Month: May 2018

Enlarge / Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA), left, and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) in 2014. (credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

In the last couple of years, companies like Uber, Waymo, and GM's Cruise have been testing more and more self-driving vehicles on public roads. Yet important details about those tests have been kept secret.

Two Democrats senators are determined to change that. Last Friday, they sent out letters to 26 car and technology companies seeking details about their testing activities—part of a broader investigation into the safety of driverless vehicles.

"In March, a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona was tragically struck and killed by a vehicle operating under autonomous technology," wrote Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) in their letter to Uber. "The latest fatality has raised many questions about the processes companies have in place to guard public safety when testing this type of technology on public roads."

Enlarge / A multi-walled carbon nanotube. (credit: NASA)

Carbon capture and storage involves the separation of carbon dioxide from other gases, after which it's pumped underground for storage. It's likely to be needed to reach our climate goals without simply shutting down many existing fossil fuel plants, and it will be essential if we overshoot our emissions goals by mid-century. But it also adds significant costs to building and operating fossil fuel plants, which explains why the process has never gotten past the point of sporadic demonstration projects.

An alternative to storage involves turning the carbon that's captured into a useful product—something the XPrize has made one of its challenges. Doing so requires two things: overcoming the chemical stability of CO₂ and making a product that sells at a profit. We recently stumbled across a bit of creative chemistry that turns carbon dioxide from the air into a product that should be profitable: high-quality carbon nanotubes.

Something in the air

Our current methods for making carbon nanotubes typically rely on hydrocarbons. The chemistry of this source helps drive the tube-forming reactions, since it can be energetically favorable to remove the hydrogens from these molecules. Unfortunately, this doesn't get rid of CO₂, and it's only good for emissions in the sense that some of the carbon ends up in nanotubes instead of the air.

Enlarge / A multi-walled carbon nanotube. (credit: NASA)

Carbon capture and storage involves the separation of carbon dioxide from other gases, after which it's pumped underground for storage. It's likely to be needed to reach our climate goals without simply shutting down many existing fossil fuel plants, and it will be essential if we overshoot our emissions goals by mid-century. But it also adds significant costs to building and operating fossil fuel plants, which explains why the process has never gotten past the point of sporadic demonstration projects.

An alternative to storage involves turning the carbon that's captured into a useful product—something the XPrize has made one of its challenges. Doing so requires two things: overcoming the chemical stability of CO₂ and making a product that sells at a profit. We recently stumbled across a bit of creative chemistry that turns carbon dioxide from the air into a product that should be profitable: high-quality carbon nanotubes.

Something in the air

Our current methods for making carbon nanotubes typically rely on hydrocarbons. The chemistry of this source helps drive the tube-forming reactions, since it can be energetically favorable to remove the hydrogens from these molecules. Unfortunately, this doesn't get rid of CO₂, and it's only good for emissions in the sense that some of the carbon ends up in nanotubes instead of the air.

Enlarge / NASHVILLE, TENN.: President Donald Trump introduces Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who is running for US Senate, during a rally at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium on May 29, 2018. (credit: Getty Images | Drew Angerer )

Net neutrality foe Marsha Blackburn's quest for a US Senate seat got a plug yesterday from President Donald Trump, who endorsed Blackburn at a campaign rally where he also criticized his various enemies, including "Crooked Hillary."

"[Blackburn] is a great woman," Trump told a crowd at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium. "We need Marsha in the Senate to continue the amazing progress and work that we've done over the last year and a half. There has never been an administration, and even some of our enemies are begrudgingly admitting this, that has done what we've done in the first year and a half."

Rep. Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is one of the most outspoken opponents of strict net neutrality rules in the House of Representatives and chairs a key subcommittee that oversees telecommunications. She is seeking the Republican nomination for one of Tennessee's Senate seats.

Enlarge / NASHVILLE, TENN.: President Donald Trump introduces Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who is running for US Senate, during a rally at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium on May 29, 2018. (credit: Getty Images | Drew Angerer )

Net neutrality foe Marsha Blackburn's quest for a US Senate seat got a plug yesterday from President Donald Trump, who endorsed Blackburn at a campaign rally where he also criticized his various enemies, including "Crooked Hillary."

"[Blackburn] is a great woman," Trump told a crowd at the Nashville Municipal Auditorium. "We need Marsha in the Senate to continue the amazing progress and work that we've done over the last year and a half. There has never been an administration, and even some of our enemies are begrudgingly admitting this, that has done what we've done in the first year and a half."

Rep. Blackburn (R-Tenn.) is one of the most outspoken opponents of strict net neutrality rules in the House of Representatives and chairs a key subcommittee that oversees telecommunications. She is seeking the Republican nomination for one of Tennessee's Senate seats.

Enlarge / These plankton apparently didn't mind living in a still-warm seafloor crater. (credit: John Maisano/University of Texas )

Usually, new studies of the dino-killing mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous provide another view into just how bloody awful it was. But if you’re a glass-half-full kind of person, it’s interesting to think about how quickly life recovered—not on timescales relevant to an individual organism, necessarily, but in terms of species and ecosystems.

A research cruise recently drilled a rock core into the Chicxulub Crater where an asteroid fell 66 million years ago. Coring the deeper rock helped show test models of the impossibly jello-like behavior of the bedrock during the impact, but there are also sedimentary rocks on top that were formed some time after the collision.

Researchers who have looked elsewhere have noticed that life recovered more slowly in the Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic than in other ocean basins, taking about 300,000 years. One hypothesis to explain this is that concentrations of toxic metals were high near the impact crater. If that’s true, recovery should be slowest at ground zero. But that’s not what a huge team led by the University of Texas at Austin’s Christopher Lowery found when they examined rocks that might record the first few years after the asteroid hit.

Enlarge / These plankton apparently didn't mind living in a still-warm seafloor crater. (credit: John Maisano/University of Texas )

Usually, new studies of the dino-killing mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous provide another view into just how bloody awful it was. But if you’re a glass-half-full kind of person, it’s interesting to think about how quickly life recovered—not on timescales relevant to an individual organism, necessarily, but in terms of species and ecosystems.

A research cruise recently drilled a rock core into the Chicxulub Crater where an asteroid fell 66 million years ago. Coring the deeper rock helped show test models of the impossibly jello-like behavior of the bedrock during the impact, but there are also sedimentary rocks on top that were formed some time after the collision.

Researchers who have looked elsewhere have noticed that life recovered more slowly in the Gulf of Mexico and North Atlantic than in other ocean basins, taking about 300,000 years. One hypothesis to explain this is that concentrations of toxic metals were high near the impact crater. If that’s true, recovery should be slowest at ground zero. But that’s not what a huge team led by the University of Texas at Austin’s Christopher Lowery found when they examined rocks that might record the first few years after the asteroid hit.

For light data users in the US, Google's cellular service, Project Fi, can be one of the best deals in mobile. It's $20 per month for unlimited calls and texts, plus $1 per 100MB of data you use (that works out to $10 per GB), with a "bill protection cap" (basically an unlimited plan) of $80. Coverage from Sprint, T-Mobile, and US-Cellular is all rolled into one super-carrier, multiple data SIMs are free, and you can text and leave voicemails from a PC.

The hard part is getting a compatible phone that works with Fi's multi-carrier setup. Previously, there was only Google's lineup of Pixel and Nexus phones, along with the Moto X4. Today, Google is announcing three new Fi-compatible phones: The Moto G6, LG G7 ThinQ, and the LG V35 ThinQ.