Wednesday, May 26, 2021

PLASTIC POWER —
From trash to jet fuel in 60 minutes—and 220º C

Researchers found a way to make fuel from plastic—critics wonder if it's practical.


DOUG JOHNSON - 5/24/2021, ARS TECHNICA

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Tobias Titz / Getty Images

The world has a lot of plastic—8.3 billion tonnes of the stuff has been produced since 1950. It has so much plastic that humans have started trying to figure out ways to use the vast quantities of plastic waste we're accumulating. For some, that means recycling; for others, that means making art. For a team of researchers based out of Washington State University, it means making jet fuel.

Turning waste plastic into fuel isn’t a new idea. Many researchers have achieved it through a process called pyrolysis, which involves heating plastic to between 300º C and 900º C in an oxygen-free environment. This breaks the substance down into fuel, along with some additional chemicals. Hongfei Lin, associate professor with The Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering at WSU, thinks that he and his team have discovered a way to make the process more efficient and environmentally friendly.

The team has a track record of making fuels from biomass sources. A year and a half ago, however, they decided to look into chemically deconstructing polyethylene, one of the most common forms of plastic in the world. The team began trying out pretreating the plastic with different combinations of solvents and catalysts prior to heating.

“Initially, we didn't know what would happen,” Lin told Ars.

Solving for the solvent

According to Lin, the solvents they tested penetrated the plastics and changed their physical properties, making them more accessible to the catalysts and maximizing the reaction rates. After testing a few different compounds, they found that n-hexane is the best solvent for producing the most fuel, while methylcyclohexane is the best option for producing more high-quality lubricant, another product of the process.

The team also used a ruthenium-on-carbon catalyst, which cleaved the covalent bonds between the carbon atoms in the plastic. After heating the plastic for an hour at 220º C—and injecting hydrogen into the reactor—the team found that 90 percent of it turned into the components of jet fuel and lubricant. The remaining 10 percent was converted to gases such as methane. The team can tinker with the different chemicals involved to produce more fuel or lubricant, as desired, he said.

This concept can also be applied to different types of plastics, though some (such as polyesters) have different types of chemical bonds. Therefore, those would need different treatments. The team tested the process in a relatively small reactor in their laboratory, but it could be scaled up to produce high-value products like lubricants and fuels from waste plastics, Lin said.

“We used polyethylene as a demonstration ... We found that it is very good as a proof of concept,” he said.

The process is more energy efficient than other pyrolysis approaches, he said, which rely on much higher temperatures. Besides the environmental benefits of losing less energy in the process, the process could also have an edge in the market if scaled up. “When it comes to recycling, cost is the key,” Lin said.

According to Lin, the team is working with WSU’s commercialization office and hopes to one day see it scaled up and used more broadly. He said that there has already been some early interest in the process from investors, but they can’t say from whom. In all, he believes that this method could be a potential tool for reducing plastic waste around the globe.Advertisement

“Worldwide, [plastic] is a very pressing environmental problem. We need to address this problem as soon as possible.”

But should we?

Not everyone’s quite as enamored with the idea, however. Andrew Rollinson, an independent consultant on the topic and former academic, called the process “totally pie-in-the-sky and impractical.”

Pyrolysis is an old technology, Rollinson told Ars. It was used to make things like creosote and methanol from wood, prior to the widespread use of petrochemicals, he said. Since the 1950s, attempts have been made to use the process on plastics. So far, it has not worked out, according to Rollinson.

Though the paper says the process is high-efficiency, it’s likely not, Rollinson says, as it requires a good deal of hydrogen pressure. Reaching the necessary pressure requires a lot of energy. Making and storing hydrogen also takes a lot of energy, reducing any green benefits. He said that the experiment was only in a laboratory setting. It would require a far greater amount of hydrogen and energy to pressurize it, if introduced at a commercial scale.

Further, Rollinson noted that the catalyst and solvents used would also need to be scaled up for larger amounts of plastics. Hexane, the solvent, is toxic, explosive, and environmentally harmful if released into the wild, he added. There’s also an energy input in the process of making these chemicals. In an email to Ars, Lin acknowledged that solvent recovery and reuse would add costs, but the technology itself would work to keep costs low. All the same, Rollinson has his doubts.

“No way it’s a go-er at all,” he said. “For science’s sake, it’s quite interesting. But as a practical answer to plastic … it’s not workable.”


Chem Catalysis, 2021. DOI: 10.1016/j.checat.2021.04.002 (About DOIs).
GOODBYE FREENODE, HELLO LIBERA CHAT —
Freenode IRC staff resign en masse after takeover by Korea’s “crown prince”

Former staffer alleges "a hostile entity is now in control... and has your data."


JIM SALTER - 5/24/2021 ARS TECHNICA

Freenode currently ranges between roughly 75,000 and 90,000 users—that's a far cry from the 240,000 users fellow IRC network QuakeNet had back in 2005, but it's still quite a lot of people.

WHAT KOREAN CROWN?

Neither North nor South Korea have or recognize a functioning monarchy—the "crown" referred to here is about as relevant as a position in a Who's Who book. Yi Seok, pretender to the defunct "throne" of Imperial, pre-Division Korea, named the Korean-American Lee as his successor in a 2018 ceremony in California.

Yi Seok did not "discover" Lee until Lee was already a multimillionaire, and we are unaware of any concrete evidence regarding hereditary relationship between Lee and the former Joseon dynasty.Freenode has been the world's largest IRC network since 2013, with roughly three times as many users as its closest competitor, IRCnet. Last week, the massive IRC network was taken over by tech entrepreneur and "Korean Crown Prince" Andrew Lee—a move that the network's staff has apparently unanimously classified as a "hostile takeover," although Lee himself claims these are only "rumors" and "simply untrue."

At first blush, it's tempting for an outside observer—someone who isn't already familiar with the history of the network's ownership and management—to shrug and say "well, who knows." Lee lays out several hundred words of explanation in a blog post currently featured on Freenode's front page—most of which sounds reasonable.

But the one question Lee never addresses—let alone answers—is why at least 14 separate staff members would quit en masse, all disagreeing with the story he tells
.
A dubious contract


In 2017, Christel Dahlskjaer—who was, at the time, head of Freenode staff—created a corporation, Freenode Ltd., which she immediately sold to Lee. Dahlskjaer and Lee told Freenode staff and users that the incorporation was only done as necessary paperwork in order to sponsor a conference and that day-to-day operations would remain unchanged.

Contract or no contract, staff and developers of Freenode maintain that it wasn't actually possible to sell the network—the staff is all volunteers, and the infrastructure itself wasn't owned by Dahlskjaer in the first place. According to resigning Freenode developer Aaron Jones, however, "Andrew has more money than us, and so we cannot fight this."

Although the contract in question was signed in 2017, staffers didn't begin objecting until this year, when operational changes began appearing without their control or consent.

A unilateral decision on advertising

In February 2021, Dahlskjaer placed the logo for Shells—a Lee-owned company offering cloud-based virtual desktops—prominently on Freenode's front page. By itself, this might seem innocuous—FOSS projects accept sponsorships and advertising all the time. But staffers, who were supposedly still in control of the network, weren't consulted about the arrangement—and they did not approve.

One reason for staffers' virulent disapproval is Shells CTO Mark Karpelès. Karpelès is the founder of the defunct Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange, which lost nearly 850,000 bitcoin (currently worth a staggering $33.4 billion-with-a-B US dollars) to attackers who exploited a massive security flaw. Karpelès was found guilty in a Tokyo court of deliberately tampering with records to cover up the exchange's various losses, although he was found innocent of outright embezzlement.

As former staffer Aaron Jones explains in his lengthy letter of resignation—which links to similar announcements from other departing high-profile staffers—this wasn't the only issue with the new ad. According to Jones, sponsorships are normally only found at freenode.net/acknowledgements—making the prominent Shells logo in the upper right of Freenode's front page more of a departure from the norm than it might seem.

Jones goes on to say that Dahlskjaer was either unable or unwilling to explain the sudden new ad to staffers, choosing to resign instead. (Lee claims that Freenode staff "harassed" Dahlskjaer into resignation; Jones and other departing staffers deny this characterization.) Freenode staff elected Tom Wesley (aka tomaw) to replace her.
Escalation in April

Beginning in April 2021, Lee's exercise of control continued ramping up:
Staffers created a blog post outlining changes in leadership and announcing a change to newly developed back-end ircd software Solanum. According to Jones, Lee summarily removed the post—and manually edited the website's built-in history to create the impression that it had never existed.

Later in April, a Freenode test network—in use to get ready for the infrastructure shift to Solanum—was shut down without discussion. Wesley (tomaw) performed the shutdown and refused to say why; Jones and others believe Lee was behind the shutdown, used threat of legal force to make Wesley comply, and issued related gag orders to OFTC staff.

Lee registered the channel #freenode-board without discussing it with staff—and, according to Jones, without proper authority (since only official group contacts are allowed to create channels in Freenode's primary namespace, and Lee was not an official Freenode contact).

Shane Allen (aka nirvana), an associate and employee of Lee's, bragged about "turning" tomaw, and he attempted to bribe prominent user Ariadne with promises of ops privileges, saying, "I'll make sure you get +oO in #freenode so you can kick people. My gift to you pal."

On May 11, Lee began issuing notices to staff as a group and directly to individual Freenode staffers. Everything came from "the board"—an entity that staffers say never existed, and even now is merely a euphemism for Lee himself.


On May 12, Lee (aka rasengan) posted his version of events—in which he claims legal ownership of Freenode, along with a list of grievances—in a Github gist. (The gist is considerably saltier than the version of events Lee posted to Freenode's public-facing blog a week later.)

Libera Chat

A week after Lee's effectively public announcement of ownership and de facto dictatorial operation of Freenode, the staffers who resigned from Freenode created Libera.chat as a replacement.

Libera Chat is incorporated as a Swedish nonprofit organization, owned and operated by volunteer staffers who are voting members of the organization. It has a small, member-elected board—currently consisting of chair, treasurer, projects and community rep, engineering rep/vice chair, and operations rep. But most decisions are to be taken by the membership as a whole.

The membership also elects two auditors, tasked with auditing the board's actions on behalf of the membership. A transparency report is to be published annually, detailing bookkeeping and the auditors' findings along with the standard annual report from the board itself.

All current Libera Chat boardmembers and auditors are Freenode staffers who resigned in protest of Lee's recent actions and assumption of control.
Amazon to buy MGM Film Studio for $8.45bn

The deal is Amazon’s biggest acquisition since it agreed to buy Whole Foods in 201
7
MGM has been seen as a takeover target for years, but was never able to close a sale before. Reuters

Amazon.com agreed to buy the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie company for $8.45 billion, a bet that a nearly century-old Hollywood icon can feed an insatiable demand for streaming content.

The takeover is Amazon’s biggest acquisition since it agreed to buy Whole Foods in 2017 for $13.7bn but follows investments of about $11bn on content for its streaming video and music services last year alone.

“The real financial value behind this deal is the treasure trove of IP in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM’s talented team,” said Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, in a statement. “It’s very exciting and provides so many opportunities for high-quality storytelling.”

Amazon shares rose about 0.5 per cent in early trading in New York.

The proliferation of streaming services, including newer arrivals such as HBO Max and Disney+, has put pressure on Amazon to acquire more programming. Chief executive Jeff Bezos has made no secret of his desire for movie moguldom and MGM’s vast backlog provides an abundance of streaming material, not to mention an opportunity to mine the iconic James Bond and Rocky franchises for new films and television shows.


Moreover, with retail rivals like Walmart rolling out more sophisticated online stores, Amazon must work even harder to keep its 200 million Prime subscribers loyal.

MGM has been seen as a takeover target for years, but was never able to close a sale before. The company made a fresh push last year, when it reportedly hired advisers to seek offers.

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Previously, Amazon has acquired smaller start-ups it perceived as a threat – footwear seller Zappos, say, or Diapers.com parent Quidsi. Amazon also has snatched up-and-comers in new business lines, such as the game platform Twitch or Kiva, which makes warehouse robots.

It’s unusual for Mr Bezos to spend big bucks on a legacy business like MGM. The only other example is the purchase of Whole Foods Market in 2017, which came after Amazon spent a decade trying to become a player in grocery sales – with little to show for its efforts and investment. Today, some analysts deem the Whole Foods acquisition wrong-headed and point to the fact that Amazon has since started a rival grocery chain.

For MGM, the studio that brought James Bond and Scarlett O’Hara to the big screen, the deal provides a finale to a bumpy era of hedge-fund ownership that began with a bankruptcy over a decade ago. MGM’s lead shareholder is the Anchorage Capital Group, which became an owner with three other investors as part of a 2010 bankruptcy agreement that erased about $4bn in debt.

MGM’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization rose 48 per cent to about $307 million last year, lifted by profit from its 4,000-title film library. But with a lack of new releases, sales declined 3 per cent to $1.5bn.

Under Anchorage, the studio aspired to its old glory – a legacy that includes “Gone With the Wind,” the top film of all time in ticket sales and the biblical classic “Ben-Hur,” which shares the record for most Academy Awards at 11.

The new owners hired a moviemaker chief executive in Gary Barber, a Hollywood heavyweight known for films such as “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective”. He oversaw a new James Bond movie, “Skyfall,” that generated more than $1bn in ticket sales – the studio’s biggest-grossing film ever – and partnered with Warner Bros. on the blockbuster “Hobbit” films.


The opportunity to align MGM’s storied history with Amazon is an inspiring combination

Kevin Ulrich, CEO, Anchorage


MGM also branched out into television. The studio took control of the premium cable network Epix, and acquired the TV production company owned by famed producer Mark Burnett, known for creating “Survivor” and “The Apprentice.” The studio also created the critically acclaimed series “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Fargo,” adding to a lucrative library.

Hedge funds rarely hang on to such investments for more than a few years, and observers long thought that Mr Barber was prepping the studio for sale. In 2017, reports suggested that MGM was in discussions with a Chinese company, though no deal materialised.

Behind the studio’s renewed financial stability under Anchorage and the M&A rumors, there was turmoil within MGM’s executive ranks. Five months after Mr Barber’s contract was renewed in 2018, he was abruptly fired by Anchorage chief executive Kevin Ulrich. Reports surfaced that the two had clashed, and that Mr Barber’s relationship with Bond producer Barbara Broccoli was also tense.

Mr Barber ultimately walked away with a $260m exit package. Mr Ulrich never named a replacement for Mr Barber, and instead created an office of the chief executive, which has been in place for three years. The unusual arrangement led the Hollywood Reporter to say Mr Burnett was sowing chaos within the company. He was said to have, at least in part, led to the ouster of film studio head Jonathan Glickman in early 2020, among other executives.

When the coronavirus struck, MGM was particularly hamstrung. Its biggest anticipated film release, the new James Bond film “No Time to Die,” has been postponed repeatedly. The company approached both Apple and Netflix about buying the film for their online services, but never reached a deal.

(FILES) In this file photo the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) headquarters is pictured on September 13, 2004 in Century City, California. Amazon has agreed to buy the storied MGM studios for $8.45 billion, the companies said on May 26, 2021, giving the US tech giant a vast library to further its ambitions in streaming. The deal bolster's Amazon Prime Video, which competes with Netflix and others in the fast-evolving market, with some 4,000 films, including the James Bond franchise, and 17,000 television shows. / AFP / Robyn BECK

While coping with the prospect of production delays and higher costs due to Covid-19, MGM suffered another blow. In a June 2020 lawsuit in New York, a woman accused Mr Ulrich of sexual battery in a swanky Manhattan hotel in June 2019. The case was ultimately withdrawn.

Late last year, MGM reportedly hired advisers to explore a sale of the company. The studio was said to seek about $5bn, compared with the more than $8bn that Mr Ulrich predicted the company could fetch given time.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer traces its roots back to the 1920s merger of Marcus Loew’s Metro films with a film company run by Hollywood legend Louis B. Mayer. The studio, while making great pictures like “Dr. Zhivago” and “2001: A Space Odyssey,” drifted in and out of financial distress in the second half of the 20th century. Over the decades it was owned by Time, CNN founder Ted Turner and more than once by the late billionaire Kirk Kerkorian.

Mr Turner kept much of MGM’s library, which is now owned by AT&T's WarnerMedia, soon to be part of Discovery.

“I am very proud that MGM’s Lion, which has long evoked the Golden Age of Hollywood, will continue its storied history, and the idea born from the creation of United Artists lives on in a way the founders originally intended, driven by the talent and their vision,” said Anchorage’s Mr Ulrich, who is chairman of the board of MGM. “The opportunity to align MGM’s storied history with Amazon is an inspiring combination.”


Published: May 26, 2021 06:07 PM
Canadian tech company among civilian buildings hit by Israeli air strikes in Gaza

Open Screenplay’s satellite office was damaged in the bombing

The Gazi Shawwa building in the Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza city housed the satellite offices of Canadian tech startup Open Screenplay. Courtesy of Open Screenplay

During the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas, an Israeli bomb hit the top two floors of the Gazi Shawwa building in the Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza city, which housed the local offices of Canadian tech start-up Open Screenplay.

Four civilians were killed in the May 17 attack, said Khaled Sabawi, founder and chief executive of Open Screenplay, though none of the firm's employees were in the building that day.

“It was suddenly bombed, but these are the stories we keep on hearing everywhere in Gaza," Open Screenplay's founder and chief executive Khaled Sabawi told The National.

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“Many regular civilian residential and office buildings were hit by Israel.”

Mr Sabawi, a Palestinian Canadian from Toronto, founded Open Screenplay in January 2019.


The company, whose headquarters are in Canada, provides an online platform that connects writers and storytellers with businesses.

They have a team of nine developers in Gaza who help keep the platform running.

“These developers are extremely talented, very hard working and it’s been a pleasure to work with them,” Mr Sabawi said.

The Gazi Shawwa building contained an insurance company, a bank, a charity and Open Screenplay's satellite offices.

It was hit amid 11 days of conflict between the Israeli military and Hamas in the most significant fighting since 2014.

Israel pummelled Gaza with powerful air strikes that reshaped the area's skyline. The military said the strikes targeted Hamas militants and infrastructure but as the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas holds, the scope and scale of the destruction has become clearer.

More than 230 Palestinians, including 65 children, were killed in Gaza. In Israel, 10 people, including two children, were killed by Hamas rockets.

In Gaza, 258 homes were destroyed and 760 housing units severely damaged. Several towers in the densely populated area were levelled.

Mr Sabawi said the his team lost an important space that served as a respite from life in Gaza.

“That office for them was really a kind of escape from that harsh reality, so they really loved to go there,” Mr Sabawi explained.

Palestinians and human rights activists have described Israel’s bombing of Gaza as “indiscriminate”.

Air strikes damaged 24 medical facilities, including the only laboratory where Covid-19 tests were performed. One of Gaza’s leading doctors in the fight against Covid-19, Ayman Abu Ouf, was also killed in an air strike.

On May 15, Israel targeted a building housing The Associated Press and other media outlets.

Israel said the building housed Hamas military infrastructure but it has yet to publicly disclose any evidence supporting the claim.

As Gazans continue to survey the damage from the 11 day conflict, Mr Sabawi said he will rebuild Open Screenplay’s offices as soon as possible.


Published: May 25, 2021 10:34 PM
AP journalists slam agency for firing pro-Palestinian colleague Emily Wilder

The news associate was dismissed for a breach of the company’s social media policy

Emily Wilder was dismissed by AP for breaches of the 
press agency's social media policy. EPA


More than 120 journalists at The Associated Press agency have penned an open letter to their employer condemning the dismissal of Emily Wilder.

The journalist was fired last week for violating AP’s social media policy, following an online campaign against her by conservatives.

“We strongly disapprove of the way the AP has handled the firing of Emily Wilder and its days-long silence internally,” the AP journalists said in the letter.

“We demand more clarity from the company about why Wilder was fired.”

In a statement posted online, Wilder said she had not been told “which exact tweets were in violation of policy or how".

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Last week, AP said Wilder had been fired for violating their social media policy but would not specify how.

“We have this policy so the comments of one person cannot create dangerous conditions for our journalists covering the story," said Lauren Easton, AP's head of communications.

"Every AP journalist is responsible for safeguarding our ability to report on this conflict, or any other, with fairness and credibility, and cannot take sides in public forums."

Wilder, a 2020 graduate of Stanford University in California, was two weeks into her job as a news associate with AP in Arizona when the Stanford College Young Republicans dug through her past social media use and highlighted a number of posts online.

In one post, the group discovered, she referred to Sheldon Adelson, the late Jewish-American billionaire who was a staunch supporter of Israel, as a “naked mole rat".

Wilder, who is Jewish, was a member of several pro-Palestinian student organisations while at Stanford. She said in her statement that she had always been “transparent” about her past involvement in such groups.

Her dismissal came days after the Israeli military ordered an air strike on a building housing the AP’s office in Gaza.

Israel alleges the building was part of Hamas's military infrastructure, though it has yet to publicly disclose any evidence.

The journalists said Wilder's dismissal has left them shaken and concerned for their own careers.

“The lack of communication since then about Wilder’s firing and the circumstances surrounding it gives us no confidence that any one of us couldn’t be next, sacrificed without explanation,” they wrote.

“It has left our colleagues – particularly emerging journalists – wondering how we treat our own, what culture we embrace and what values we truly espouse as a company.”
Bernie Sanders wants to stop NASA funding for Blue Origin

The Endless Frontier Act? More like the Endless Amendment Act.

ERIC BERGER - 5/24/2021

Enlarge / Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks outside the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union headquarters in Birmingham, Alabama, on Friday, March 26, 2021.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders inserted himself into the debate about NASA's Artemis Program on Monday.

The independent and two-time presidential candidate did so by submitting an amendment to the Endless Frontier Act, which is now under consideration by the full Senate. Sanders' amendment, No. 1925, has a simple purpose: "To eliminate the multi-billion dollar Bezos Bailout."

The "bailout" in question refers to an earlier amendment filed to the Endless Frontier Act during a committee meeting earlier this month. Overall, the Endless Frontier Act is primarily about advancing US scientific and research efforts, but it has become fettered with modifications by US senators. Sanders is seeking to strip language from an amendment that has already been successfully attached to the scientific act.

This earlier amendment, submitted by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), modified NASA's Artemis Program. Cantwell's amendment, in part, called for $10.03 billion in additional funding for NASA to carry out the Human Landing System program. This legislation was filed as Blue Origin and Jeff Bezos were urging Congress to add $10 billion to NASA's budget—enough money to fully fund the development of a second Human Landing System. It was passed 11 days ago without any debate by the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.

Sanders' terse amendment seeks to excise the Cantwell language that provides additional funding for a Human Landing System.

In theory, Cantwell filed her amendment to the bill because she genuinely wanted competition in NASA's efforts to build a landing system to send astronauts to the Moon, beginning as early as 2024. In reality, Cantwell's amendment is probably more accurately interpreted as an effort to support Blue Origin, which is based in the state she represents.

NASA genuinely wanted to have a competition for the lunar lander. But it selected only one company—SpaceX—in mid-April after Congress appropriated just a small amount of money in the fiscal year 2021 budget. SpaceX's total bid was only $2.9 billion, less than half that of its competitors, including the Blue Origin-led national team.

However, the way Cantwell's amendment was written would likely have slowed down NASA and its return to the Moon. Were the Cantwell amendment to be signed into law, NASA would have to reopen the competition, thus delaying work on the agency's return to the Moon and putting an already difficult target of 2024 into further jeopardy. Her amendment also ignored NASA's own plans to both create a lunar-lander competition as well as keep the possibility of a 2024 landing on track. Under NASA's plans, SpaceX would work at full speed toward the 2024 landing while a second company would be brought on to compete for subsequent landings.

Harumph


Sanders did not speak publicly about his amendment, but his intentions seem transparent. He is a frequent critic of billionaires in general and Jeff Bezos—the founder of Amazon and the world's richest person—in particular. He was notably upset by Amazon's efforts to prevent a union from organizing earlier this year in Bessemer, Alabama. Therefore, Sanders' amendment is best seen as a shot at Bezos.

Where this leaves NASA and its Artemis Program is difficult to forecast. Even if Sanders' amendment fails, the amended Endless Frontier Act must go through the US House, where the Cantwell amendment may get stripped out. And even if the bill becomes law this fall or winter, this "authorizing" language about funding still could be superseded by the appropriations process.
Sensor-driven turbine platforms could unlock 4,000 TWh of offshore wind

Bringing the biggest turbines to deep waters is an engineering challenge.


TIM DE CHANT - 5/25/2021
ARS TECHNICA

Enlarge / A rendering of GE and Glosten's actively managed tension leg platform for floating offshore wind projects.

The US took its first steps toward embracing offshore wind power earlier this month with the approval of the Vineyard Wind 1 project off the coast of Massachusetts. When the site is complete, 62 massive wind turbines anchored in the continental shelf will crank out 800 MW of electricity, giving the East Coast its first taste of a large, nearby, and renewable power source. And while the project shows the promise of offshore wind, the industry’s future may lie even deeper in the ocean.

After many delays, Massachusetts’ Vineyard Wind is finally approvedIn US waters alone, 58 percent of offshore wind capacity—some 4,200 TWh per year—is beyond the reach of fixed-foundation wind turbines, which are commercially limited to depths of less than 60 m. Offshore wind represents a massive untapped resource and could go a long way toward addressing the approximately 4,000 TWh of electricity used in the US last year.

To access offshore wind power, companies have been experimenting with floating platforms that would support the industry’s largest turbines. Yesterday, General Electric and Glosten, an engineering consultancy, announced a new design and control scheme that could significantly lower the cost of floating offshore wind as part of the ARPA-E ATLANTIS program.

Researchers from GE began with their company’s latest design, the 220-meter rotor Haliade X turbine that produces anywhere between 12 and 14 MW of power. “The Halide X turbine is a massive machine,” Rogier Blom, senior principal engineer at GE and the project’s lead, said to Ars. “To have a floating platform that can support that, these platforms need to be pretty massive. The state-of-the-art is to design the platform independent from the turbine.”

That design philosophy results in massive platforms that require more materials than may be necessary, driving up costs and making installation more challenging. Many of today’s floating platforms rely on gravity to keep turbines upright, and the platforms weigh up to three times more than the turbines. Other platforms are simply tethered to the seafloor, a situation that can make controlling the turbine more challenging.

“The reality is the platform behavior—its motions back and forth, its tilting behavior as a result of the waves—are very dynamically coupled with the behavior of the turbine, the bending of the tower, for example,” Blom said. “By separately designing turbine and platform, you’re essentially ignoring that coupling. That’s what’s driving inefficiency of overall design.”

Blom and his colleagues investigated whether they could design a dynamic platform that could communicate with the turbine so the two could work together to manage the myriad forces acting on the combined structure. The researchers landed on a tension leg platform, which essentially looks like a pirate ship’s anchor with many flukes instead of just two. Each of those flukes is then tethered to the seafloor.

Those tethers, or tendons, are key to the new GE design. “We’re looking to make the platform active, allow it to adjust its positioning through active tendons, to ride with the waves, control the positioning as it’s being moved back and forth, up and down with the waves, to ensure that it’s safe,” Blom said. “But we also want to ensure that all of those mechanical loads that the turbine would experience are as low as possible, while maximizing the resulting energy the turbine produces.”

Wind turbines already actively manage the pitch of their blades and the torque of their generator to optimize energy production while minimizing fatigue. The new tension leg platform that Blom and his colleagues designed coordinates the turbine’s responses with the tensioning or loosening of each tendon. All of this happens several times a second to continuously adjust the entire system.

The active design could trim up to 35 percent of the total mass of the platform, GE says, allowing wind developers to cut a significant driver of costs. It could also mean that a future platform may help install itself. Today, tension leg platforms require a special ship to bring the platform down to the correct depth. An active system could winch itself down, further reducing costs. How much money could be saved remains to be seen—the team has yet to do a full analysis of how the system would change the levelized cost of electricity, a key metric used to compare different sources of power, though it’s in the team's plans. Currently, ARPA-E is looking to the next two-year phase of the project, which would result in a prototype that could be tested out at sea.

Offshore wind in Europe won’t need subsidies much longerOffshore wind developers have already begun eyeing floating platforms in addition to more traditional fixed-platform projects. Winds offshore are more favorable than onshore, and floating platforms allow developers to site turbines in even more beneficial locations. Plus, floating platforms can be placed beyond the horizon, tackling one of offshore wind’s most challenging issues—NIMBYism.

As the offshore wind industry has matured, prices have dropped significantly. In Europe, costs of fixed platforms have fallen so much that the platforms may not require government subsidies. That could free up money for floating platforms, which remain pricier.

Blom said that his group isn’t seeking to replace fixed platforms; instead, it wants to open new swaths of the ocean to wind development.

#STOPWOLFHUNTS

By Creating a ‘Landscape of Fear,’ Wolves Reduce Car Collisions With Deer

A new study in Wisconsin suggests the predators keep prey away from roads, reducing crashes by 24 percent
Each year, nearly 20,000 Wisconsin residents collide with deer each year, which leads to about 477 injuries and eight deaths annually. (Photo by Ken Mattison via Flickr under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences highlights an underappreciated benefit of wild wolf populations: the large predators frighten deer away from dangerous roadways, saving money and lives in the process.

According to the analysis 22 years of data, a county’s deer-vehicle collisions fall by about 24 percent after wolves take up residence there, Christina Larson reports for the Associated Press. Nearly 20,000 Wisconsin residents collide with deer each year, which leads to about 477 injuries and eight deaths annually. There are 29 counties in Wisconsin that have wolves.

“Some lives are saved, some injuries are prevented, and a huge amount of damage and time are saved by having wolves present,” says Wesleyan University natural resource economist Jennifer Raynor to Ed Yong at the Atlantic.

The study estimates that wolves save Wisconsin about $10.9 million in losses each year in prevented car crashes, which is far greater than the compensation paid by the state to people who lose pets or livestock to wolves.

“Most economic studies of wolves have been negative, focusing on livestock losses,” says wolf expert Dave Mech, who works at the U.S. Geological Survey in Minnesota and was not involved in the study, to the AP. “But wolves also reshape ecosystems in many ways, although that’s hard to measure economically.”

Most of the reduction in collisions was due to the “landscape of fear” that wolves create. Wolves tend to follow clear paths through the landscape, like streams. In an area that has been developed by humans, wolves follow roads, trails and pipelines. Deer adapt to the wolves’ presence by staying away, which would reduce the chance that they would get hit by a car.

“The icing on the cake is that wolves do this work all year long at their own expense,” says Western University ecologist Liana Zanette, who was not involved in the study, to the Atlantic. “It all seems like a win-win for those wolf counties.”

Wolves killing deer only accounted for about six percent of the drop in deer-vehicle collisions, reports Jack J. Lee for Science News. The drop in collisions didn't just happen because wolves kill deer, so culling deerduring hunting season wouldn’t necessarily limit car collisions to the same extent as having wolves present.

The deer that the wolves do manage to kill would likely be the least risk-averse, and most likely to run in front of cars. But a detailed understanding of wolf and deer behavior would come from research that tracks the animals with collars, which was not a part of the new study, says University of Wyoming ecologist Matthew Kauffman to the Atlantic.

The research stands out from other studies of wolves’ impact on the environment because it highlights a benefit that wolves bring to the humans that live nearby. The regions that support wolf reintroduction tend to be urban, while rural communities generally oppose it. That was the case in Colorado, where wolf reintroduction narrowly passed in a vote in November. In sharp contrast, the Idaho state government recently passed a law to kill 90 percent of its wolves.

“The most interesting thing to me about choosing Wisconsin as a case study is that this is a human-dominated landscape,” says Raynor to Science News.

The estimated savings to Wisconsin are about 63 times higher than the cost of compensating people for losses caused by wolves. Raynor adds to Science News there are economic factors that weren’t taken into account in the new study, like the cost by deer to agriculture and through Lyme disease.

Adrian Treves, a conservation biologist at the University of Wisconsin, tells the AP that the study “adds to growing awareness that scientists should consider both the costs and the benefits of having large carnivores on the landscape.”

 

Quarter of Albanians at Risk 

of Poverty, 37% 

More Experience Severe 

Material Deprivation

Almost a quarter of Albanians are at risk of falling into poverty, according to data released by INSTAT.

The percentage of people at risk of poverty in 2019 was 23.0%, a decrease of 0.4% when compared with 2018 and 0.7% when compared with 2017. The survey was conducted only for the year 2019 and INSTAT has no data from 2020 at present.

The survey looked at the size of household disposable income, how many members are living in each household, and income distribution amongst the population. It found that around 659,000 people were living below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold in 2019.

Concerningly, 37.1% of the population experience severe material deprivation. This means they are deprived of at least four out of nine items used by the European Commission’s Social Protection Committee to calculate material deprivation. These include being unable to pay rent or bills, keep the home adequately warm, meet an unexpected expense, eat meat or protein regularly, go on holidays, buy a television, have a washing machine, buy and use a car, or afford a telephone.

While this number had decreased slightly in 2018, it remains high in comparison to the rest of Europe.

Furthermore, almost half (46%) are living in a household with very low work intensity. This metric refers to the number of months that all household members have been employed during the last 12 months when considering how many could have been working. The very low threshold is considered to be 20%, Albania scored just 12.4%.

INSTAT refers to the Gini Coefficient and Income Quintile Ratio to qualify Albanian’s income distribution. Under the Gini Coefficient, 0% represents a population with perfectly fair income distribution, while 100% means perfect inequality. Albania scored 34.3%.

In Europe, Montenegro reached the highest at-risk-of-poverty percentage (24.5%) followed by Romania (23.8), Serbia (23.2%), and then Albania. The lowest poverty rates are found in the Czech Republic (10.1%), Finland (11.6%), Slovakia (11.9%), and Slovenia (12.02%.) The EU Member States average is 16.8%, a 6.2 percentage difference with Albania’s 23%. 


 

Money Laundering Feeds Dangerous Housing Market Bubble in Albania   

From: Exit Staff 
Money Laundering Feeds Dangerous Housing Market Bubble in Albania   

Between 300-700 million in dirty money enters Albania each year, according to an estimate by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Crime Initiative (GIATOC).

In Wednesday’s “In a Few Words” show on Euronews, Neritan Sejami focused on money laundering in the construction sector in Albania.

Dirty money entering the country has three main sources: criminal activities, corruption and tax fraud.

In the last 3 years, an estimated 1.6 billion was laundered through the construction sector in Albania.

New constructions have flourished in Tirana, especially after 2015. Comparing the numbers for 2015 and 2020,  a 5-fold increase in the overall surface area constructed and for which local and central authorities have issued permits can be noted.

A similar increase was seen in 2020 also, despite the fact that all other sectors of the economy suffered losses. Only the construction and real estate sectors reported growth during the pandemic.

The increase in overall area ceased to construction projects and the overall growth of the sector does not reflect the country’s economic development and housing demand.

“Being illegal, these trends are difficult to study and evaluate,” Kristina Amerhauser, co-author of the GIATOC report, told the show.

Dirty money in construction could trigger a real estate crisis, Ornela Liperi, editor-in-chief of Monitor, a business magazine, remarked.

She said that because of money laundered in the construction sector, apartment prices in Albania have gone up by 70 percent in the last 4 years. In addition, they strengthen criminal groups and their political influence.

Liperi warned that Albania risks facing an economic crash once the construction bubble bursts, bringing apartment prices down by up to 50 percent in about 10 years.