240 rare books worth over $3.3 million returned to owners after ‘Mission: Impossible’ burglary in UK

The men, who were jailed in Britain last month, were dubbed the “Mission: Impossible” gang by UK media because of their acrobatic technique, reminiscent of a famous scene in the 1996 movie in which Tom Cruise is lowered into a vault on a rope.

Updated: Nov 12, 2020
Reuters | Posted by: Sanya Budhiraja
London

A combination picture shows recovered stolen books in unknown location.(via REUTERS)

A trove of 240 rare books worth over $3.3 million have been returned to their owners after they were stolen in London by a gang of Romanian men who abseiled down from a warehouse ceiling to avoid setting off alarms.

The men, who were jailed in Britain last month, were dubbed the “Mission: Impossible” gang by UK media because of their acrobatic technique, reminiscent of a famous scene in the 1996 movie in which Tom Cruise is lowered into a vault on a rope.

A recovered stolen book is seen in unknown location. ( via REUTERS )

The antique books, considered to be of international cultural significance, include works by English scientist Isaac Newton and Spanish artist Francisco Goya and relating to Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, the Metropolitan Police said.

The burglary took place in January 2017 at a warehouse in Feltham, west London, where the books, which belonged to specialist dealers and had been shipped from Italy and Germany, were being stored on their way to a U.S. book fair.

After cutting holes in the perimeter fence to gain access to the warehouse, the burglars cut holes into skylights in the roof and lowered themselves down onto shelves, thus avoiding activating sensor-based alarms located by the doors.

Recovered stolen books are seen in unknown location in Romania. ( via REUTERS )

The burglary was one of 12 carried out by the gang, linked to the Clamparu organised crime group based in the Iasi region in eastern Romania, at various locations around Britain over a two-and-a-half year period.

In meticulously planned operations, gang members would fly into the country to commit burglaries then fly out shortly afterwards. Twelve of them were jailed for terms ranging from three years and eight months to five years and eight months.

London’s Metropolitan Police worked on the case for over three years with counterparts in Romania and Italy.

After the books were discovered hidden underground at a house in Romania, they were transported to the country’s National Library in Bucharest, where four of the five owners travelled last month to recover them.


A combination picture shows recovered stolen books in unknown location. ( via REUTERS )

“It was lovely to see the joy of each victim being reunited with these irreplaceable books,” said Detective Inspector Andy Durham, adding that one of the book dealers, Alessandro Bado, had reacted by declaring with great gusto: “Tonight we drink like lions.”

Why Pfizer’s ultra-cold COVID-19 vaccine will not be at the local pharmacy any time soon

By Carl O’Donnell


NEW YORK (Reuters) - Work to distribute the experimental COVID-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE is gearing up after the companies announced successful interim data earlier on Monday, but it will not be coming to local pharmacies for the general public any time soon.

The data, which sent U.S. stocks to record highs [.N], showed that the two companies’ experimental vaccine is 90% effective at preventing COVID-19. They are still awaiting data on safety, which could come later this month.

Pfizer and BioNTech need to get regulators to sign off on the shot before it can start shipping vaccines to those considered most in need by government. Healthcare workers and people living in nursing homes will likely top that list.

But the vaccine’s complex and super-cold storage requirements are an obstacle for even the most sophisticated hospitals in the United States and may impact when and where it is available in rural areas or poor countries where resources are tight.

The main issue is that the vaccine, which is based on a novel technology that uses synthetic mRNA to activate the immune system against the virus, needs to be kept at minus 70 degrees Celsius (-94 F) or below.

“The cold chain is going to be one of the most challenging aspects of delivery of this vaccination,” said Amesh Adalja, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.

“This will be a challenge in all settings because hospitals even in big cities do not have storage facilities for a vaccine at that ultra-low temperature.”

Indeed, one of the most prestigious U.S. hospitals, the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, said it does not currently have that capability.

“We’re talking about a vaccine that needs storage at minus 70 or 80. That’s a tremendous logistical issue not only in the U.S. but outside the Western world,” said Dr Gregory Poland, a virologist and vaccine researcher with the Mayo Clinic.

“We’re a major medical center and we don’t have storage capacity like this. That will be true for everybody. This is a logistical obstacle.”

Pfizer spokeswoman Kim Bencker said the company was working closely with the U.S. government and state officials on how to ship the vaccine from its distribution centers in the United States, Germany and Belgium around the globe.

The detailed plan includes using dry ice to transport frozen vaccine vials by both air and land at their recommended temperatures for up to 10 days, she said.

See graphic on COVID-19 global tracker: here

A person walks past the Pfizer Headquarters building in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., November 9, 2020. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

ON ICE

State and local healthcare providers are responsible for storing and administering vaccines once delivered.

They can be kept in an ultra-low temperature freezer for up to six months, or for five days at 2-8 degrees C – a type of refrigeration commonly available at hospitals, Bencker said.

The Pfizer storage units can also be refilled with ice for up to 15 days, she said.

But shots will spoil in around five days at normal refrigeration temperatures of slightly above freezing. BioNTech CEO Ugur Sahin told Reuters the companies are analyzing if they can extend that for two weeks.

The vaccine of Moderna Inc, which is working on a vaccine based on similar technology, does not need to be stored at such a low temperature.

Other vaccines including ones from Johnson & Johnson and Novavax Inc can be stored at 2-8 degrees C, the temperature of a regular refrigerator.

EXPANSION

Northwell Health, a major hospital system in New York, is expanding its ultra-cold storage capacity. Although it is possible to deploy the vaccine before it spoils, Northwell Chief Pharmacy Officer Onisis Stefas said the hospital decided the freezer access would ensure a smooth rollout.

The cold storage requirements could impede Pfizer’s ability to reach rural healthcare systems and nursing homes, or less wealthy nations, which may not have the funds for the refrigeration units, experts said.

“If Pfizer’s is the only vaccine to be authorized in the next few months, we do worry about equity when it comes to spreading it to rural areas,” said Claire Hannan, executive director at the Association of Immunization Managers, a nonprofit organization representing state and local public health officials who handle vaccines.

Ultra-cold freezer supplies are already limited as hospitals scramble to stock up, Stefas said.

Some states have said they have a shortage of ultra-cold freezers, according to public documents that states filed with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

New Hampshire has purchased extra ultra-cold freezers and like other states is lobbying the Trump administration for additional funds, the documents show.

California has also said ultra-cold freezer supplies are limited and roughly half of the states’ health departments are looking in to purchasing or leasing additional cold storage supplies.

It has proposed building a distribution network of ultra-cold freezers, including mobile vaccination clinics, to reach underserved areas around the state. California said it will not provide vaccine supplies to facilities without adequate cold-storage capabilities.

Without the extra equipment, doctors will have a dilemma: store vaccines in standard refrigerators and deploy all 975 doses in each Pfizer vaccine container in less than five days or restock them with dry ice and open them only twice a day to extend the vaccines’ life span, Hannan said.

“I think it will be difficult, but based on the task and how important it is, people will do the best to their ability to make that happen,” Stefas said.

(This story corrects to clarify in the 24th paragraph that the Association of Immunization Managers is not a lobbying group)

Reporting by Carl O’Donnell in New York; additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Caroline Humer, Josephine Mason and Matthew Lewis


Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principle

Q&A: Studying the capture and storage of carbon dioxide during waste incineration

by Nils Røkke, Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The capture and storage of CO2, also known as CCS, from our waste is essential because this refuse is responsible for a large proportion or our cities' greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, the technology represents a relatively inexpensive abatement cost.


In order to achieve the targets set out in the Paris Agreement, aiming to keep global warming to within 1.5 degrees higher than pre-industrial levels, it will not be sufficient simply to reduce emissions. We must also actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere and establish a balance between emissions and removal.

Not all industries will be able to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. The agricultural sector is a good example. But if we are to achieve total net zero emissions during the next 30 years, we have to capture one CO2 molecule and remove it from the atmosphere for every molecule we release. With between 50 and 70 percent biological material currently being processed in energy recycling plants employing waste incineration, this will make a considerable difference to our carbon accounting.

What does 'climate-positive' mean?

Let's say that you throw away a set of IKEA's Ivar storage shelves and it ends up in an incineration plant. The shelves contain CO2 extracted from the air by the wood while the tree was living. So, in principle, if we incinerate this wood the entire cycle is carbon neutral. The same amount of the gas is released on incineration as was originally taken up. But if we capture and remove the CO2 during incineration, we also extract some CO2 from the cycle and make a positive contribution to the carbon budget.

Of course there will be hurdles to negotiate, but these are also created by humans. How we calculate and reward climate-positive approaches is currently unclear, not least within the EU. I have been in Brussels for some years now, and the debate continues to rage about how fast it is possible to store the CO2 locked in biological material. It is argued that this will take longer than the 30-year perspective leading up to 2050.

"During the next 30 years, we have to capture one CO2 molecule and remove it from the atmosphere for every molecule we release."


There is some misunderstanding, and a constructive dialog is being launched on this topic as a basis for the formulation of regulations governing sustainable investment. Or "sustainable taxonomy" as it is referred to in EU jargon.

But we mustn't let such things prevent us from taking action. There is no doubt that climate-positive systems have to be implemented if we are to achieve carbon neutrality. Globally, we have to remove between five and ten billion tons net of greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere by 2050. In Norway, the figures are about the same, but here at home we're talking millions, not billions of tons. Our ability to achieve this will depend on the measures that we implement and which of these has the greatest impact.

And we have to bear in mind that such measures involve technologies that must be applied in addition to, and not simply replace, other initiatives such as electrification and lifestyle changes.

What does Brussels have to say about CCS?

Brussels views CCS as a necessary measure. There is no doubt that it is essential if we are to achieve the decarbonisation of industry and the transport sector, to provide heat and power, and to open the door to the use of hydrogen, which can also be generated from biomass using CCS. But we need countries that can lead the way, with vision that extends beyond the end of their noses. In my view, our towns and cities must be closely linked to the Norwegian full-scale project. And why not establish links to other urban initiatives taking place across Europe? We all know that passivity is much more expensive for society than taking proactive steps.

We must link CCS to wealth generation

The smart things to do are to develop a CO2 transport infrastructure across national boundaries and link CCS to wealth generation and climate-positive initiatives. In this regard, our waste materials are very well suited to such concepts, and it is quite simply amazing to see that others as well as Norway are taking up the challenge. This is not a race to be first to the finishing line considering that we need a few thousand full-scale plants in operation if we are to meet the targets set out in the Paris Agreement.

As President of the European Energy Research Alliance (EERA). I have been observing the ups and downs of the CCS debate. The challenge of climate change and the overriding political ambition within the EU to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 demand that we implement all the measures we can lay our hands on. I often say that the most expensive climate change mitigation measures are the ones we don't implement. We all know that passivity is much more expensive for society than taking proactive steps.

"And we have to bear in mind that such measures involve technologies that must be applied in addition to, and not simply replace, other initiatives such as electrification and lifestyle changes."

The significance of CCS cannot be overestimated

Research shows that we need systems to address greenhouse gas emissions in all industrial sectors. We need zero emissions electrons, zero emissions molecules and CCS. And these will all be linked together by energy—one of contemporary society's most important prerequisites.

The significance of having or not having implemented a full-scale CCS project in Norway cannot be overestimated.

I want to see a joint effort in the field of CCS based on the full-scale project, involving our towns and cities and the industrial and waste management sectors, and I want it to be closely linked to similar initiatives being carried out in Europe. I receive calls from Austria, wondering when they can deliver CO2 to Equinor's transport and storage project Northern Lights.

In a broader context, CCS is all about the future of the Norwegian welfare system

It is no less than considering the benefits of having a car—with or without roads to drive it on. Our towns and cities can make all the difference. In this respect, the assessments being made by the Norwegian Environment Agency's Klimakur ("Climate Cure") project investigating emissions mitigation measures will be well worth following up. We must lose no time in focusing our ambitions.

In Brussels, we are sick and tired of hearing about ambitions linked to CCS. We want to see action and genuine investment in real projects. In a broader context, CCS is all about the future of the Norwegian welfare system. The debate about jobs and towns and cities is welcome—but now we really have to take action!


Explore further Bus emission target unreachable without immediate move to electric

Provided by Norwegian University of Science and Technology

On environmental protection, Biden's election will mean a 180-degree turn from Trump policies

by Janet McCabe, The Conversation
  

President-elect Joe Biden opposes proposals to allow uranium mining around the Grand Canyon, which the Trump administration supports. 

Credit: Michael Quinn, NPS/Flickr, CC BY

The Trump administration has waged what I and many other legal experts view as an all-out assault on the nation's environmental laws for the past four years. Decisions at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department and other agencies have weakened the guardrails that protect our nation's air, water and public lands, and have sided with industry rather than advocating for public health and the environment.


Senior officials such as EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler assert that the Trump administration has balanced environmental regulation with economic growth and made the regulatory process less bureaucratic. But former EPA leaders from both Democratic and Republican administrations have called this administration's actions disastrous for the environment.

Rolling back laws and hollowing out agencies

The Trump administration has used many tools to weaken environmental protection. For example, Trump issued an executive order in June 2020 to waive environmental review for infrastructure projects like pipelines and highways.

The EPA has revised regulations that implement the Clean Water Act to drastically scale back protection for wetlands, streams and marshes. And the administration has revoked California's authority under the Clean Air Act to set its own standards for air pollution emissions from cars, although California is pressing ahead.

The Trump administration has also changed agency procedures to limit the use of science and upended a longstanding approach to valuing the costs and benefits of environmental rules. It has cut funding for key agency functions such as research and overseen an exodus of experienced career staff.
In their final campaign debate, President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden offered sharply contrasting views of how environmental protection affects the economy.

A quick about-face


I expect that the Biden administration will quickly signal to the nation that effectively applying the nation's environmental laws matters to everyone—especially to communities that bear an unfair share of the public health burden of pollution.

With a closely divided Senate, Biden will need to rely primarily on executive actions and must-pass legislative measures like the federal budget and the Farm Bill to further his environmental agenda. Policies that require big investments, such as Biden's pledge to invest US$400 billion over 10 years in clean energy research and innovation, can make a big difference, but may be challenging to advance. Coupling clean technology with infrastructure and jobs programs to build back better is likely to have broad appeal.

I expect that officials will move quickly to restore the role of science in agency decision-making and withdraw Trump-era policies that make it harder to adopt protective regulations. A Biden EPA will end efforts to impede states like California that are moving ahead under their own authority to protect their residents, and will make clear to career staff that their expertise is valued.

The agency is likely to withdraw or closely scrutinize pending Trump proposals, such as the ongoing review of the current standard for fine-particle air pollution. Officials also will review pending litigation, much of which involves challenges to Trump administration rule revisions and policies, and decide whether to defend any of them. There likely won't be many.

One area where EPA can quickly change course is enforcement. Biden's climate and energy plan pledges to hold polluters accountable, and his administration reportedly plans to create a new division at the Justice Department focused on environmental and climate justice. Biden has promised greater attention to environmental justice communities, where neighborhoods are heavily affected by concentrations of highly polluting sources such as refineries and hazardous waste sites.

Many of these actions can be done quickly through new executive orders or policy changes. Regulatory changes will take longer. In my view, Biden's biggest challenge will be deciding what to prioritize. His administration will not be able to do (or undo) everything. Even with a revitalized career workforce and political staff all rowing in the same direction, there won't be enough bandwidth to address all the bad policies enacted in the past four years, let alone move forward with a proactive agenda focused on public health protection and environmental justice.


Explore further  5 things Joe Biden can do to fight climate change—without Congress' help
Provided by The Conversation

Biden's climate plan could reduce global warming by about 0.1°C

by Marco Tedesco, Earth Institute at Columbia University

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

"From words to deeds" could and should be Joe Biden's slogan for climate. Now that the United States, and the world with them, have (at least temporarily) averted the danger of a presidency that would have brought our planet to its knees, it is time to look forward and take action. In that regard, Biden's election could reduce global warming by about 0.1°C, making the goals of the Paris Agreement more attainable.

The Paris Agreement was signed in 2015 by 195 countries, including the United States, and aims to contain the increase in the average global temperature within 1.5°C above the pre-industrial average. The United States' exit from the agreement, which officially took place on November 5, was one of the Trump administration's strategies to undermine the work of its predecessor and, at the same time, favor the economic interests of fossil fuel corporations and lobbies.

Biden can—and hopefully will soon—bring the United States back into the agreement, although this can happen no earlier than February 19, at least a month after his inauguration, as the agreement provides that the request remains filed and under observation for a month.

In the election campaign, Biden pledged to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, with an investment of $1.7 trillion to reduce U.S. emissions over the next 30 years by about 75 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide. According to the Climate Action Tracker (which evaluates governments' activities regarding greenhouse gas emissions, and how these activities can influence the achievement of the Paris Agreement), this reduction would be sufficient to avoid a temperature increase of about 0.1°C by 2100. The undertaking is obviously not easy, as the United States is the largest economy in the world and the second largest producer of greenhouse gasses. Its status as a major polluter, together with Trump's international stance, has increasingly isolated the United States, leaving room for countries such as China, which recently announced a zero-emissions target by 2060, to become world leaders on tackling climate change.

According to the Climate Action Tracker, China's initiatives would prevent global temperatures from rising between 0.2°C and 0.3°C. China is joined by Japan, South Korea and the European Union. The "return" of the United States in international climate-related efforts would have enormous consequences on our planet, as the "coalition" of countries committed to achieving zero emissions around 2050 is responsible for more than half of global emissions. Of course, goodwill is not enough, especially since Biden will likely face stiff opposition from Republicans, both regionally and nationally, as he tries to "clean up" the chaos Trump has created over the past four years.

It is also good to remember, in this regard, that part of the battle is fought through legal appeals and judicial challenges which, in the end, will be resolved by a strongly conservative Supreme Court built ad hoc by Trump.

Unfortunately, even at best, the commitments of the United States and China would be sufficient to reduce global warming to only about 2.3°C above pre-industrial levels—well above the 1.5°C limit imposed by the Paris Agreement. Thus, an even greater effort is needed. The image that these countries evoke, especially the United States, is that of a newborn learning to take its first steps in an environmentalist world that, given the situation, requires running faster and faster even before learning to walk. There aren't many alternatives anymore.


Explore further US formally exits Paris pact aiming to curb climate change

Provided by Earth Institute at Columbia University

This story is republished courtesy of Earth Institute, Columbia University http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu.

Meeting a 100-year-old challenge could lead the way to digital aromas

by Weizmann Institute of Science

Smells may be measured by their distance from one another. 

Credit: Weizmann Institute of Science

Fragrances—promising mystery and intrigue—are blended by master perfumers, their recipes kept secret. In a new study on the sense of smell, Weizmann Institute of Science researchers have managed to strip much of the mystery from even complex blends of odorants, not by uncovering their secret ingredients, but by recording and mapping how they are perceived. The scientists can now predict how any complex odorant will smell from its molecular structure alone. This study may not only revolutionize the world of perfumery, but eventually lead to the ability to digitize and reproduce smells on command. A proposed framework for odors, created by neurobiologists, computer scientists, and a master perfumer and funded by a European Commission initiative called Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Open, was published in Nature.


"The challenge of plotting smells in an organized and logical manner was first proposed by Alexander Graham Bell over 100 years ago," says Prof. Noam Sobel of the Weizmann Institute's Department of Neurobiology. Bell threw down the gauntlet, saying: "We have very many different kinds of smells, all the way from the odor of violets and roses up to asafoetida. But until you can measure their likenesses and differences you can have no science of odor." His challenge remained unmet—until now.

This century-old challenge highlighted the difficulty in fitting odors into a logical system, as there are millions of odor receptors in our noses, with hundreds of subtypes, each shaped to detect particular molecular features. Our brains potentially perceive millions of smells in which these single molecules are mixed and blended at varying intensities; thus, mapping this information has been a challenge. But the study by Prof. Sobel and his team, led by graduate student Aharon Ravia and Dr. Kobi Snitz, found that there is an underlying order to odors. They reached this conclusion by adopting Bell's concept—namely, to describe not the smells themselves, but rather the relationships between smells as they are perceived.

In the initial experiment, the researchers created 14 aromatic blends, each comprising about 10 molecular components, and presented them two at a time to nearly 200 volunteers. The participants rated the pairs of smells on how similar they seemed, ranking them on a scale ranging from 'identical' to 'extremely different.' By the end of the experiment, each volunteer had evaluated 95 pairs.

To translate the resulting database of thousands of perceptual similarity ratings into a useful layout, the team refined a physicochemical measure they had previously developed. In this calculation, each odorant was represented by a single vector that combines 21 physical measures (polarity, molecular weight, etc.). To compare two odorants, each represented by a vector, the scientists measured the angle between the vectors to reflect the perceptual similarity between them. Pairs of odorants with a short angle distance between them were predicted to be similar, and those with high angle distance were predicted to be different.


To test this model, the team first applied it to data collected by other researchers, primarily a large study in odor discrimination by Caroline Bushdid and colleagues in the lab of Prof. Leslie Vosshall at the Rockefeller University in New York. The Weizmann team found that their model and measurements accurately predicted the Bushdid results: Odorants with low angle distance between them were difficult to discriminate; those with high angle distance were simple. Encouraged by the model's accuracy in predicting data collected by others, the Sobel group continued to test for themselves.

The team concocted new scents and invited a fresh group of volunteers to smell them, again using their method to predict how this set of participants would rate the pairs—at first 14 new blends and then, in the next experiment, 100 blends. The model performed exceptionally well. In fact, the results were in the same ballpark as those for color perception—sensory information that is grounded in well-defined parameters. This was particularly surprising considering that every person likely has a unique complement of smell receptor subtypes, which can vary by as much as 30% across individuals.

Because the 'smell map,' or metric, predicts the similarity of any two odorants, it can also be used to predict how an odorant will ultimately smell. For example, any novel odorant that is within 0.05 radians (a unit of measurement for angles) or less from the odor of banana will smell exactly like banana. As the novel odorant gains distance from banana, it will smell banana-ish, and beyond a certain distance, it will stop resembling banana.

The Sobel lab is now developing a web-based tool. These techniques not only predict how a novel odorant will smell, but can also synthesize odorants by design. For example, one can take any perfume with a known set of ingredients and, using the map and metric, generate a new perfume with no components in common with the original perfume, but with exactly the same smell. Such creations in color vision—namely, non-overlapping spectral compositions that generate the same perceived color—are called color metamers, and the Sobel team has produced olfactory metamers.

The findings are a significant step toward realizing a vision of study coauthor Prof. David Harel of the Weizmann Institute's Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, who also serves as Vice President of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities: Enabling computers to digitize and reproduce smells. In addition to being able to add realistic flower or sea aromas to vacation pictures on social media, giving computers the ability to interpret odors in the way that humans do could have an impact on environmental monitoring and the biomedical and food industries, to name a few. Still, master perfumer Christophe Laudamiel, who is also a co-author of the study, remarks that he is not concerned for his profession just yet.

Prof. Sobel says, "One-hundred years ago, Alexander Graham Bell posed a challenge. We have now answered it: The distance between rose and violet is 0.202 radians (they are remotely similar), the distance between violet and asafoetida is 0.5 radians (they are very different), and the difference between rose and asafoetida is 0.565 radians (they are even more different). We have converted odor percepts into numbers, and this should indeed advance the science of odor."


Explore further Using artificial intelligence to smell the roses
More information: Aharon Ravia et al. A measure of smell enables the creation of olfactory metamers, Nature (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2891-7
Journal information: Nature


Provided by Weizmann Institute of Science

Russian scientists developed sensor for detecting toxic substances in water bodies

by South Ural State University

Credit: pixabay

SUSU scientists, with their colleagues from Belgium and Egypt, have developed and tested a sensor for environmental monitoring. The device reveals insecticides in water. The research results have been published in Scientific Reports.

Accumulation of insecticides in the environment

Insecticides are important for agriculture. These are toxic substances that decompose in water and soil for a long time and have a negative effect on animals, birds and people when they accumulate in large quantities. Neonicotinoids dominate the market because of their selective toxicity. The most popular of these substances is imidacloprid.

Over nearly two decades, the presence of imidacloprid in the environment has increased, and monitoring it has become especially relevant. Current methods such as chromatography are effective. However, they require lengthy preparation of samples, a large amount of solvent and expensive equipment.

Researchers at South Ural State University, jointly with their foreign colleagues, proposed using the electrochemical method for this purpose. They were the first who introduced a capacitive sensor based on molecular imprinted polymers that can detect imidocloprid in water.

"Capacitive sensors belong to the category of impedametric sensors. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first molecularly imprinted, polymer-based capacitive sensor for detecting imidocloprid in water. Moreover, a two-step approach with a regeneration step between each analysis was first introduced to determine intermodulation distortions. This added the possibility of sequential use of each electrode 32 times," said Nataliia Beloglazova, senior researcher at the Nanotechnology Research and Education Center.

Credit: SUSU

The sensor was developed at SUSU, and their colleagues from the Ghent University, Belgium (Center of Excellence in Mycotoxicology and Public Health, Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences) also participated in its development.

Molecularly imprinted polymers were synthesized and then immobilized on an electrode surface. The two-step procedure prevented damage to the electrodes and ensured that no template molecules were present in the resulting particles. In addition, nonimprinted polymers were produced.

"The binding properties of the synthesized molecularly imprinted and nonimprinted polymers were tested using solution chromatography of tandem mass spectrometry. The proposed sensor showed a linear range of 5–100 µM with a detection limit of 4.61 µM," Nataliia Beloglazova said.

The sensor with a detection element was developed on the basis of another sensor proposed for testing by an international team. Testing was carried out using water samples from the Nile in Egypt. Therefore, research assistance was also provided by the staff of the Reference Materials Laboratory, National Institute of Standards (NIS), Giza, Egypt, and Beni-Suef University, Beni-Suef, Egypt.


Explore further Rapid detection of toxic compounds
More information: Suzan El-Akaad et al. Capacitive sensor based on molecularly imprinted polymers for detection of the insecticide imidacloprid in water, Scientific Reports (2020).

DOI: 10.1038/s41598-020-71325-y

Journal information: Scientific Reports

Central Florida lands hub for Jetsons-like 'flying cars'




The nation's first regional hub for "flying cars" is being built in central Florida and once completed in five years, the vehicles will be able to take passengers from Orlando to Tampa in a half hour, officials said Wednesday.


The Tavistock Development Corp. said it was constructing a Jetsons-like aviation facility in Orlando's Lake Nona area, the mixed-use planned community it built. Lake Nona already is home to several medical and research facilities.

The aircraft will be supplied by Lilium, a Germany-based aviation company that manufacturers the industry's only five-passenger "electric vertical takeoff and landing" aircraft. At the moment, the Lilium Jets can travel up to 185 miles (nearly 300 kilometers) on a one-hour charge.

Passengers wanting a ride on the aircraft will be able to book reservations via their phones in a way similar to ride-share companies Uber and Lyft, officials said.

The vehicles flying and landing out of the Lake Nona Vertiport will accommodate four passengers and a pilot. The cost will be similar to a first-class fare, though the price will likely go down as the service becomes more popular, officials said.

Unlike airplanes and helicopters, the vehicles offer quick point-to-point personal travel, at least in principle. They could do away with the hassle of airports and traffic jams.

Battery sizes, air traffic control and other infrastructure issues are among the many potential challenges to commercializing them, according to experts. Experts compare the buzz over flying cars to the days when the aviation industry got started with the Wright brothers and the auto industry with the Ford Model T.

The Lake Nona Vertiport has applied for approval from the Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Transportation.


Explore further Japan's 'flying car' gets off ground, with a person aboard (Video)

US nuclear lab partnering with utility to produce hydrogen

by Keith Ridler

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded just under $14 million for an attempt to build a hydrogen-energy production facility at a nuclear power plant in Minnesota with the help of a nuclear research lab in Idaho.

Idaho National Laboratory and Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy will work on devising and building the facility, most likely at Xcel Energy's Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Station in Red Wing, Minnesota.

The project announced this week is part of the Energy Department's strategy to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions using nuclear power to generate carbon-free energy. Vehicles using hydrogen fuel cells, for example, produce only water vapor and warm air as exhaust. Hydrogen could also be used in industry, such as in the production of steel.

Xcel Energy officials said they have a large amount of wind-generated energy they supply to customers. Officials said the Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Station could make hydrogen when wind energy meets customer demand for electricity. Officials said the hydrogen would initially be used at the power plant but could ultimately be sold to other industries.

According to its website, Xcel Energy provides energy to millions of homes and businesses across eight Western and Midwestern states, and has a goal of being 100% carbon-free by 2050.

"Now we'll be the first company to produce carbon-free hydrogen at a nuclear plant using this technology," Tim O'Connor, Xcel Energy chief generation officer, said in a statement.

The effort planned at the Minnesota plant will use a process called high-temperature steam electrolysis. Water is made out of three atoms: one oxygen and two hydrogen. The proposed project would use Prairie Island Nuclear Generating Station's steam and electricity to split water and separate the hydrogen. Idaho National Laboratory will help with technical aspects of the project.

The Energy Department said it hopes the result will be a functioning hydrogen plant capable of operating as a hybrid system that can also test electrolysis technologies.

"This is a game-changer for both nuclear energy and carbon-free hydrogen production for numerous industries," said the Energy Department's Richard Boardman in a statement. "It offers a view of the energy structures of the future, which will integrate systems to maximize energy use, generator profitability and grid reliability all while minimizing carbon emissions."

Hydrogen is abundant in the environment and is stored in water, methane and organic matter. The primary challenge is economically extracting it and being competitive in the marketplace. Most of the hydrogen currently produced in the nation comes from combining high-temperature steam with natural gas.

Officials say nuclear-produced hydrogen has the advantage of being carbon-free. That's opposed to fossil fuels such as natural gas, coal and oil that produce greenhouse gases that cause global warming.

The Energy Department says that nearly all hydrogen produced in the U.S. is used for refining petroleum, processing food, producing fertilizer or treating metals.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the United States at the end of 2019 had 96 operating commercial nuclear reactors at 58 nuclear power plants in 29 states. They produce about 20% of the nation's electricity. Most of the reactors are decades old, and some are having a tough time competing economically with other forms of energy production.


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Satellites to track trains and promote rail safety

by European Space Agency
  

Credit: European Space Agency

Trains in Italy will be tracked and controlled via space to ensure they run in a safe, punctual and environmentally friendly way.

The project could see satellite technology become a standard way to run trains across the whole of Europe.

The Italian national railway company, Gruppo FS Italiane, is installing systems that will use satellites to monitor the speed of trains on its lines and automatically control the signals ahead to slow any engine that is going too fast. The satellites will add capacity to the existing trackside radio systems.

The satellites will also monitor the distances between trains to avoid any collisions. The system will be more energy efficient than existing measures and therefore better for the environment.

Trains making the 40-kilometer journey between the Italian cities of Novara in the Piedmont region and Rho in the Lombardy region will be the first to use the system, which was originally conceived in 2012 and has since undergone an extensive test campaign.

The project, called ERSAT, is part of the European Rail Traffic Management System, an EU initiative to integrate the separate national rail networks into a coherent Europe-wide system. Once it has demonstrated its success, it will allow satellite technologies to be certified for use under the scheme. This would increase the efficiency of the system, cutting costs and electricity use, and thereby reducing carbon emissions.

The ERSAT project is being implemented in coordination with the Italian Space Agency, with the support of ESA, and with the contribution of the EU's European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency.


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Provided by European Space Agency