Electric Footsteps? Novel Wooden Floors Generate Power From Walking | Interesting Engineering (01:16)

• In a study, researchers from ETH Zurich in Switzerland, Chongqing University in China, and Northwestern University in Illinois have found a way to tap into an unexpected energy source right under our feet.

• To generate electricity from wooden flooring through our footfalls, the researchers developed an energy-harvesting device, known as a nanogenerator
  • Employs wood with a silicone covering and embedded nanocrystals
  • Can generate energy to power LED light bulbs and other gadgets

• It’s made up of two pieces of wood sandwiched between electrodes 

• When stepped on, the wood pieces get electrically charged due to contact and separation.
  • The phenomenon is known as the triboelectric effect

• The researchers discovered that using a wood floor prototype with a surface area barely smaller than an A4 piece of paper provided enough energy to power home LED lighting and tiny gadgets such as calculators. 

• The researchers found that a nanogenerator made with radially cut spruce was able to get 80 times more electricity than natural wood and the electricity output remained stable under steady forces for up to 1,500 cycles. 

• This study was proof-of-concept data, and further work is required before the system can be scaled up for industrial usage.

• Senior author Guido Panzarasa discusses how they want to scale up the wood for the future:
  • “We have been focusing our attention on developing the approach to make it even more industrially friendly. And for this, we need to maybe sacrifice the overall efficiency in favor of easier methods of a wood modification … So that even though the electrical output of a single device would not be as high as the one we published, the union of many devices across a larger flooring unit will eventually produce a significant amount of energy.”

New Way to Pull Lithium from Water Could Increase Supply, Efficiency |  UT News (07:52)

• An interdisciplinary team of engineers and scientists is developing a way to extract lithium from contaminated water.
  • Extracting lithium from aqueous brines 

• Potentially creating a much larger supply and reducing costs of lithium for batteries to power electric vehicles, electronics, and a wide range of other devices. 

• Currently, lithium is most commonly sourced from salt brines in South America using solar evaporation, 
  • Costly & inefficient process that can take years

• “The study’s findings have significant implications for addressing major resource constraints for lithium, with the potential to also extract it from water generated in oil and gas production for batteries,” said Benny Freeman, a professor at UT Austin and a co-author on the paper.

• According to the researchers, a single week’s worth of water from fracking Texas’ Eagle Ford Shale could potentially produce enough lithium for 300 electric vehicle batteries or 1.7 million smartphones.

• To accomplish this process, they created a new polymer membrane that would bind/stop the sodium but not the lithium. 

The World’s Largest Carbon-Sucking Plant Just Became Operational | Science Alert (13:39)

• The plant, named Orca, is designed to suck carbon dioxide out of the air and turn it into rock.
  • Started running on Wednesday (Sept. 8th).
  • Consists of four units, each made up of two metal boxes
  • Image here. 

• The plant was constructed by Switzerland’s Climeworks and Iceland’s Carbfix.

• According to both companies, when in operation the plant is designed to draw 4,000 tonnes of CO2 out of the air every year. 
  • EPA estimates that is roughly 870 cars.

• The CO2 is collected by a large filter, it is heated to (80 and 100 °C) to release it from the filter and then mixed with the water

• Afterward, it is injected at a depth of 1,000 meters into the nearby basalt rock where it is petrified. 

• The technology is still expensive and might take decades to operate at scale.

Baby Birds Start Learning Songs From Inside Their Snug Eggs, Study Reveals | Science Alert (20:03)

• A new study suggests most baby birds start listening and responding to surrounding birdsong as mere embryos, while still tucked inside their eggs.

• With enough time and repetition, it seems unhatched baby birds commonly become accustomed to noises from outside their shell.
  • Forming an important part of their vocal development

• Animal behaviorist Diane Colombelli-Négrel from Flinders University in Australia, discusses the study:
  • “Long before actual vocalization, we found that these tiny songbirds were also discriminating towards non-specific sounds and capable of ‘non-associative (not from parents) sounds, building on the complexity of vocal learning in songbirds.”

• For seven years, between 2012 and 2019, researchers played a variety of bird calls to the eggs of five different bird species.
  • First Experiment: researchers exposed 109 embryos to 60 seconds of noise, bookended by 60 seconds of silence.
  • Second: researchers exposed 138 embryos to 180 seconds of the same bird song, either from their species or another, bookended once again by a minute of silence.

• The authors found all the birds, learners, and non-learners alike grew accustomed to the repeated external sound, regardless of whether it came from their species or a different species.

• Further research will be needed to compare how the sounds that drift through the shell of an egg impact vocal learners and non-learners as they grow up.

Antioxidant drug reverses process responsible for heart attacks and strokes  | MedicalXPress (24:17)

• Atherosclerosis is the buildup of fats, cholesterol, and other substances in and on your artery walls. 
  • A slow, progressive disease that may begin as early as childhood.
  • The cause is still unknown
  • Can block vital arteries that allow blood to flow to the heart, causing a heart attack, or to the brain causing a stroke.

• According to a new study in the Journal of the American Heart Association, an antioxidant drug reverses atherosclerosis and could be used to prevent heart attacks and strokes due to clots
  • Drug Name: Cysteamine
  • Effect: Power to switch off, and even reverse, this damaging process

• The drug is already known to be safe in humans where it’s used to treat a rare lysosomal disease called cystinosis.

• Looked at the effect on mice:
  • 32 to 56 percent reduction in the size of atherosclerotic plaques
  • Decreased the amount of oxidized fat by 73 percent
  • Decreased the proportion of inflammatory white blood cells by 55 percent
  • Increased the area made up of smooth muscle cells by 85 percent

• Professor David Leake, Professor of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Reading who led the study discussed the drug:
  • “The potential in this drug to protect against heart attacks and strokes and ultimately save lives superseded our expectations. We hoped it would cause plaques to grow at a slower pace, but we were amazed to find it reversed the process.”

• Cysteamine would offer an entirely new way of treating atherosclerosis. We now want to look at the most efficient way to give this drug to patients, and hope that it can be taken to clinical trials in the next few years.”

• Hopefully, clinical, trials will prove to be effective, and the more we can treat the cause of heart or brain events the more lives can be saved. 

Scientists Find a Way To Transform Toxic Sewer Gas Into Clean Hydrogen Fuel  | SciTechDaily (29:21)

• Scientists have found a new chemical process to turn toxic sewer gas into clean-burning fuel.
  • The process turns hydrogen sulfide into hydrogen fuel.
  • According to the research, the process is relatively little energy and a relatively cheap material 

• Hydrogen sulfide is emitted from manure piles and sewer pipes. 
  • A byproduct of industrial activities including refining oil and gas, producing paper, and mining.

•  Lang Qin, a co-author of the study, discusses hydrogen sulfide:
  • “Hydrogen sulfide is one of the most harmful gases in industry and to the environment … And because the gas is so harmful, a number of researchers want to turn hydrogen sulfide into something that is not so harmful, preferably valuable.”

• This study builds on a previous study, and a process called chemical looping.
  • Uses metal oxide particles in high-pressure reactors to “burn” fossil fuels and biomass without the presence of oxygen in the air.
  • First used in a study back in 2018, where researchers converted fossil fuels(i.e. coal) into electricity without emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

• The chemical additive to make this conversion happen is iron sulfide with a trace amount of molybdenum.
  • Hoping this catalyst will be able to scale at industrial levels. 

• This work is early in the scientific process – the researchers showed that the process worked in the lab; tests at the industrial level are forthcoming.

• Qin continues to talk about the high-level view of this study: 
  • “The big picture is we want to solve the harmful gas issue, and we thought that our chemical looping process would allow that … And here, we have found a way to do it in the lab that creates this value-added hydrogen fuel.”