2022 when she sought court approval in California to change her name and, in the process, denounced her father.
“I no longer live with or wish to be related to my biological father in any way, shape or form,” she said in the court filing.
She told NBC News that at the time, she was surprised by the media attention to the court filing, which she submitted when she was 18. She said in the interview that she stands by what she wrote, though she said she might have tried to be more eloquent had she known the coverage it would get.
Wilson said that she hadn’t spoken to Musk in about four years and that she refused to be defined by him.
“I would like to emphasize one thing: I am an adult. I am 20 years old. I am not a child,” she said. “My life should be defined by my own choices.”
Musk threw a spotlight on Wilson on Monday by speaking about their relationship in a video interview with psychologist and conservative commentator Jordan Peterson streamed live on X, saying he didn’t support Wilson’s gender identity.
“I lost my son, essentially,” Musk said. He used Wilson’s birth name, also known as a deadname for transgender people, and said she was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.”
And in a post on X, Musk said Monday that Wilson was “born gay and slightly autistic” and that, at age 4, she fit certain gay stereotypes, such as loving musicals and using the exclamation “fabulous!” to describe certain clothing. Wilson told NBC News that the anecdotes aren’t true, though she said she did act stereotypically feminine in other ways as a child.
Wilson also addressed Musk’s recent comments in a series of posts Thursday on the social media app Threads.
“He doesn’t know what I was like as a child because he quite simply wasn’t there,” she wrote. “And in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness.”
“I’ve been reduced to a happy little stereotype,” she continued. “I think that says alot about how he views queer people and children in general.”
In recent years, Musk has taken a hard–right turn into conservative politics and has been waging a campaign against transgender people and policies designed to support them. This month, he said he was pulling his businesses out of California to protest a new state law that bars schools from requiring that trans kids be outed to their parents.
On X, Musk has for years criticized transgender rights, including medical treatments for trans-identifying minors, and the use of pronouns if they are different from what would be used at birth. He has promoted anti-trans content and called for arresting people who provide trans care to minors.
After Musk bought X, then known as Twitter, in 2022, he rolled back the app’s protections for trans people, including a ban on using deadnames.
Musk told Peterson that Wilson’s gender transition has been the motivation for his push into conservative politics.
“I vowed to destroy the woke mind virus after that, and we’re making some progress,” he said.
Wilson was also mentioned in a biography of Musk by author Walter Isaacson — a book that she told NBC News was inaccurate and unfair to her. The book refers to her politics as “radical Marxism,” quoting Musk’s sister-in-law Christiana Musk, but Wilson said she’s not a Marxist, though she said she does oppose wealth inequality. The book also calls her by her middle name, Jenna.
Wilson said Isaacson never reached out to her directly ahead of publication. In a phone interview Thursday, Isaacson said he had reached out to Wilson through family members.
Christiana Musk didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday.
Wilson told NBC News that for years she had considered speaking out about Musk’s behavior as a parent and as a person but that she could no longer remain silent after his comments Monday.
She said she had never received an explanation for why her father spent so little time with her and her siblings — behavior that she now views as strange.
“He was there, I want to say, maybe 10% of the time. That’s generous,” she said. “He had half custody, and he fully was not there.”
“It was just a fact of life at the time, so I don’t think I realized just how abnormal of an experience it was,” she added.
Wilson said she came out twice in life: once as gay in eighth grade and a second time as transgender when she was 16. She said that she doesn’t recall Musk’s response the first time and that she wasn’t present when Musk heard from others that she was transgender, because by then the pandemic had started and she was living full-time with her mother.
“She’s very supportive. I love her a lot,” Wilson said of her mom.
The pandemic was a chance to escape Musk’s cruelty, she said.
“When Covid hit, I was like, ‘I’m not going over there,’” she said. “It was basically very lucky timing.”
Musk told Peterson in the interview that he had been “tricked” into signing documents authorizing transgender-related medical treatment for Wilson — an allegation Wilson said isn’t true.
“I was essentially tricked into signing documents for one of my older boys,” Musk said, using her birth name.
“This was before I had really any understanding of what was going on, and we had Covid going on,” he said, adding that he was told she might commit suicide.
Wilson said that, in 2020, when she was still a minor at 16, she wanted to start treatment for severe gender dysphoria but needed the consent of both parents under California law. She said that her mother was supportive but that Musk initially wasn’t. She said she texted him about it for a while.
“I was trying to do this for months, but he said I had to go meet with him in person,” she said. “At that point, it was very clear that we both had a very distinct disdain for each other.”
When she eventually went and gave him the medical forms, she said, he read them at least twice, once with her and then again on his own, before he signed them.
“He was not by any means tricked. He knew the full side effects,” she said.
She said she took puberty blockers before she switched to hormone-replacement therapy — treatments that she said were lifesaving for her and other transgender people.
“They save lives. Let’s not get that twisted,” she said. “They definitely allowed me to thrive.”
She said she believed the requirements to obtain such treatments remain onerous, with teenagers pressured to say they’re at extreme risk of self-harm before they’ll be approved. She said she felt judged by Musk and Peterson, in the Monday interview, for not being at a high enough risk in their eyes.
“I have been basically put into a point where, to a group of people, I have to basically prove whether or not I was suicidal or not to warrant medically transitioning,” she said. “It’s absolutely mind-boggling.”
Scottie's Playtime 