Engineer, innovator, aerial dancer: NUS scientist flies through the air on silk as a hobby

Duong Hai Minh is so inspired by his art form that it gave him an idea that may help to solve the world’s plastic pollution problem. The series Wizards Of Tech meets this 46-year-old on a mission

Dr Duong Hai Minh has been working at the National University of Singapore for 10 years.


By Derrick A Paulo
By Sim Yee Lim
By Jonathan Chia

15 Dec 2020 

SINGAPORE: When physicist Isaac Newton discovered gravity, his eureka moment came as he was sitting in a garden, observing an apple fall.

In the case of National University of Singapore scientist Duong Hai Minh, it came after he was suspended in mid-air, doing swirls.

Duong led the research team who found a solution to the world’s plastic pollution problem — by turning plastic waste into aerogel, the lightest solid known to man and a material that insulates people against fire and cleans oil spills.

READ: A made-in-Singapore solution to the world's plastic waste problem

And he had this stroke of inspiration after flying through the air on aerial silks, a form of acrobatic dance performed while one is hanging from silk fabric.

“At the aerial silk (studio), I see people drink a lot of water after the exercise. And when I threw away my plastic bottle, I saw a lot of plastic bottles in the bin,” recalls the 46-year-old innovator.

“So I just wondered, can we recycle them into high-value material?


One A4-sized aerogel sheet can be made from one plastic bottle.

The result: The reinvention of aerogel, which had mostly been produced commercially from silica and commonly used for heat and sound insulation in buildings. Now it can be made into jackets that are more fire-resistant than conventional fire-fighting suits.

But what was this associate professor from the department of mechanical engineering doing on aerial silks in the first place?

“I tried different kinds of sports. I went to the gym, running, dancing, yoga, but I got bored … I like aerial silks because it’s a combination of various sports,” he tells the series Wizards Of Tech.

“It helps me to improve upper body strength, also (my) flexibility and my abs … Sometimes in the middle of the air, a eureka moment pops up in my mind.”

He started practising in 2013 and has been inspired by his weekend hobby ever since.

PHYSICS AND DANCE COMBINED

If you ask Duong, aerial silks are “in between an art and a science”. He says: “As long as you know about the science in the aerial silk tricks, you can master (them) more easily.”

And the first thing science helped him to understand was how to “defeat” gravity.

“When you (invert yourself) … you need to apply a force with your hand higher than the force of gravity to lift up your body. Then you can do the inversion,” he cites.

The second thing that is needed is momentum.

“When you rotate your body in the air, when you pull in your legs and your arms … rotational kinetic energy will be increased,” he says. “The spin of your body will be faster.

“When you extend your legs and arms back to the original (position), you can reduce the speed.”

Creating his own momentum.

Last but not least is friction, especially between the hands and the silk. In fact, it is “very important”, which is why some aerial dancers apply a drying lotion to “get a better grip on the fabric”.

“You can hang your body better in the air,” Duong adds.

However, he loves his art form not only because of the physics of it but also because he must “adapt to the music”.

“That means you can be a dancer,” he says. “This is the artiste; you need … some creativity as well. So that also helped me to become a (better) scientist.

“When you’re a scientist, (you) need to get creative in your technology or … research method to do it (your) own way. You don’t follow other people’s ways.”

Defeating gravity.


Aerial silks have also helped to train his focus as an engineer because up in the air, he has to focus on what he is doing and the technique. “Otherwise, (you) will injure yourself,” he adds.

“That also helps me when I go to work, because I need to focus on what I’m good at.”

ON A ROLL

The kind of innovation Duong is good at, which he gets ideas about during or usually after his aerial silk exercise, has to do with recycling waste into new material “to enhance human life”.

Converting plastic bottles into aerogel is but one of these breakthroughs. Since his team published their research on this in 2018, they have figured out how to make the world’s first aerogels from rubber tyres.





Aerogel made of rubber tyre fibres.

They filed a patent last year for their rubber aerogels, which could solve another environmental problem: Globally, about a billion car tyres are discarded every year — only 40 per cent are recycled, and the bulk are burnt, releasing toxic gases.

Next up is agricultural waste such as pineapple leaves. “Every kilogramme of pineapple ... will generate about three kilogrammes of pineapple leaf waste,” says Duong. “We can use it for baby diapers ... and food preservation.”

Pineapple aerogel treated with active carbon powder, for example, can keep fruits and vegetables from rotting for at least two weeks. “This can be used for preserving vegetables and fruits during transportation,” he points out.

There seems to be no stopping him on his aerogel roll. His team have also used soya bean residue, known as okara, to create another eco-aerogel that is in the process of commercialisation.

Pineapple leaf aerogel, made of natural fibre, is biodegradable and eco-friendly, like okara aerogel.

What has “surprised” his colleagues, however, is his aerial silk hobby, which they found out recently.

“They feel that I’m a little bit weird because I’m a professor working at the university,” he says with a laugh. “And they said, ‘We couldn’t believe that you can do this well.’”

His students found out about it too. “They gossiped about it,” he grins. “They came up to me and said, ‘Prof, I saw your aerial silk (video) on YouTube. And we like it.’ I said, ‘Oh, thank you.’”

Watch this episode of Wizards Of Tech here.


WATCH: Why aerial silk dance inspires this engineering innovator (3:44)

Novel public-private partnership facilitates development of fusion energy

DOE/PRINCETON PLASMA PHYSICS LABORATORY

Research News

 

IMAGE: PPPL PHYSICIST GERRIT KRAMER WITH CONCEPTUAL IMAGE OF SPARC FUSION REACTOR. view more 

CREDIT: COLLAGE AND KRAMER PHOTO BY ELLE STARKMAN/PPPL OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS. SPARC IMAGE COURTESY OF COMMONWEALTH FUSION SYSTEMS.

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) is collaborating with private industry on cutting-edge fusion research aimed at achieving commercial fusion energy. This work, enabled through a public-private DOE grant program, supports efforts to develop high-performance fusion grade plasmas. In one such project PPPL is working in coordination with MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a start-up spun out of MIT that is developing a tokamak fusion device called "SPARC."

The goal of the project is to predict the leakage of fast "alpha" particles produced during the fusion reactions in SPARC, given the size and potential misalignments of the superconducting magnets that confine the plasma. These particles can create a largely self-heated or "burning plasma" that fuels fusion reactions. Development of burning plasma is a major scientific goal for fusion energy research. However, leakage of alpha particles could slow or halt the production of fusion energy and damage the interior of the SPARC facility.

New superconducting magnets

Key features of the SPARC machine include its compact size and powerful magnetic fields enabled by the ability of new superconducting magnets to operate at higher fields and stresses than existing superconducting magnets. These features will enable design and construction of smaller and less-expensive fusion facilities, as described in recent publications by the SPARC team -- assuming that the fast alpha particles created in fusion reactions can be contained long enough to keep the plasma hot.

"Our research indicates that they can be," said PPPL physicist Gerrit Kramer, who participates in the project through the DOE Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) program. The two-year-old program, which PPPL physicist Ahmed Diallo serves as deputy director, aims to speed private-sector development of fusion energy through partnerships with national laboratories.

Well-confined

"We found that the alpha particles are indeed well confined in the SPARC design," said Kramer, coauthor of a paper in the Journal of Plasma Physics that reports the findings. He worked closely with the lead author Steven Scott, a consultant to Commonwealth Fusion Systems and former long-time physicist at PPPL.

Kramer used the SPIRAL computer code developed at PPPL to verify the particle confinement. "The code, which simulates the wavy pattern, or ripples, in a magnetic field that could allow the escape of fast particles, showed good confinement and lack of damage to the SPARC walls," Kramer said. Moreover, he added, "the SPIRAL code agreed well with the ASCOT code from Finland. While the two codes are completely different, the results were similar."

The findings gladdened Scott. "It's gratifying to see the computational validation of our understanding of ripple-induced losses," he said, "since I studied the issue experimentally back in the early 1980s for my doctoral dissertation."

Fusion reactions combine light elements in the form of plasma -- the hot, charged state of matter composed of free electrons and atomic nuclei, or ions, that comprises 99 percent of the visible universe -- to generate massive amounts of energy. Scientists around the world are seeking to create fusion as a virtually unlimited source of power for generating electricity.

Key guidance

Kramer and colleagues noted that misalignment of the SPARC magnets will increase the ripple-induced losses of fusion particles leading to increased power striking the walls. Their calculations should provide key guidance to the SPARC engineering team about how well the magnets must be aligned to avoid excessive power loss and wall damage. Properly aligned magnets will enable studies of plasma self-heating for the first time and development of improved techniques for plasma control in future fusion power plants.

###

Support for this research comes from Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Support for Kramer comes from the DOE Office of Science INFUSE program. Contributors to the project include physicists from PSFC; Aalto University in Espoo, Finland; and Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden.

PPPL, on Princeton University's Forrestal Campus in Plainsboro, N.J., is devoted to creating new knowledge about the physics of plasmas -- ultra-hot, charged gases -- and to developing practical solutions for the creation of fusion energy. The Laboratory is managed by the University for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science, which is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit energy.gov/science

Largest study of Asia's rivers unearths 800 years of paleoclimate patterns

The SUTD study will be crucial for assessing future climatic changes and making more informed water management decisions.

SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND DESIGN

Research News

 

IMAGE: MAP OF THE ASIAN MONSOON REGION; RIVER BASINS INVOLVED IN THIS STUDY ARE HIGHLIGHTED BY SUBREGION, RIVERS BELONGING TO THE WORLD'S 30 BIGGEST ARE SHOWN WITH NAMES INDICATED IN BLUE.... view more 

CREDIT: SUTD

813 years of annual river discharge at 62 stations, 41 rivers in 16 countries, from 1200 to 2012. That is what researchers at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) produced after two years of research in order to better understand past climate patterns of the Asian Monsoon region.

Home to many populous river basins, including ten of the world's biggest rivers (Figure 1), the Asian Monsoon region provides water, energy, and food for more than three billion people. This makes it crucial for us to understand past climate patterns so that we can better predict long term changes in the water cycle and the impact they will have on the water supply.

To reconstruct histories of river discharge, the researchers relied on tree rings. An earlier study by Cook et al. (2010) developed an extensive network of tree ring data sites in Asia and created a paleodrought record called the Monsoon Asia Drought Atlas (MADA). SUTD researchers used the MADA as an input for their river discharge model.

They developed an innovative procedure to select the most relevant subset of the MADA for each river based on hydroclimatic similarity. This procedure allowed the model to extract the most important climate signals that influence river discharge from the underlying tree ring data.

"Our results reveal that rivers in Asia behave in a coherent pattern. Large droughts and major pluvial periods have often occurred simultaneously in adjacent or nearby basins. Sometimes, droughts stretched as far as from the Godavari in India to the Mekong in Southeast Asia (Figure 2). This has important implications for water management, especially when a country's economy depends on multiple river basins, like in the case of Thailand," explained first author Nguyen Tan Thai Hung, a PhD student from SUTD.

Using modern measurements, it has been known that the behaviour of Asian rivers is influenced by the oceans. For instance, if the Pacific Ocean becomes warmer in its tropical region in an El Nino event, this will alter atmospheric circulations and likely cause droughts in South and Southeast Asian rivers. However, the SUTD study revealed that this ocean-river connection is not constant over time. The researchers found that rivers in Asia were much less influenced by the oceans in the first half of the 20th century compared to the 50 years before and 50 years after that period.

"This research is of great importance to policy makers; we need to know where and why river discharge changed during the past millennium to make big decisions on water-dependent infrastructure. One such example is the development of the ASEAN Power Grid, conceived to interconnect a system of hydropower, thermoelectric, and renewable energy plants across all ASEAN countries. Our records show that 'mega-droughts' have hit multiple power production sites simultaneously, so we can now use this information to design a grid that is less vulnerable during extreme events," said principal investigator Associate Professor Stefano Galelli from SUTD.

CAPTION

This "heat map" shows the reconstructed history of 62 river reaches (each row) over 812 years (each column). The stations are arranged approximately north to south (top down on y?axis) and divided into five regions as delineated in Figure 1: CA (Central Asia), EA (East Asia), WA (West Asia), CN (eastern China), SEA (Southeast Asia), and SA (South Asia).

China Sinopharm’s vaccine has 79% protection rate against COVID-19

30 Dec 2020 

BEIJING: A COVID-19 vaccine developed by a Beijing firm linked to Sinopharm has a protection rate of 79.34 per cent against the disease, the firm said in a statement on Wednesday (Dec 30).

Beijing Biological Products Institute said it had applied to the National Medical Products Administration for conditional approval of the inactivated coronavirus vaccine, a type of inoculation using particles of the pathogen.

The result is based on interim analysis of data from its Phase III clinical trial, but the firm did not give details such as the number of infections in the trial.

The efficacy of the Chinese vaccine candidate is lower than rival jabs developed by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna but a potential breakthrough in the battle to stem the pandemic in Asia.

READ: China Sinopharm's COVID-19 vaccine taken by about 1 million people in emergency use

China has been racing against to develop its own COVID-19 vaccines, with five already in large-scale Phase 3 clinical trials. But it has struggled to gain international trust for its vaccine candidates, hindered by a lack of transparency on test results.

It has also been slow to complete Phase 3 trials, which had to be conducted abroad due to China's success at curbing the spread of COVID-19 within its own borders.

Chinese officials have repeatedly assured the public of the vaccines' safety, claiming that there have been no serious adverse reactions.

More than 1 million people have already been vaccinated with unapproved vaccines in China under its emergency use programme, including frontline health workers, state-owned enterprise employees and workers planning to travel abroad.

READ: Chinese COVID-19 vaccines are poised to fill gap, but will they work?

The United Arab Emirates approved a Sinopharm vaccine earlier this month, becoming the first foreign country to approve a China-developed COVID-19 vaccine.

Beijing has pledged to share the vaccine at a fair cost - a potential boost for poorer Asian countries who are otherwise reliant on limited distribution offered by the COVAX scheme.

"China has made the firm commitment that after China's new coronavirus vaccines are completed and put into use, they will serve as a global public product and be supplied to the world at a fair and reasonable price," foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Friday.

"We will also give priority to developing countries for vaccines. This will be made through a variety of ways, including through donations and aid."

BOOKMARK THIS: Our comprehensive coverage of the coronavirus outbreak and its developments

Damaged nerves, scarred lungs, exhausted bodies: Some COVID-19 patients face a long haul that can last for months

by Emily Brindley, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

For Anna Lawrence, a history professor at Fairfield University, it started the third week of March.

Her symptoms were textbook—chest pain, difficulty breathing, fatigue, racing heart.

"It was pretty clearly COVID," she said.

Lawrence battled the virus, the constant tiredness and breathlessness, for a month until her symptoms began to let up. But then, she started to recover. Things seemed better. She felt almost out of the woods.

"Then I started to slip back again," she said. Lawrence went through the cycle four times—sick for a month or so, rebounding for a couple of weeks and then sick again. Each time, "I went right back to square one."

Lawrence is one of many across Connecticut and the country who are commonly referred to as "COVID-19 long-haulers"—thousands of people who contract the virus, and then battle its effects for months and months afterward.

Now, in her fourth cycle of COVID-19 symptoms, the chest pain and difficulty breathing seem to have dissipated. But they're replaced by an exhaustion so complete that she said it feels like a depression.

"Since March, I've spent more time in bed than I have upright," Lawrence said. "I can do something pretty normal, like wiping down counters, and I have to sit down and rest."

There's no one set of symptoms that defines a long-hauler—although many report extreme fatigue. There's also no one profile of a long-hauler. Physicians say they've seen people with severe COVID-19 cases, moderate cases and mild cases all become long-haulers.

At this point, with so much about COVID-19 and its long-term effects still unknown, medical experts say it's unclear if all or even most long-haulers will ever return to their pre-coronavirus health.

'I have never been more frightened'

For some long-haulers, COVID-19 hits like a truck—bringing severe illness and leaving them wondering if they'll even survive.

On the morning of March 12, Kathy Flaherty woke up with a fever. Eight days later, she was in the emergency room. It was COVID-19.

"It was terrifying," she said. "I have never been more frightened."

Flaherty, the executive director of the Connecticut Legal Rights Project, said there were times she asked her husband to label things and take them to the office, because she didn't know if she was going to survive.

After being discharged from the hospital and spending more time recovering at home, Flaherty said she started to realize that she probably wasn't going to get back to normal anytime soon.

"It just keeps dragging on, and then you're just stuck in this chronic stage," she said. "There's no further setback, but there's not further progress."

George Aiello, 77, was a full-time X-ray technician at Norwalk Hospital when he caught COVID-19 at work. He spent 37 days on a ventilator. In May, he was transferred from Danbury Hospital to Wallingford's Gaylord Hospital—but it was another seven months before he was discharged and sent home.

The most difficult part, Aiello said, was learning how to walk again.

"Like a baby," he said. "And here I am a grown man."

Sonya Huber, a creative writing professor at Fairfield University, has spent the past nine months dealing with mental health effects on top of long-hauler symptoms.

In her initial bout with COVID-19, which began in March, the threat of dying and the fear of the unknown pushed her into survival mode.

"I don't know if I was near death, but I consider it the equivalent of a near-death experience," Huber said. "I sort of shut down into crisis and kind of just really withdrew from feeling about it."

'A web of unhealthiness'

The COVID-19 diagnosis is often only the beginning for long-haulers.

Lawrence has lung damage and undifferentiated connective tissue disease, which is an autoimmune disease that she's still learning about. Both issues stem from COVID-19.

"It felt like this disease had planted a web of unhealthiness, and every time I went to a doctor it was another little sticky tendril wrapped around a leg," Lawrence said. "Now my body feels kind of bound up."

Aiello, after learning to walk again and being discharged back to his home, is still in physical therapy five times a week. Surgery on his throat has left his voice quiet and wheezing. Nerve damage to his hands means he can't make a fist. His heart races. His left shoulder aches.

"It's all part of COVID," Aiello said.

Flaherty's back lights up with burning pain, and she uses an inhaler to calm her lungs and medication to calm her stomach. Huber's aorta is dilated, her lungs are scarred and her blood pressure spikes at random times.

For all of them, coronavirus may have begun with classic symptoms—shortness of breath, coughing, fever—but it did not end there.

"It's a very weird thing to go from feeling like your body knows what it's doing ... and now I feel like I can't really trust it anymore," Lawrence said.

'Am I ever really going to recover?'

Long-haul COVID-19 is a relatively new phenomenon, by nature even more recent than COVID-19 itself.

Dr. Jordan Powner, a pulmonologist and critical care doctor at Hartford Hospital, said he would estimate about 10% to 15% of coronavirus patients become long-haulers. But he emphasized that that figure is an educated guess.

Powner said he and his colleagues are particularly worried about cardiac problems, and that there's some evidence that long-haulers may be more prone to heart disease and stroke.

But for now, he said, the extent of the long-term effects is just not knowable.

"We're kind of just catching the tip of the iceberg now," Powner said.

Dr. Jessica Abrantes-Figueiredo, the chief of infectious disease at Hartford's St. Francis Hospital, said she feels that long-haulers get overlooked when people talk about the toll of COVID-19.

"Yes, there's death," she said. "But then there are the people who are left behind with all these symptoms."

In recent weeks, Huber's long-hauler symptoms have started to ebb. She said she still worries what will happen when she goes back to pre-pandemic activity—"I'm wondering what that will do to my body and my energy levels"—but it seems she's slowly getting back to her old self.

Aiello, Flaherty and Lawrence haven't yet been able to say the same. All three worry that they might not be able to work like they used to.

Aiello, though 77, was working full time as an X-ray technician before he got sick. But going back to work at all now depends on his nerve-damaged hands.

Flaherty, who's still batting constant exhaustion, is limited to working half time.

"I'd give anything to be able to go back to work full time," she said.

And Lawrence said the constant exhaustion has impacted her work, too, even though she was able to teach during the fall semester. Her constant exhaustion has eaten away at her deadlines, and her brain fog has chipped away at her access to her memories.

As a historian, Lawrence is used to pulling up names and dates on command. But recently, she said, she'll listen back to her lectures and hear herself struggling to find the right words.

"Am I ever really going to recover?" she said. For now, doctors can't give her a sure answer.


Explore further The frightening uncertainty of long-haul COVID-19

Provided by Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Tips for making music good medicine

by From Mayo Clinic News Network, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Music has been a part of humanity for as long as humanity has existed. Archeologists have unearthed relatively complex bone instruments greater than 40,000 years old. Certainly, human ancestors likely were making music in more rudimentary ways even before this. It is no surprise then that music is so fundamental to development as humans and their continued psychological well-being.

There's no doubt the COVID-19 pandemic and the difficulties people all have experienced this year have taken a toll on mental health. Music is one tool to use ease the strain on your mental health, and help you to heal in the future.

No one can tell a person exactly how to enjoy music. This is because music preferences are as unique as each person.

Music therapy is field of medicine where music is used to treat various conditions, much as a physical therapist might treat a patient. You can use some of their techniques to inspire your own healing and manage your mental health. These techniques are wide ranging. No matter your preferences for music, you can make activities like these work for you.

Performing music often is more powerful than listening. If you have the skill, you should try to perform music. You don't need to be a classically trained musician, and you don't need an audience. Sure, you can sit down and play the piano, but belting out a tune in the shower or in your car likely is just as helpful. Whistling is performing music, too. Getting a group of people together outside, using social distancing, to play kazoos, rarely ends without laughter, which also is powerful medicine. However you do it, find a way to make music.

Music has always been a social bonding activity. If you aren't comfortable making your own music, you can make listening more powerful by listening together. With quarantine, this takes creativity. Try listening to a song together on Facetime with a friend or playing music that you and a neighbor enjoy. If you and another person have a song that you share as your special song, call him or her ― or send them the song to listen to ― and then call and talk when the song is done. If you are quarantined together, listen together.

Music often is linked to some of our deepest and most resilient memories and emotions. If you are feeling down, think back to music you listened to during a happier time. Often this is music from your youth. Whatever this music is, listen to it, and it may lighten the mood.

In many cultures, music and dance are closely linked, so much so that one seems incomplete without the other. So listen or perform music and dance. Do it with a family partner in your home if you can, but alone will do, and you don't need an audience for this either. We all need to move more than we do, even in normal times. While stuck in quarantine, this is doubly true, and evidence shows that exercise also improves mental health. There are many ways ― and no wrong way ― to move with music. Many places are offering things like online movement and dance classes, and other ways to move to music and connect to people online. You don't need anything fancy. If you can find a way to hear music and move your body to it, then do it.

There are many other ways to fit music into your lives. Let my suggestions be motivation for your own creativity. Music has always been a refuge for people during the most difficult times, and it can certainly help during the COVID-19 pandemic.

So sing, dance, play and connect to make each day a little better.


Explore further

Music-induced emotions can be predicted from brain scans

Provided by Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

©2020 Mayo Clinic News Network

For young Californians, climate change is a mental health crisis too

by Brian Contreras, Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Maddie Cole in eighth grade stopped running cross country. She'd competed the year before, but the air quality in her native Sacramento, California, was so bad that she got sick during a race; she soon learned she had asthma.

The next year the sky above Sacramento turned gray with smoke from the 2018 Camp fire. Maddie and her classmates went to school with masks on. "It felt," she said, "like a futuristic apocalypse."

The situation has only worsened as wildfires and their devastation have become so routine that she and her classmates are "just used to it," said Maddie, now 16 and a junior. This fall "it was just like, 'Yeah, California's on fire again. It's that time of year.'"

Neither the polluted air nor the wildfires punctuating Maddie's adolescence are random. Both are being exacerbated by climate change, and the future they portend has left Maddie feeling helpless, anxious and scared. Climate anxiety and other mental health struggles are rampant among Maddie's generation, according to experts who warn that young Californians are growing up in the shadow of looming catastrophe—and dealing with the emotional and psychological fallout that comes with it.

The scope of the problem is enormous.

The Earth's temperature has skyrocketed since the Industrial Age, fueled by human activity and accompanying greenhouse gas emissions. Dramatic reductions in those emissions, and in fossil fuel use, will be necessary to prevent temperatures from reaching a tipping point by 2030, the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned two years ago.

Without reducing those emissions, climate change will make natural disasters, food shortages and rising sea levels even worse, experts say. The world is not yet on track to make the changes necessary to ameliorate its worst effects.

Such dire predictions can affect mental health, particularly among young people. Polls have found that climate change-related stress affects daily life for 47% of America's young adults; over half of teenagers feel afraid and angry about climate change; and 72% of young adults are concerned that it will harm their community.

Climate depression played a central role in teenage activist Greta Thunberg's political awakening, and according to Varshini Prakash—executive director of youth-focused climate activism group the Sunrise Movement—it's not uncommon for her group to meet kids who have contemplated suicide over the climate crisis.

"Surveys have found that young people often experience more fear, sadness and anger regarding climate change than their older counterparts, as well as an increased sense of helplessness or hopelessness," said Hasina Samji, an assistant professor at Simon Fraser University who has explored the mental toll of climate change on young people, in an email. In particular, "areas that suffer direct, visible effects of climate change … have been observed to face acute impacts such as trauma, shock and PTSD."

Young Los Angeles residents described similar emotions and mental stress when contemplating the climate crisis. Kate Shapiro, 15, said humanity's selfishness, greed and "lack of foresight" about the warming planet contributes to her depression. Sarah Allen, 25, said she shudders in "real terror" when contemplating the plight of future generations. And Sam Jackson, 29, said the enormity of the problem leaves him feeling "exhausted."

To cope, many have become activists or taken steps to reduce their own effect on the planet. Some go vegetarian or vegan. Others have opted not to buy a car, even in car-centric Los Angeles, or are making plans to leave Los Angeles before the fires and droughts become unbearable. And a few said the looming environmental disaster has discouraged them from having children.

"As I've gotten to learn more about how much or how disproportionate an impact an additional American has … (I'm) less and less inclined to create a new person," said Elliott Lee, 26, of Los Angeles.

Others are throwing themselves into climate activism as a way to deal with the stress.

Lifestyle changes "empower individuals to feel like they can act," said Abby Austin, 23, the political lead for the Sunrise Movement's L.A. branch—echoing medical professionals who say that even small personal actions can help people feel like broader change remains possible.

Getting involved with activism can serve a similar function. Many young Californians said volunteering with climate advocacy groups such as the Sunrise Movement or for politicians who have made climate change a central plank in their platforms has given them a sense of purpose.

"A lot of the people who are in Sunrise," Austin said, "are literally organizing out of climate anxiety."


Explore further

Majority of US adults believe climate change is most important issue today

Provided by Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

©2020 Los Angeles Times.

Wind powers more than half of UK electricity for first time

THE DESIGNER WAS SCARED BY PINK FLAMINGOS

Britain intends to rely heavily on offshore wind power as part of its efforts to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 in order to help meet its commitments under the Paris climate accord

Wind power accounted for more than half of Britain's daily generated electricity on Saturday in the wake of Storm Bella, according to energy giant Drax.


The percentage of wind power in the country's energy mix hit a record 50.67 percent on Saturday, the company said over the weekend, beating the previous record of 50 percent in August.

"For the first time ever (on Saturday), amid #StormBella, more than half of Great Britain's electricity was generated by the wind," Drax Group tweeted.

It added: "This is the first time ever wind has supplied the majority of the country's power over the course of a whole day."

The encouraging news comes ahead of COP26, the UN's global climate change summit, which will be held in Glasgow next year.

The British government wants offshore wind farms to provide one third of the country's electricity by 2030, as part of its strategy to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 to help meet its commitments under the Paris climate accord.

The UK has also placed nuclear power at the heart of its low-carbon energy policy.

"Britain has experienced a renewables revolution over the last decade with the growth of biomass, wind and solar power," Drax said.

Added to the brightening picture, National Grid's Electricity System Operator (NGESO) division declared Tuesday that this year was a historic year for UK renewables.

"2020 was the greenest year on record for Britain's electricity system, with average carbon intensity—the measure of CO2 emissions per unit of electricity consumed—reaching a new low," NGESO said in a statement.

National Grid also revealed that on Christmas Day, December 25, the share of coal in the UK electricity mix stood at zero for the first time.

That compared with just 1.8 percent the previous year—and 20 percent in 2009.


Explore furtherRenewables overtake hydrocarbons in UK electricity generation: study

© 2020 AFP

How coronavirus made 2020 the year of the electric bike

by Ashley Cooper, Angie Page and Jessica E Bourne, 

The Conversation

DECEMBER 29, 2020

Credit: Halfpoint/Shutterstock

Walking and cycling gained a higher profile than ever in 2020 as a result of the pandemic. Governments around the world encouraged individuals to go on foot or take their bikes where possible instead of using crowded public transport, and invested in widescale cycling infrastructure to help them do so.

In the UK, the link between obesity and poorer coronavirus outcomes and the country's new obesity strategy led to doctors prescribing cycling to improve patients' health.

While manufacturers and retailers reported a rise in bicycle sales and cycling in general during the pandemic, there remain many people who may not feel fit enough to cycle very far (or at all), have a long commute, or live in hilly places.

For these people, bicycles that provide electrical assistance for the rider when pedalling, known as electric bikes or e-bikes, have proved an attractive option because they make cycling easier. As a result, sales of e-bikes also boomed in 2020, with manufacturers struggling to keep up with the demand.

The advantages of e-bikes

Requiring less effort to ride, e-bikes allow the user to carry more luggage than conventional cycles, and are often used for utilitarian purposes such as shopping or commuting, as well as for recreation. E-bike owners have been found to cycle more frequently and for longer distances than conventional cyclists.

In Europe, e-bikes represent one of the fastest growing segments of the transport market, with sales in Germany in 2018 accounting for 23.5% of all bikes sold, while more than half of the adult bikes sold in the Netherlands in 2018 were electric.

That was before the pandemic sent numbers through the roof. Now, industry groups say sales of e-bikes in Europe could double in the next five years.

A replacement for cars

Car travel is an essential part of everyday life for many people, but has a major impact on the environment through air pollution, particularly from congested traffic. As half of all car journeys in the UK are between one and five miles in length, substituting many of them with e-cycling is an achievable aim.

To explore the influence of e-cycling on travel, we conducted a scoping review of previous research. In 42 studies examining the impact of e-bike use on other travel modes, the proportion of car journeys substituted after people bought e-bikes ranged from 20% to as high as 86%. Adoption of e-cycling can therefore contribute at some level to reducing congestion, greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.

Who benefits from e-bikes?

We have also researched the health benefits of e-bikes in a 2018 systematic review of studies. In 17 studies involving a range of groups, we found that e-cycling provided physical activity of at least moderate intensity, which was lower than the intensity elicited during conventional cycling, but higher than that during walking. E-cycling can therefore contribute to meeting physical activity recommendations and increasing physical fitness.

Most people who are not regularly active could benefit from e-cycling. However, for those with health conditions such as obesity or type 2 diabetes, who may particularly benefit from physical activity but often find it difficult, e-cycling may be an important way to become more regularly active.

Our research shows that rates of active commuting in these groups is low—just 5.5% for those with type 2 diabetes. In response to this statistic, we conducted the first feasibility study to explore whether e-cycling was acceptable to, and could potentially improve the health of, people with this condition.

We recruited 20 people with type 2 diabetes to use an e-bike for 20 weeks. We found that participants enjoyed using the e-bikes, cycling on average 21km per week. Participants' heart rate during e-bicycle journeys was 74.7% of maximum, compared with 64.3% of maximum when walking, a level sufficient to generate improvements in fitness. This is comparable to the changes seen when healthy inactive individuals take up conventional cycling.

The future of e-bikes

There is now increasing interest in the potential of e-bikes for other people who are recommended more physical activity but find this hard to achieve, such as those recovering from cancer. We can see a future where doctors could prescribe e-cycling to patients, with provision to buy bikes at reduced cost or spreading the payments.

Although it has been a difficult year, there may be a small silver lining to the pandemic. With fewer of us commuting, and less motorised travel overall, the pandemic has driven a change in physical activity behaviour and raised awareness of traffic congestion and air pollution.

With many of us exploring or re-discovering ways to be active outdoors and cut down on motorised transport, the future is bright for e-cycling. With the development of smaller and more efficient batteries, e-bikes will become lighter and have a longer range of travel, and will become a common sight on our streets.

Providers of e-bikes often refer to the e-bike smile—the look of joy on peoples face when they try one for the first time. Try to remember how it felt when a parent held the back of your bike saddle and whizzed you along—the feeling is very similar.

If you haven't yet tried an e-bike, we would encourage you to do so. They are great fun, will make becoming healthy a lot easier, and you may have a reason look back on something positive from 2020.


Explore further Think e-bikes are cheating? Think again

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

What's the best way to boost the economy? Invest in high-voltage transmission lines

by Peter Martin, The Conversation

DECEMBER 29, 2020

Credit: Bohbeh/Shutterstock

When, in the midst of the pandemic, the Economic Society of Australia invited 150 of Australia's keenest young thinkers to come up with "brief, specific and actionable" proposals to improve the economy, amid scores of ideas about improving job matching, changing the tax system, providing non-repayable loans to businesses and accelerating telehealth, two proposals stood out.


They were actually the same proposal, arrived at independently by two groups of "hackers" in the society's annual (this time virtual) "hackathon".

I was one of the judges.

The mentors who helped test and guide the proposals were some of the leading names in economics, among them Jeff Borland, John Quiggin, Gigi Foster, Deborah Cobb-Clark, Peter Abelson and John Hewson.

The proposal is to fast track the 15 or more projects already identified by the Australian Energy Market Operator as essential to meet the electricity grid's transmission needs over the next 20 years.

Starting them immediately, when business investment is weak and there's a need for jobs and governments can borrow at rates close to zero, will bring forward all of the benefits of being able to bring ultra-cheap power from the places it will be made to the places it will be needed as expensive fossil-fuel generators bow out or are out competed.

Judges Alison Booth, Jeremy Thorpe and I noted that policy hacks were the most useful where neither the market nor the government was getting the job done.

The proposal would help ensure renewables can connect to the grid, something "neither the market nor the government is managing to do quickly".

AEMO Integrated System Plan

A few weeks later Labor leader Anthony Albanese used his budget reply speech to propose the same thing—a Rewiring the Nation Corporation to turn the projects identified in the Energy Market Operator's integrated system plan into reality.


Here is what is proposed in the winners' own words:

Accelerating priority transmission projects

Nick Vernon, Agrata Verma, Bella Hancock

Investment in new renewable generators in Australia sank 40% in 2019. A major factor holding them back is grid access. The best locations for wind and sun often have poor access to the cables that transport electricity to consumers.

Our near-term recommendation is to guarantee Project EnergyConnect, a 900-kilometre cable between NSW and South Australia due to begin construction next year. The network operators got approval in January, but there is now uncertainty over whether they will get the funding.

We propose that the two state governments agree to cover the shortfall between approved revenues and realised costs (up to a pre-determined limit) to ensure construction starts on time in 2021.

Medium-term, we recommend the Australian Energy Regulator conduct the regulatory investment test and revenue adjustment processes for all priority projects in parallel to condense approval timelines and that the Commonwealth and state governments underwrite priority projects' early works.

This would allow service providers to commission new transmission lines sooner after regulatory approval.

The case for fast tracking transmission

Patrick Sweeney, Sam Edge, Elke Taylor, Jacob Keillor, Timothy Fong

Currently valued at A$20 billion, the Australian transmission network was designed for a centralised 20th century power mix and suffers from aging infrastructure.

The $6 billion upgrade we propose would have as its centrepiece 15 projects the Energy Market Operator has already identified as essential.

Fast-tracking these projects has the potential to generate 100,000 jobs, to bring about strong private investment in low-carbon power production, and to place downward pressure on wholesale power prices, producing $11 billion in benefits.

A national taskforce consisting of the department of energy and the market operator would oversee a project of a similar size to the Snowy Mountains scheme, which itself created more than 100,000 jobs during its lifecycle.

The government would procure the funds by issuing bonds, with recent rates indicating the yield payable will be less than the rate of inflation.

Firms that tendered for the work would be evaluated on their capacity to upscale production to meet milestones and on their plans to generate long-term, sustainable employment.


Explore further

Up to 90% of electricity from solar and wind the cheapest option by 2030

Provided by The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.