Similar to the process of producing clean water, one method China uses to attempt to reduce chronic smog pollution moves dirty air through a filtration system.
In Beijing, a Dutch invention cleans air using a 23-foot, cylindrical filtration tower powered by electricity from a coal-fired power plant. A 300-foot tower surrounded by coated greenhouses in Xian, Shaanxi province, is experimenting with a more complex process. In daylight hours, solar radiation heats polluted air in the greenhouses before it rises in the tower through a series of purifying filters and is released into a 3.86 square mile area. Thus far, the Xian tower, when treating severely polluted air, especially in winter when coal provides heat in the area, shows only a 15% reduction in the fine small particles most hazardous to health. Yet, Xian's developers have an ambitious plan to construct 1,640-foot anti-pollution towers, each surrounded by 11.6 square miles of greenhouses, in other Chinese cities.
Based on the Australian study mentioned in the earlier post, "Priority: Eliminate generating electricity from fossil fuels," coal-fueled power plants are the major source of pollution. These air filtration towers would seem to do the most good, if they were located in the vicinity of power plants.
Startups and traditional automakers throughout the world race to produce the electric cars that promise to eliminate a source of pollution, the fossil fuels that power today's cars and trucks. The challenge to up the percentage of electric passenger cars from less than 1% on the world's roads today to at least 33% by 2040 involves financing, designing, engineering, manufacturing, charging stations, searching for the lithium used in batteries, and marketing. China is the industry's acknowledged leader with Tesla in the U.S. and European automakers also in the hunt.
Although China is expected to continue to import lithium from South America's Argentina-Chile-Bolivia Belt (See the earlier post, "Technology's Hard Sell and the Public's Role in the Lithium-ion Battery Industry."), it has its own domestic supply. In the cold, thin air high in China's mountains between the Tibet Autonomous Region and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, mining in Chaerhan Salt Lake is on track to supply a plant that will produce 30,000 tons of lithium carbonate by 2020 or 2021 and eventually plants that produce 200,000 tons annually.
China also has ideas for creating charging methods to keep electric cars on the road away from home. When driving long distances, drivers could visit automated swap stations to switch their dying batteries for new ones in three minutes, or they could call mobile vans to come and recharge their dying batteries in ten minutes. (I cannot help but recall the toxic nano particles a high school student found, when her summer intern project at the University of Wisconsin studied the effects of decomposing lithium batteries. See the earlier post, "The Challenge of New Technologies: Prepare to Think.") By requiring foreign auto dealers to sell only electric cars and to provide charging options, China is in a position to restrict entry into the world's biggest market.
Showing posts with label nano particles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nano particles. Show all posts
Sunday, January 21, 2018
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
The Challenge of New Technologies: Prepare to Think
IBM recognized what the future would require by showing the lack of space planned for the "K" slipping down the side of its "THINK" signs. The need to think was on display at last night's poster and presentation session given by high school students who spent their summer in science labs and departments at the University of Wisconsin.
Students needed to be willing to expend a major effort just preparing for their experiments. One young woman dragged branches, plants, and flowers to the lab to find that birds need to be motivated by an attractive, secure area in order to breed. Multiple times a young man rowed a boat into the middle of a lake at night in order to scoop up water that showed what destroyed undesirable algae multiplied faster than the invasive species that destroyed the helpful algae remover. Another student had to find a sausage factory where he could procure the pig livers he needed to test how their properties changed during heating in a microwave. Various purifying procedures were needed before testing and careful math calculations were needed before a machine could emit radiation to attack tumors. Findings, such as the dangers of the toxic nano particles lithium batteries give off as they decompose, were preliminary but important.
Heading into the future, artificial intelligence (AI); robotics, CRISPR and other medical technologies; the relationship of technology, human values, and public policy; and other technical subjects will play a major role in lives throughout the world. Yet in recent elections, electorates have cast their votes based on emotion: anger about the rich who are getting richer while they're not, anger about their countries filling up with people who don't look like them, and anger about a perceived attack on their values.
Away from the disillusioned voters back home, members of the World Economic Forum (weforum.org) met in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, this week to discuss the impact of new technologies. Their discussions need to make it back home to those have to understand how they will be affected by the good and bad impacts these technologies will have on their lives.
However, you can't help but sympathize with anyone who tries to deal with the complexity and scientific jargon in an article about a technology, such as CRISPR-Cas9. First there is a description. CRISPR-Cas9 can genetically edit cells to improve crops and fight disease. In humans, if used to alter the genetic make-up of cells in an egg, sperm, or embryo, the same mutation will be transmitted from generation to generation. In order for the latter process to work, genes injected from outside need to be accepted by cells that store the germline, the biochemical unit of heredity.
Then, articles tout the benefits of the new technology. Pig organs could be produced without the genes that prevent transplants in humans. Malaria-carrying mosquitoes could be eliminated the way genetically altered Atlantic salmon already grow double the size of ordinary salmon in half the time. Diseases could be cured, even though the complex interrelationship of genes often makes this unlikely in many cases.
Articles frequently ignore problems associated with new technologies. It is up to the reader to ask, "Couldn't a rogue scientist use CRISPR-Cas9 to inject unhealthy mutations into human cells that would be transmitted from generation to generation?" Or might only wealthy people be able: to afford the cures that CRISPR-Cas9 technology could provide. While CRISPR-altered seeds produce uniform crops that can be harvested by machines, farmers in poor countries may not be able to pay for the annual purchase of patented hybrid seeds that grow food in drought conditions.
Some call the biomedical duel between China and the United States to achieve dramatic CRISPR-Cas9 results "Sputnik 2.0." On October 18, 2016 scientists at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, used CRISPR-Cas9 technology to see whether they could disable a gene in the patient's immune cells and reprogram the lung cancer patient's cells not only to resist but to fight back against the cancer. To date, results of the test are not known and neither are side effects. At the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Dr. Carl June also is about to use CRISPR editing to enable three genes in the immune cells of 18 cancer patients, who have not been helped by other treatments, to seek and destroy their cancerous tumors.
Guarding against technology bias also needs to keep up with fast-paced artificial intelligence (AI) developments. Joy Buolamwini's Algorithmic Justice League found facial-analysis software was prone to making mistakes recognizing the female gender, especially of darker-skinned women. AI is developed by and often tested primarily on light-skinned men, but recognition technology, for example, is promoted for hiring, policing, and military applications involving diverse populations.
Finally, we all need to think about and act on the guidelines, regulations, and other checks needed to keep up with the effects of rapidly progressing new technologies.
Students needed to be willing to expend a major effort just preparing for their experiments. One young woman dragged branches, plants, and flowers to the lab to find that birds need to be motivated by an attractive, secure area in order to breed. Multiple times a young man rowed a boat into the middle of a lake at night in order to scoop up water that showed what destroyed undesirable algae multiplied faster than the invasive species that destroyed the helpful algae remover. Another student had to find a sausage factory where he could procure the pig livers he needed to test how their properties changed during heating in a microwave. Various purifying procedures were needed before testing and careful math calculations were needed before a machine could emit radiation to attack tumors. Findings, such as the dangers of the toxic nano particles lithium batteries give off as they decompose, were preliminary but important.
Heading into the future, artificial intelligence (AI); robotics, CRISPR and other medical technologies; the relationship of technology, human values, and public policy; and other technical subjects will play a major role in lives throughout the world. Yet in recent elections, electorates have cast their votes based on emotion: anger about the rich who are getting richer while they're not, anger about their countries filling up with people who don't look like them, and anger about a perceived attack on their values.
Away from the disillusioned voters back home, members of the World Economic Forum (weforum.org) met in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, this week to discuss the impact of new technologies. Their discussions need to make it back home to those have to understand how they will be affected by the good and bad impacts these technologies will have on their lives.
However, you can't help but sympathize with anyone who tries to deal with the complexity and scientific jargon in an article about a technology, such as CRISPR-Cas9. First there is a description. CRISPR-Cas9 can genetically edit cells to improve crops and fight disease. In humans, if used to alter the genetic make-up of cells in an egg, sperm, or embryo, the same mutation will be transmitted from generation to generation. In order for the latter process to work, genes injected from outside need to be accepted by cells that store the germline, the biochemical unit of heredity.
Then, articles tout the benefits of the new technology. Pig organs could be produced without the genes that prevent transplants in humans. Malaria-carrying mosquitoes could be eliminated the way genetically altered Atlantic salmon already grow double the size of ordinary salmon in half the time. Diseases could be cured, even though the complex interrelationship of genes often makes this unlikely in many cases.
Articles frequently ignore problems associated with new technologies. It is up to the reader to ask, "Couldn't a rogue scientist use CRISPR-Cas9 to inject unhealthy mutations into human cells that would be transmitted from generation to generation?" Or might only wealthy people be able: to afford the cures that CRISPR-Cas9 technology could provide. While CRISPR-altered seeds produce uniform crops that can be harvested by machines, farmers in poor countries may not be able to pay for the annual purchase of patented hybrid seeds that grow food in drought conditions.
Some call the biomedical duel between China and the United States to achieve dramatic CRISPR-Cas9 results "Sputnik 2.0." On October 18, 2016 scientists at Sichuan University in Chengdu, China, used CRISPR-Cas9 technology to see whether they could disable a gene in the patient's immune cells and reprogram the lung cancer patient's cells not only to resist but to fight back against the cancer. To date, results of the test are not known and neither are side effects. At the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Dr. Carl June also is about to use CRISPR editing to enable three genes in the immune cells of 18 cancer patients, who have not been helped by other treatments, to seek and destroy their cancerous tumors.
Guarding against technology bias also needs to keep up with fast-paced artificial intelligence (AI) developments. Joy Buolamwini's Algorithmic Justice League found facial-analysis software was prone to making mistakes recognizing the female gender, especially of darker-skinned women. AI is developed by and often tested primarily on light-skinned men, but recognition technology, for example, is promoted for hiring, policing, and military applications involving diverse populations.
Finally, we all need to think about and act on the guidelines, regulations, and other checks needed to keep up with the effects of rapidly progressing new technologies.
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