Professor Nicky Eshtiaghi, lead researcher at RMIT University, and her colleagues have created a magnetic nano-pillared adsorbent that can remove smaller microplastics at a much faster rate than any currently existing technologies.The adsorbent takes the form of a powder additive, which is added to water and attracts microplastics and dissolved pollutants. "This whole process takes one hour, compared to other inventions taking days," says Ph.D. candidate Muhammad Haris, the study's first author.It can also "remove microplastics that are 1,000 times smaller than those that are currently detectable by existing wastewater treatment plants," according to Eshtiaghi."The results suggest a promising pathway to addressing the removal of mixed contaminants from water in a single process and highlighting its potential in resolving critical industrial and domestic wastewater treatment," the team's study abstract reads.
This year, Canadian manufacturing company Xaba unveiled Project Arrow, an electric concept car with a completely 3D-printed chassis, CleanTechnica reports.Until now, cars have been manufactured using specialized machinery that cuts, bends, and welds metal into shape. Because the process uses so many individual, specific machines, manufacturers need huge factories for production.The capabilities of these machines also limit design possibilities. For example, if a designer wanted to make a component hollow to reduce weight, but a hollow version is harder to make than a solid version, the final car might be manufactured with the heavier solid component to save time and money.Now, 3D printing offers an alternative. This technology uses materials like plastic, resin, metal, or concrete that start out as a liquid but cool to become solid.According to Explain That Stuff!, the printer builds this material into a 3D shape by adding flat layers one after another. The shape is controlled by a computer, programmed with a model of the finished product. With the right equipment and materials, this method can print anything from toys to houses.
The first stage of steel production is to produce iron, which exists in the earth as iron oxides. Iron oxides are mined and then put into very high-temperature blast furnaces with coal to cause the oxygen molecules in the former to bind with the carbon in the coal. The byproduct is carbon dioxide, a key global warming gas.Helios has discovered that sodium -- used to make table salt -- can be used instead of carbon-rich coal. The sodium molecules connect with the oxygen molecules in the iron ore to form sodium oxide. Sodium oxide can then be separated back into sodium and oxygen, and the latter is released into the air. The sodium can then be reused.The idea of using sodium in the steel industry came out of the company's ongoing work on a lunar oxygen-producing reactor, aimed at separating oxygen from iron oxides found in lunar rock.
Instead of building solar farms on undeveloped land, Conniff argues that we should be building them on top of or over existing structures, such as parking lots."The appeal of parking lots and rooftops," he writes, "is that they are abundant, close to customers, largely untapped for solar power generation, and on land that's already been stripped of much of its biological value."Building a canopy with a solar array over a parking lot, he goes on to say, would not only generate clean energy for the surrounding area, but would also provide shade for the cars and people underneath.
So far, attempts by Fox lawyers to have the Smartmatic case dismissed have fallen on stony ground. Last week the New York state supreme court in Manhattan gave the green light for the case to proceed against Fox News, the Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, the former business anchor Lou Dobbs and Trump's former lawyer Rudy Giuliani.Smartmatic, a global election technology company headquartered in London, lodged its defamation suit in February 2021. "The Earth is round," was the complaint's striking opening sentence. "Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election ... "The complaint goes on to argue that, contrary to these indisputable facts, Fox News broadcast a series of blatant lies in support of Trump's stolen election conspiracy theory. "Defendants did not want Biden to win the election. They wanted President Trump to win re-election ... They also saw an opportunity to capitalize on President Trump's popularity by inventing a story."To prop up that story, the lawsuit claims, Fox needed a villain. That villain was Smartmatic.Smartmatic claims that more than 100 false statements were broadcast by Fox News hosts and guests. Smartmatic was falsely said to have been involved in 2020 election counts in six battleground states - in fact, it was present only at the count in Los Angeles county.Fox broadcast that Smartmatic shared its technology with Dominion, when in fact the two companies had no communication and regarded each other as rivals. Smartmatic was in cahoots with foreign governments in a conspiracy to rig the vote for Biden, Giuliani said on Bartiromo's show - a claim that the company disputes as false and defamatory.Fox also described Smartmatic as having been founded in Venezuela at the behest of corrupt dictators. In fact, it was founded by Antonio Mugica and Roger Piñate in 2000 in Boca Raton, Florida, in the wake of the "hanging chad" fiasco, with the aim of using technology to restore people's faith in election results.
For example, a vital oversight hearing to finally learn why a social media company kept Republicans from seeing pictures of Hunter Biden's penis, prompting a group of former Twitter executives to be hauled in and accused of pedophilia, all while getting yelled at for having community moderation, not to mention being threatened with prison time for unspecified crimes. Sadly for Republicans, the most memorable moment was when we learned that Donald Trump was really mad about a celebrity being mean to him on Twitter, with this memorable exchange being officially entered into the Congressional Record:NAVAROLI: Would you like me to give the direct quote?FROST: Yeah.NAVAROLI: Please excuse my language. This is a direct quote, but Chrissy Teigen referred to Donald Trump as a "[**** *** ****."A moment in congressional hearing history unmatched since Watergate, when Alexander Butterfield admitted that Richard Nixon had a recording system in the Oval Office.
Just before 7 am on March 3, Danny Lemoi posted an update in his hugely popular pro-ivermectin Telegram group, Dirt Road Discussions: "HAPPY FRIDAY ALL YOU POISONOUS HORSE PASTE EATING SURVIVORS !!!"Hours later, Lemoi was dead.For the last decade, Lemoi had taken a daily dose of veterinary ivermectin, a dewormer designed to be used on large animals like horses and cows. In 2021, as ivermectin became a popular alternative COVID-19 treatment among anti-vaxxers, he launched what became one of the largest Telegram channels dedicated to promoting the use of it, including instructions on how to administer ivermectin to children.
or you may be mercy-killed."To be abundantly clear, it is not a crime to give someone the finger," the judge wrote in his Feb. 24 ruling. "Flipping the proverbial bird is a God-given, Charter-enshrined right that belongs to every red-blooded Canadian. It may not be civil, it may not be polite, it may not be gentlemanly. Nevertheless, it does not trigger criminal liability."Police arrested Epstein, a 45-year-old teacher, on May 18, 2021, as he returned home from a walk. Earlier in the day, he had run into a neighbour -- Michael Naccache -- who lived on the same Beaconsfield, Que., street and with whom he had previous conflicts.Naccache, 34, swore at Epstein and threatened him while holding a power tool "in a menacing way," the judge found. Epstein replied with two middle fingers and continued walking.
Over 250 US-based financial investors warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that his government's planned judicial overhaul could chill new infusions of cash into Israel, the latest signal of potentially devastating economic fallout should the controversial legislation go through."Many leaders in the business community will feel compelled to reevaluate their reliance on Israel as a strategic destination for investment, sourcing talent, building engineering centers, and maintaining intellectual property," read a letter signed by 255 investors, according to Channel 12 news, which first reported on the missive Sunday."It will also become increasingly difficult to advocate for and defend Israel internationally."
Let us put it this way. To remember someone at their best is to choose to tell the story that redeems them. It is an act of forgiveness. It acknowledges that there is more than one story that you could tell about this person, and perhaps one of those stories is more complete, but the other is kinder. To remember someone at their best is to tell the kind story.In 1 Corinthians, St. Paul says that "love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." This may seem a mysterious and, frankly, absurd claim. What could it possibly mean for love to believe all things? Besides, St. Paul tells us in the same breath that love keeps no record of wrongs, which sounds equally ridiculous. All of us certainly keep a record of wrongs--perhaps many records of wrongs. But could "believing all things" mean acting against our instincts? Could "believing all things" mean choosing to think of everyone--even our enemies--at their best?At the climax of David Copperfield, Steerforth makes a request of David. By making that request, Steerforth acknowledges that he has done things--or in this case, that he will do things--that overshadow the memory of the kind protector who saved young David all those years ago. He may commit sins that transform him from an object of love into an object of hatred. He may never repent, and if that happens, David will be forced to make a choice: Will I honor my old friend's last request of me, even though it is difficult? Will I choose to think of him at his best?After Steerforth drowns in a terrible storm, he washes up on the shore. Poor David is the first to find the dead body of his old friend; as the narrator, he tells us, "I saw him lying with his head upon his arm, as I had often seen him lie at school." David sees Steerforth as he was at school--mature, good, kind, protective. At this low point, when David has every reason to hate Steerforth for ruining the life and reputation of a dear friend, he continues to think of Steerforth at his best.The trouble is that it is much easier to remember someone at their worst, especially if they were once dear to you. It is significantly less painful to denigrate someone in your mind, to reduce all their fullness and complexity down to a single event or action, than it is to remember their best, most noble moments. It hurts to miss a real human being. But if you remember a monster, you succeed in deadening your own pain. No one misses a monster. These are the stories, however, that will make us hard and bitter when we retell them, even just to ourselves. On the other hand, there are stories that will make us richer, fuller, wiser--and more open to love. When we fail to think of others at their best, we are really marring our own souls.
US health agencies have sent a letter to the surgeon general of Florida, warning that his claims about Covid-19 vaccine risks are harmful to the public.The letter was sent to Joseph Ladapo on Friday by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). It was a response to a letter Ladapo wrote to the agencies last month, expressing concerns about what he described as adverse effects from Covid vaccines."It is the job of public health officials around the country to protect the lives of the populations they serve, particularly the vulnerable," said the federal letter, which was signed by the FDA commissioner, Robert Califf, and CDC director, Rochelle Walensky."Fueling vaccine hesitancy undermines this effort."Ladapo was appointed by the Republican governor of Florida, the prospective Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis, in 2021.
In a speech at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, last month that some Republicans saw as a warm-up to a presidential stump speech, Scott criticized President Biden, accusing him of exploiting "the painful parts of America's past." But he also struck a note of unity, describing himself as a "messenger of hope.""I see 330 million Americans getting back to celebrating our shared blessings again, tolerating our differences again and having each other's backs again," Scott said. "This is what I see. A new American sunrise. Even brighter than before."Doug Heye, a Republican strategist who first met Scott during his time in the House, said that the South Carolina senator isn't the kind of person to back down from a fight, but described him as a kind of happy warrior who could offer voters a much-needed change from Trump's combativeness."There are those voters, but that's not the entire party or the entire primary voter makeup," Heye said. "He is aggressive and he is a fighter, but he does so with a smile on his face. And after six years of Donald Trump, there's an exhaustion for a lot of people who want new voices and fresh voices, and I think Scott represents that very well."