Long time readers of Found This Week will know I'm a big fan of both Tim Ferriss and Seth Godin, and as a result I was excited to listen to a recent interview with Seth Godin on The Tim Ferriss Show podcast. Seth has a unique ability to deliver wisdom wrapped up in empathy with a shot of motivation, and this interview did not disappoint.
Engineers at University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a method to generate electricity from air using two porous nanofilms that create an imbalance of charge between water droplets. Stacking this air-gen device could allow the technology to scale up to the kilowatt level of electricity generation.
This is Dolly Parton's world, we just live in it.Now that world is burning, so Dolly wrote a climate action song."Liar, Liar, The world's on fire, what you gonna do when it all burns down."
Scientists published a paper in the Energies journal that outlines how to use abandoned coal mine shafts as batteries. The Underground Energy Storage (UGES) system raises containers of sand raised to the top of the mine to store the energy, which when released to fall generate electricity. Scottish company Gravitricity have developed and tested a similar system.
Researchers at Penn State University have made a super paper bag that is stronger, resistant to getting wet, can be reused multiple times, and ultimately recycled as biofuel.
Researchers at MIT and the University of Michigan have developed fibers with engineered reflectivity that can be woven into fabrics, and scanned under infrared light that act as barcodes to help with sorting and recycling.
This fascinating Shortwave episode describes how American scientists working with Chinese farmers have successfully engineered a strand of perennial rice and harvested it over mutiple crop years. Rice usually has to be planted from seed each year, which is labour intensive and harmful to the health of farm land. This perennial rice regrows each year without having to replanted, while also rejuvenating the land.
