Every May, the Waldorf school in Santa Fe, New Mexico, brings their eighth grade students on a class trip—a trip that the kids have all worked toward, by raising the money selling burritos and pizzas.
But when they were denied their reward this spring because of the pandemic, students decided to show compassion to those in need by donating $2,800 worth of supplies to the Navajo Nation, which is suffering from one of the highest per-capita COVID-19 infection and death rates in the US.
On Tuesday, May 26, Jessica Falkenhagen rented a van so she could drive with her older daughter, 11th grader Indie Russell, to Window Rock, Arizona. The van was stuffed with food, toiletries, paper products, school and cleaning supplies, pet food, thermometers, handmade masks and 60 gallons of drinking water—all purchased with the class trip money.
Also included was a large bag of face masks homemade by Indie.
Students helped with pre-trip shopping and loading the van. “They were great helpers trying to fit everything in as efficiently as possible,” says Falkenhagen.
A cultural anthropologist with a background in indigenous rights, Falkenhagen suggested the idea to the school after tracking the growing crisis in the Navajo Nation.
“I could see how lit up the kids were about that idea,” teacher Daisy Barnard said, after she put the idea to the class. “None of them complained about using the money for something other than a trip.”
“We’ve been anxiously following developments on the Navajo Nation over the past couple months and this money ended up being a real windfall at just the right time,” said Barnard.
The class trip that had been planned would have been a real adventure, too—a multi-day rafting voyage on the San Juan River in Utah.
Eighth grader Daisy Blue Russell is glad things worked out the way they did. “It felt good to use our trip money to help others who needed it.”
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Quote of the Day: “Calamity is virtue’s opportunity.” – Seneca
Photo: by AJ Colores, public domain
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As Tommye Austin made her way around the COVID-19 unit in early April, she worried about how long her nurses were going to have the supplies they needed to protect them from the virus.
Her San Antonio, Texas, hospital was well stocked, but with a surge of cases expected in May, the senior vice president and chief nurse executive, worried whether there would be enough N95 masks—especially with every hospital in the world seeking them.
Then she remembered what her late husband always said: “If you can’t find something, and you can’t buy something, you make it.”
So that’s what Tommye did—the nurse-scientist whose resume is crammed with credentials, like R.N., Ph.D., MBA and NEA-BC (Nurse Executive Advanced-Board Certified), began building a better mousetrap.
In her rare free time, she enjoys embroidery and quilting at her sewing machine, but even with all her skills and credentials, it was a challenge to design an N95 equivalent.
Even after long days at her University Health System job, she worked through the night to perfect her mask.
Photos courtesy of Tommye Austin
She remembered her husband teaching her about the best air conditioning filters for their home being electrostatic: they were worth the higher price because they carry a charge that zaps more gunk from the air. So, when Tommye went shopping for materials for this project, she remembered the word ‘electrostatic’.
At about $25 each, Tommye bought three different filter models, cut through their paper and wire frames, and got to work.
“The efficiency of each model was around the same, but one was more pliable,” she said. “It gave your mask a nice shape and was very breathable.”
Her biggest challenge was getting the mask to fit snug over the nose and mouth – but not so tight that it would damage the skin. And it still had to leave room for carbon dioxide to escape.
Photos courtesy of Tommye Austin
For more than a week, Tommye came home from work and tinkered practically all night. Her initial $300 purchase was supplemented by another $2,000 worth of gear.
As she closed in on a prototype, she struggled with the final piece of the comfort-safety puzzle. Then she extended the fabric on the nose and pleated that extension. Voila—more air pocket, no added bulk.
It only took her ten days to design the TM 2020 (‘Tommye Mask’). And, it only took 24 hours and a local TV news story for it to become an internet sensation. By the next day, her masks had been showcased by Fox News and the New York Post.
She likes to coordinate her TM 2020 masks to match her outfits
The hospital was so inundated with requests for details that it posted step-by-step instructions later that week. At that point, Tommye only had the instructions in her head.
A Better Mousetrap
The name N95 comes from the fact the masks filter 95% of airborne particles, such as viruses. Lab results show Tommye’s masks block 96.5%.
N95s weren’t intended for all-day use, so they tend to carve painful, unsightly marks into noses, cheeks and chins. Hers don’t.
With nowhere for exhaled carbon dioxide to escape, N95 wearers sometimes suffer dizziness or headaches. Hers have an air pocket so the C02 floats more easily away.
Although the TM 2020 is meant for non-commercial purposes, Tommye received over 1,500 offers from people willing to buy them. Messages have come from as far as Indonesia and South Africa.
After speaking with an old friend, Tommye heard that her daughter was a nurse in Houston, and had been using the same N95 mask for nearly two months. Brittany got a TM 2020 in the mail the next day.
Thousands of her mask have been created, so far, but only Tommye and a few others are wearing them at her hospital. Everyone else on the staff has access to barrier/surgical masks, N95 respirator masks, face shields, and hospital-issued scrubs.
Thanks to Tommye’s concern for nurses needing a backup in San Antonio, the TM 2020s are helping people to feel safer around the world, according to American Heart Association News.
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Amid lockdowns, people are eating healthier, cooking their own food, and consuming more fruit and vegetables, according to preliminary results from a worldwide Corona Cooking Survey.
Based on analysis of answers to the survey by 11,000 people in 11 countries, consumers reported fewer purchases of microwave-prepared foods, and fewer purchases of sweet and salty snacks.
“Consumption of salty, fat and sweet products usually goes up when people are under stress, but during the pandemic this heightened craving has been fulfilled in many countries with home-baked delicacies,” said Charlotte De Backer, chairman of FOOMS, a research group on food and media at U. Antwerp.
Furthermore, the study, conducted by the University of Antwerp in collaboration with U. Ghent and U. Leuven, is revealing that as more people rely less on Lean Cuisine and Stouffer’s, the act of cooking in their kitchens has become more of a habit as workers are banished from their office buildings and spend more time at home.
The good news, De Backer told Reuters, is that some of these eating habits are likely to outlast the pandemic, because in many countries lockdowns lasted longer than the six weeks it takes to form a new habit.
The thousands of people who took the survey in Belgium reported that they had reduced stress and frustration about cooking, as well as feeling bolder and more creative in the kitchen post-COVID-19. Time preference was also changed, with people feeling that cooking didn’t require an intolerable amount of effort anymore.
Personal nutrition has apparently improved, as the purchase of fresh, frozen, and canned vegetables and fruit across all countries went up. Also notable is the fact that people say they are wasting less food, eating more leftovers, and planning meals in advance.
With restaurants closed and people forced to grocery shop, De Backer posits they may be aligning more with healthy eating habits as fewer opportunities exist for impulse buying or eating unhealthy foods.
In regards to why people are wasting less food and eating leftovers, De Backer says it could correspond with a participant’s fears of food shortages, as grocery stores around the world suffer from empty shelves.
The researchers have been delighted because their peers in at least 30 countries have now joined the survey, to get even more data from around the world. Results won’t be available until June.
FOOMS regularly posts updates on the Corona Cooking Survey research on their Facebook page, while anyone can contribute to the science by taking the survey on the U. Antwerp website.
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If you’re feeling a bit frazzled, you might decide to have a chat with a couple of friends over a cup of coffee, talk things over, and hopefully walk away feeling a bit more positive about life in general.
Frazzled Café Online provides the equivalent of a neighborhood coffee shop in a virtual environment, where people who are feeling overwhelmed by the stresses and strains of everyday life can get together to share their experiences.
Since completing a Master’s degree in cognitive therapy at Oxford University, the American born comedian Ruby Wax has written several self-help books—such as, A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled—with her distinctive style of observational humor. During her UK book and theatre tours, she found that when the floor was thrown open for Q and A, audience members were keen to connect and talk about their issues.
The need for a support network to cope with the demands of our fast-paced lifestyles inspired her to create a nonprofit online coffee chat room.
“Frazzled Cafe is about people coming together to share their stories, calmly sitting together, stating their case, and feeling validated as a result, says Ruby. “Feeling heard, to me, has always been half the cure.”
Meetings are held regularly to allow people the opportunity to speak out in a safe, non-judgmental environment. While face-to-face meetings are currently on hold, online sessions are being held instead. These take the form of larger groups of up to 50 people led by Ruby, and smaller meetings hosted by trained facilitators.
The meetings are hosted on Zoom, and when everyone is ready to begin, Ruby launches into the main session with a short mindfulness meditation. The meeting is then thrown open to anyone wishing to share personal experiences. A few simple rules are in place, such as to steer clear of contentious topics, but the message is that: “It’s OK to not be OK”.
Participants from across the UK, and elsewhere, talk about how they are feeling, giving an insight into a cross-section of different views. The group is mainly made up of women, though there are a fair number of men, with a wide range of ages, from twenties to seventies. After the first session, the group is divided up into smaller sections allowing more people a chance to chat in a smaller group. Ruby concludes the meeting with a short closing meditation.
The meetings, which have gained in popularity since the COVID-19 crisis, and often have a waitlist because they fill up, are not intended to take the place of therapy. The aim is not to offer solutions, but to provide a safe and confidential space where anyone can speak openly about how they feel, amongst a supportive group of people who understand what it’s like to feel “frazzled”. (Read more about Ruby, and how it works.)
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Photo by Ruth Mottram from the Danish Meteorological Institute
Proving that the world is still full of mysterious and exciting things that are unknown, American scientist Tim Bartholomaus has recently published a paper with his findings after an unexpected encounter he had with other-worldly balls of green moss atop Root Glacier in Alaska.
Scattered across the ice, Tim began to look into what glaciologists in Iceland described as “glacier mice”.
“They’re not attached to anything and they’re just resting there on ice,” he says. “They’re bright green in a world of white.”
Glacier mice, upon further observation, are herds or kreshes of green moss balls growing on nothing, which moved in an ultra-slow coordinated synchronicity with each other in a way that no one understands.
They are made from a variety of different species of mosses that Tim imagines formed around some tiny piece of detritus, and then grew off each other. They also contain a variety of basic organisms like worms and bacteria.
“They really do look like little mammals, little mice or chipmunks or rats or something running around on the glacier, although they run in obviously very slow motion,” the study’s co-author and wildlife biologist Sophie Gilbert, also at the University of Idaho, told NPR.
Photo by Ruth Mottram from the Danish Meteorological Institute
“The whole colony of moss balls, this whole grouping, moves at about the same speeds and in the same directions,” Bartholomaus added. “Those speeds and directions can change over the course of weeks.”
To try and determine the cause of movement of the mysterious migrating mosses, Bartholomaus tied wires with brightly-colored beads around each moss ball and then tracked their positions every year as they moved across the glacier.
So far none of the gathered evidence supports any of the immediate hypotheses. At first scientists thought they were only rolling down hill, but this proved false.
Next the idea was that the moss balls shaded the ice underneath them, and that as the sun melted the surrounding ice they were left on teetering on “an ice pedestal” which after melting caused them to slide off. Again, this was not the case.
“We next thought maybe the wind is sort of blowing them in consistent directions,” says Bartholomaus, “and so we measured the dominant direction of the wind.”
Wind was also found to be irrelevant, leaving Bartholomaus “baffled”.
“I think that probably the explanation is somewhere in the physics of the energy and the heat around the surface of the glacier, but we haven’t quite got there yet,” says Ruth Mottram, according to NPR, a climate scientist at the Danish Meteorological Institute who later mentioned it’s hard not to imagine them as little alien lifeforms like the “tribbles” from Star Trek.
(LISTEN to the NPR segment below)
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Quote of the Day: “I don’t believe in pessimism. If something doesn’t come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it’s going to rain, it will.” – Clint Eastwood (turns 90 today)
Photo: by Todd Cravens, public domain
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We know renewable energy technology can produce electricity from the sun’s rays, the force of the wind, and the power of the waves—which makes one wonder why this new 3-in-1 offshore platform wasn’t made 20 years ago.
The maritime energy generator developed by German company Sinn Power goes where the power of these three forces of nature are often strongest—the ocean. With its onboard equipment, it can generate power from the force of the water underneath as well as the wind and sun above.
“The modular design has been a key element since we started developing maritime technologies that allow flexibility and a wide variety of applications” Dr Philipp Sinn, CEO Sinn Power told Forbes. “The floating platform can supply renewable energy to islands across the world, for example, and contribute to the worldwide implementation of offshore wind farms.”
The prototype, which started as a patent application merely 2 years ago, is now stationed off the coast of Greece. It’s being offered to solar energy companies as a golden opportunity to test and demonstrate photovoltaic arrays to be stationed on a fleet of future platforms.
As is so often the case with new energy solutions, the design is lightweight, scalable, durable, and easy to repair—but the platform raises or lowers itself, depending on the height of the waves around it.
When fully outfitted with solar panels and windmills, the platform can generate 26 kilowatts of renewable energy. Far more reliable than wind and solar, most of the energy generated by the platform would come from waves—synced as they are with the tides and uninterrupted by clouds or darkness.
Many island communities across the world rely on portable energy sources like diesel generators or cheap coal power plants—like on the island of Siberut in Indonesia, where locals have been forced to develop bamboo-powered bioelectric power stations to get energy to small hamlets. Offshore sources like Sinn Power’s flotilla could offer another way to get electricity to island communities.
“We are now preparing the floating platform to be used as a showcase, to enable wider access for potential customers. Politicians and representatives from other European nations have already visited. The next goal is in the autumn, when hopefully we’ll be able to start marketing our unique electronics set,” Sinn said.
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Dozens of lab rats have been given happy retirements thanks to a professor of physiology and biology in Wisconsin.
Dr. Richard Hein of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay has been helping his lab rats find forever homes after his first and second-year students complete their introduction to anatomy courses.
Throughout the courses, students examine how things like exercise, music, and temperature affect the anatomy of the animals—and Hein told Wisconsin Public Radio that many students actually form bonds with their rats.
“That’s actually one of the things that I really think is a great outcome of using research animals,” Hein said. “The students that normally wouldn’t get exposure to care for animals really take on that responsibility.”
In fact, Hein says that more than half of the students in his class wind up adopting their rats every year—animals which Hein say are very intelligent and intuitive of human emotions.
Biology major Stevie VanderBloomen, adopted three of the classroom rats after finishing her second year course with Professor Hein, saying that now his pet rats can do tricks, respond to their names, and actually clean themselves more than cats do.
“They’re very into human interaction and being able to have fun with you,” she told WPR.
The rats in the class of 2020 all arrived with white fur covered in black blotches like Holstein cows, and were a particularly friendly bunch. Amazingly, residents of Manitowoc, where the school campus is located, adopted every single one of the Holstein rats once school ended after the university publicized Prof. Hein’s adopt-a-rat program in their newsletter.
“It is that time of year again where I am running the adopt-a-rat program,” wrote Hein in the newsletter. “The Anatomy and Physiology students have been working with laboratory rats over the year, and we have 11 females up for adoption that have been raised since they were a few weeks old. This year they are a particularly friendly and fun bunch.”
Ethical codes for use of rats and mice in laboratory experiments for the sake of science normally call for the animals to be treated humanely, but not for their adoption post-study.
“I think people in general really do care for animals and appreciate the fact that they do get adopted out,” Hein said.
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Quote of the Day: “Giving birth and nourishing, having without possessing, acting with no expectation, leading and not trying to control: this is the supreme virtue.” – Tao Te Ching, translated by Stephen Mitchell
Photo: by Matthew T Rader, public domain
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Almost as sensitive as real human eyes, a recent paper in Nature published the trials of a bionic eye developed by a team of robotics engineers that could restore sight to an estimated 285 million blind people.
Hypothesized to be available in 5 years the EC-EYE—short for ElectroChemical EYE—is inspired by the human retina, which is one of the most sensitive tissues we possess, providing up to 80% of all information about our surroundings. If you have been noticing any issues with you eye health, like dry eyes, then consider making an appointment for dry eye treatment as soon as possible. For those who stare at a computer screen for too long, consider trying out these Felix Gray glasses so you can have better eye care throughout the day.
The visual prosthetic developed by engineers from Hong Kong and the U.S. offers hope to the hundreds of millions of people around the world that have lost their ability to see due to things like age-related macular degeneration and BB gun accidents.
The bionic eye mimics the domed-shape of the human retina which sharpens the focus and reduces the spread of light as it passes through ten million photoreceptive cells per square centimeter.
These natural characteristics have so far been impossible to replicate with artificial materials. Paper author and engineer Zhiyong Fan of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and his colleagues developed a high-density array of photoreceptors placed inside pores of aluminium oxide, a mineral almost as hard as diamonds that would work to mimic the retina.
Again, imitating biology, nerve-like electrical wires formed from liquid metal are sealed inside rubber tubes which run to the external circuitry for processing the image.
The eyeball itself is made of silicon into which the retina technology is placed, the space in between is taken up by ionic liquid that simulates the biological gel that forms a buffer between the lens and the retina behind it.
A Better Mouse Trap
Professor Fan and his colleagues predict the technology will become practical to manufacture and implant within 5 years—and, amazingly, the EC-EYE could surpass the ability of the normal human eye by simply increasing the density of light-detecting sensors.
“We hope to further improve our device in terms of bio-compatibility, stability, and performance,” said Professor Fan.
Earlier this month, an injured migrant laborer named Mohan Paswan was forced to hobble home to his 15-year-old daughter and tell her he had been badly hurt, he had lost his job, and there was no way for them to get home to their faraway village in India.
Most people would regard their predicament as a horrible—even hopeless—situation; but now, the world is celebrating the incredible story that followed.
Paswan and his teen daughter Jyoti Kumari recently completed the 750-mile journey from their former apartment on the outskirts of New Dehli all the way to their home village. What’s remarkable is that they rode the entire distance on a bicycle they purchased with their last $20, with Jyoti pedaling as her father rode on the seat with his heavy bag.
The story of their grit and determination has inspired millions of migrant workers across the country, where the novel coronavirus lockdowns has resulted in severe work shortages. Many of these laborers have needed to take similar journeys from major cities back to their home villages where they can be supported by their extended family—but financial and logistical problems have left many of them stranded and wondering what’s next.
Things had not been going well for Paswan, even before the pandemic. In January, he was involved in a traffic accident while working as a rickshaw driver. His daughter, who had dropped out of school a year earlier because of the family’s financial troubles, decided to make the trip to Dehli to care for her injured father. When the lockdown hit and Paswan was unable to earn a living, their landlord cut off their electricity and threatened to kick them out of their apartment. It was then that Jyoti suggested that they head home to their village in Bihar.
At first, Paswan was aghast over his daughter’s suggestion that she take him home. “I said, ‘Look, daughter, it’s not four or five kilometers that you will drag me from here. It’s 12-, 13-hundred kilometers. How will we go?” he said in a video broadcast by the BBC’s Hindi service.
Jyoti had cycled a lot in their village, and they had just enough money to purchase a bicycle. She insisted that she would get her dad home safely.
That being said, it was not a glamorous journey for Jyoti and Paswan—they often found themselves without enough to eat; they slept at gas stations, and often relied on the generosity of strangers.
The pair traveled nearly 100 miles per day. On borrowed cell phones, Jyoti would reassure her worried mother: “Don’t worry, I’ll get Papa home good.”
True to her word, Jyoti and her father made it home. Additionally, since the Indian media has dubbed her “Jyoti the lionhearted”, the teenage girl has been contacted by Onkar Singh, the chairmain of the Cycling Federation of India, urging her to try out for the national team.
Singh says that the Cycling Federation is planning on bringing Jyoti back to New Dehli in “something comfortable, like an [air conditioned] train.” Expressing his admiration that she could travel so far with a heavy man “and his luggage,” Singh added with conviction: “She has guts.”
(WATCH the news coverage below)
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Transplanted nerve cells (transplant up to the right), which were produced from human skin cells, send their nerve fibers to the cerebral cortex on the opposite side of the brain in a stroke-afflicted rat.
Photo by Lund University.
Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have succeeded in restoring mobility and sensation of touch in stroke-afflicted rats by reprogramming human skin cells and transplanting them into the brain.
“Six months after the transplantation, we could see how the new cells had repaired the damage that a stroke had caused in the rats’ brains,” says Professor Zaal Kokaia, one of the researchers behind the study.
Several previous studies from the Lund team and others have shown that it is possible to transplant nerve cells derived from human stem cells or from reprogrammed cells into brains of rats afflicted by stroke. However, it was not known whether the transplanted cells can form connections correctly in the rat brain in a way that restores normal movement and feeling.
“We have used tracking techniques, electron microscopy and other methods, such as light to switch off activity in the transplanted cells, as a way to show that they really have connected correctly in the damaged nerve circuits. We have been able to see that the fibers from the transplanted cells have grown to the other side of the brain, the side where we did not transplant any cells, and created connections. No previous study has shown this,” says Kokaia, who—even though he and colleague senior professor Olle Lindvall have studied the brain for several decades—was surprised by the results.
“It is remarkable to find that it is actually possible to repair a stroke-damaged brain and recreate nerve connections that have been lost,” says Lindvall. “The study kindles hope that in the future it could be possible to replace dead nerve cells with new healthy nerve cells also in stroke patients.”
The researchers have used human skin cells that have been reprogrammed in the laboratory to become nerve cells. They were then transplanted into the cerebral cortex of rats, in the part of the brain that is most often damaged after a stroke. Now the researchers will undertake further studies.
“We want to know more about how the transplanted cells affect the opposite hemisphere of the brain. We also want to take a closer look at how a transplant affects intellectual functions such as memory. In addition, we will study possible side effects,” says Kokaia. “Safety is, of course, extremely important for cell transplantation if it is going to be used clinically in the future.”
Transplanted nerve cells (transplant up to the right), which were produced from human skin cells, send their nerve fibers to the cerebral cortex on the opposite side of the brain in a stroke-afflicted rat. Photo by Lund University.
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This 7-year-old boy from Raleigh, North Carolina may not be old enough to attend high school, but he has proven himself to be quite a prom king since he came to the rescue of his heartbroken nanny.
17-year-old Rachel Chapman had been babysitting young Curtis Rogers for almost a year prior to the novel coronavirus outbreaks. Between picking up Curtis from school, taking him to piano lessons, and helping him with his homework, Rachel had become a beloved part of the Rogers family.
After the COVID-19 lockdowns shuttered their schools and forced them into quarantine, however, Rachel and Curtis were not able to see each other for two months.
In addition to missing the Rogers family, Rachel—who is a senior student at Sanderson High School—was particularly saddened by the cancellation of her senior prom and commencement ceremony.
When Curtis heard about Rachel’s prom, he insisted on throwing a socially distanced “mini-prom” for his beloved nanny in their backyard.
The youngster pulled out all the stops for the celebration, too—he even used a giant “promposal” sign to invite Rachel to the event.
Photo by Elissa Rogers/Becky Chapman
On the day of the mini-prom, Curtis donned a purple suit to match Rachel’s prom dress; he set out a fancy dinner table in the back yard with all of their favorite foods from Chick-Fil-A; and after raising a glass of juice to toast his babysitter, they danced six feet across from each other in order to maintain social distancing.
“I was so surprised,” Rachel told Good Morning America. “I had no idea he was going to go all out. It was very thoughtful and sweet.”
“I planned it out because Rachel probably just wanted to see me a lot and she also is one of the best people I’ve known,” Curtis told WTVD. “Rachel is one of our favorite people and Rachel’s like the best nanny ever.”
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(WATCH the news coverage below)
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An MIT study shows that electrical vehicle batteries could have a useful and profitable second life as backup storage for grid-scale solar photovoltaic installations, where they could perform for more than a decade in this less demanding role. This image shows a ‘cut-away’ view of a lithium-ion battery over a background of cars and solar panels. Photo by MIT News.
Solar energy farms could offer second life for electric vehicle batteries Modeling study shows battery reuse systems could be profitable for both electric vehicle companies and grid-scale solar operations.
Written by David L. Chandler MIT News
As electric vehicles rapidly grow in popularity worldwide, there will soon be a wave of used batteries whose performance is no longer sufficient for vehicles that need reliable acceleration and range.
But this new study shows that these batteries could still have a useful and profitable second life as backup storage for grid-scale solar photovoltaic installations, where they could perform for more than a decade in this less demanding role.
The study, published in the journal Applied Energy, was carried out by six current and former MIT researchers, including postdoc Ian Mathews and professor of mechanical engineering Tonio Buonassisi, who is head of the Photovoltaics Research Laboratory.
As a test case, the researchers examined in detail a hypothetical grid-scale solar farm in California. They studied the economics of several scenarios: building a 2.5-megawatt solar farm alone; building the same array along with a new lithium-ion battery storage system; and building it with a battery array made of repurposed EV batteries that had declined to 80 percent of their original capacity, the point at which they would be considered too weak for continued vehicle use.
They found that the new battery installation would not provide a reasonable net return on investment, but that a properly managed system of used EV batteries could be a good, profitable investment as long as the batteries cost less than 60 percent of their original price.
The process might sound straightforward, and it has occasionally been implemented in smaller-scale projects, but expanding that to grid scale is not simple, Mathews explains. “There are many issues on a technical level. How do you screen batteries when you take them out of the car to make sure they’re good enough to reuse? How do you pack together batteries from different cars in a way that you know that they’ll work well together, and you won’t have one battery that’s much poorer than the others and will drag the performance of the system down?”
On the economic side, he says, there are also questions: “Are we sure that there’s enough value left in these batteries to justify the cost of taking them from cars, collecting them, checking them over, and repackaging them into a new application?” For the modeled case under California’s local conditions, the answer seems to be a solid yes, the team found.
The study used a semiempirical model of battery degradation, trained using measured data, to predict capacity fade in these lithium-ion batteries under different operating conditions, and found that the batteries could achieve maximum lifetimes and value by operating under relatively gentle charging and discharging cycles — never going above 65 percent of full charge or below 15 percent. This finding challenges some earlier assumptions that running the batteries at maximum capacity initially would provide the most value.
“I’ve talked to people who’ve said the best thing to do is just work your battery really hard, and front load all your revenue,” Mathews says. “When we looked at that, it just didn’t make sense at all.” It was clear from the analysis that maximizing the lifetime of the batteries would provide the best returns.
An MIT study shows that electrical vehicle batteries could have a useful and profitable second life as backup storage for grid-scale solar photovoltaic installations, where they could perform for more than a decade in this less demanding role. This image shows a ‘cut-away’ view of a lithium-ion battery over a background of cars and solar panels. Photo by MIT News.
How long will they last?
One unknown factor is just how long the batteries can continue to operate usefully in this second application. The study made a conservative assumption, that the batteries would be retired from their solar-farm backup service after they had declined down to 70% of their rated capacity, from their initial 80% (the point when they were retired from EV use). But it may well be, Mathews says, that continuing to operate down to 60% of capacity or even lower might prove to be safe and worthwhile. Longer-term pilot studies will be required to determine that, he says. Many electric vehicle manufacturers are already beginning to do such pilot studies.
“That’s a whole area of research in itself,” he says, “because the typical battery has multiple degradation pathways. Trying to figure out what happens when you move into this more rapid degradation phase, it’s an active area of research.” In part, the degradation is determined by the way the batteries are controlled. “So, you might actually adapt your control algorithms over the lifetime of the project, to just really push that out as far as possible,” he says.
“A lot of states are really starting to see the benefit that storage can provide,” Mathews says. “And this just shows that they should have an allowance that somehow incorporates second-life batteries in those regulations. That could be favorable for them.”
A recent report from McKinsey Corp. shows that as demand for backup storage for renewable energy projects grows between now and 2030, second-use EV batteries could potentially meet half of that demand, Mathews says. Some EV companies, he says, including Rivian, founded by an MIT alumnus, are already designing their battery packs specifically to make this end-of-life repurposing as easy as possible.
Mathews says that “the point that I made in the paper was that technically, economically, … this could work.” For the next step, he says, “There’s a lot of stakeholders who would need to be involved in this: You need to have your EV manufacturer, your lithium ion battery manufacturer, your solar project developer, the power electronics guys.” The intent, he says, “was to say, ‘Hey, you guys should actually sit down and really look at this, because we think it could really work.’”
This 103-year-old woman was given a slim chance of survival after she was hospitalized with a case of the novel coronavirus earlier this month.
Jennie Stejna, a “feisty Polish grandmother” from Easton, Massachusetts, was the first resident of her nursing home to be diagnosed with the virus after she contracted a low-grade fever. Despite being moved to a quarantined ward, her condition worsened.
Nursing home staffers eventually called Stejna’s granddaughter, Shelley Gunn, and advised her to say her final goodbyes before it was too late. According to the Easton Wicked Local, Gunn’s husband asked Stejna if she was ready to go to heaven—and Stejna reportedly responded with a resounding “hell yes”.
To everyone’s shock, however, Stejna made a full recovery from the virus.
As a means of celebrating her recovery, nursing home staffers gave her a bottle of Bud Light—a drink which Stejna loves, but has not gotten to enjoy in a long time.
Since Stejna’s story has been shared across international news outlets, social media users have hailed the grandma for her strength—and for her good taste.
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Quote of the Day: “That best portion of a man’s life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.” – William Wordsworth
Photo: by Brigitte Tohm, public domain
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This savvy English chef has come up with a unique lunch special for people who may be reluctant about returning to work: a ginormous socially-distanced sandwich.
Measuring in at 6.5 feet (2 meters) long, the massive bacon and sausage baguette is now being sold for £20 since it was dreamt into existence by chef Ethan Rodgers earlier this week.
The “Back to Work Baguette” sandwich was created with the help of a butcher, bakery, deli, and restaurant in Cirencester, Gloucestershire.
The sarnie is meant for two people who want to share lunch while still following social distancing guidelines.
Staff at Corn Hall Deli with the massive sandwich — SWNS
“We have been asked a lot since measures started to ease about sandwiches and take away and we were able to do take away coffees,” said Rodgers. “[But] this is a fun example of what we are doing here.
“The hospitality industry will be the last to reopen, with talk of July, so we have had to diversify,” he added. “We are doing a grocery delivery service for the remote villages, my chef team are making ready meals and pastries that are available from the restaurant and deli every day.”
Until the social restrictions are actually lifted, Rodgers has been happy to share the “Back to Work Baguette” sandwich with the staffers at Cam Butchers, Halls Bakery, Corn Hall Deli, and MBB Brasserie who made it happen.
Regardless of whether the restaurant’s patrons will actually order the monster sandwich in the future, we’re simply happy to applaud the chef for his creativity.
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Staff at Corn Hall Deli with the massive sandwich — SWNS
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Earlier today, the world’s largest all-electric commercial aircraft successfully completed its first test flight—and it is being hailed as a significant milestone in disrupting the transportation industry and accelerating the electric aviation revolution.
The all-electric Cessna Grand Caravan 208B was designed by electric aviation company magniX in partnership with AeroTEC, a leading independent company focused on aerospace testing, engineering and certification.
The successful flight of the 9-passenger eCaravan, magnified by a 750-horsepower (560 kW) magni500 propulsion system, took place at the AeroTEC Flight Test Center at the Grant County International Airport (KMWH) in Moses Lake, Washington this morning.
“The iconic Caravan has been a workhorse of industry moving people and transporting goods on short routes for decades,” said magnix CEO Roei Ganzarski. “This first flight of the eCaravan is yet another step on the road to operating these middle-mile aircraft at a fraction of the cost, with zero emissions, from and to smaller airports. These electric commercial aircraft will enable the offering of flying services of people and packages in a way previously not possible.”
Although the eCaravan is being hailed as the largest all-electric commercial aircraft, magniX was also responsible for launching the world’s first all-electric commercial aircraft back in December 2019.
Now, the flying of the eCaravan serves as another critical step in the certification and approval process of the magni500 propulsion system, enabling future conversions of additional aircraft to magniX’s all-electric propulsion technology.
Photo by magniX
“I’m proud of the pioneering work performed by our engineers, technicians and flight test team,” said Lee Human, President and CEO of AeroTEC. “There’s no roadmap for testing and certifying electric aircraft—this is a new frontier and AeroTEC is on the front lines developing the processes and best practices that will pave the way for electric aviation.”
The historic flight was captured via livestream and watched by social media users around the world.
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In what is being hailed “the ultimate form of social distancing”, a trio of autonomous cars are set to begin delivering thousands of meals to families suffering from food insecurity in Washington DC.
Optimus Ride, a startup that specializes in developing driverless vehicles for urban transportation, has announced that they will be deploying three of their cars for contactless grocery deliveries to low-income households in Southeast DC.
The initiative, which is being spearheaded by real estate company Brookfield Properties, is expected to deliver 5,000 meals every week. The meals are being doled out in the form of “One-Week Boxes” containing enough nutritious ready-made meals and ingredients to feed an adult three times a day for seven days at a time.
According to Venture Beat, the meals are being sent to at-risk recipients identified by homelessness nonprofit Pathways to Housing and to the local Van Ness Elementary School.
Although the cars will require disinfection in between each use, the project is expected to decrease the risk of COVID-19 transmission.
Prior to the onset of the pandemic, Optimus Ride had been developing their autonomous vehicle operations in The Yards neighborhood of DC with the aim of one day offering transportation services to the residents—but until the outbreaks subside, the startup has been using their driverless cars to deliver essential items to communities with high risk of infection.
“Our strategy has proven to be highly tractable, as Optimus Ride is one of the first commercially operational self-driving technology companies in the world, with deployments in Maryland, California, Virginia, and New York,” reads an Optimus Ride blog post. “While our initial focus has been on moving passengers, we also developed an initial pilot for self-driving delivery of pharmaceuticals. Our goal at the time was to identify efficiency opportunities during off-peak hours, but in doing so we found a strong and positive response, particularly from our senior community members.
“Along with many other companies and institutions, we have been closely monitoring the pandemic from its early days through its global spread. In keeping with guidance from health and state officials, we transitioned the company from optional work-from-home to mandatory. On Monday, March 15th, we mutually decided with our partners to pause passenger operations in all of our sites … It was the responsible thing to do considering the situation.
“After pausing operations at … [a California nursing home], we received an urgent request from their management to assist with evening meal delivery as residents were no longer allowed to congregate in the dining hall. Our team sprang into action, and after some rapid planning, preparation and taking all possible precautions, we adapted our services for meal delivery. On that evening we delivered 46 meals, and since then have continued delivering 50-80 meals per day.
“It is responses like these that have made our team feel our work is more meaningful than ever, and we will continue with our meal deliveries for [the nursing home] while the situation is still ongoing.”
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