Tag: Saved for Later

The damp coffee grounds sitting alone and forgotten in the basket of your coffee maker have the potential to save the world. (You forgot to clean the coffee maker, didn’t you? Go ahead. We’ll be here when you get back.)

Yes, those coffee grounds, the ones that you so callously tossed in the trash (or composted, or turned into a DIY project) have the potential to store substantial amounts of methane.

In a new paper published in Nanotechnology, researchers report that heating coffee grounds with potassium hydroxide creates a material that can store methane. Methane is an incredibly potent greenhouse gas, much stronger than carbon dioxide. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trap heat from the sun, leading to climate change.

Researchers have been looking at ways to store methane for quite some time. With this new method, the treated coffee grounds can store up to seven percent of their weight in methane. As an added bonus, the storage is also stable at room temperature, between 58 and 94 degrees Fahrenheit (288 to 308 Kelvin).

And really, they just used normal, spent coffee grounds (Kirkland 100% Colombian coffee, dark roast fine ground). The researchers hope that one day, this method can be used to either store methane and keep it from getting into the atmosphere, or as a building block for methane or hydrogen fuel cells, which could power cleaner, greener cars. Someday, both you and your car might run on coffee!

Metastatic cancer, or a cancer that spreads to other parts of the body, causes more than 90 percent of cancer deaths. Doctors constantly monitor patients’ blood to make sure that cancer cells haven’t broken off from the original tumor and started spreading, but these cells are difficult to detect, making the tests inefficient. Now a team of researchers has developed a tiny implantable sponge that can soak up these cancer cells so that doctors can intervene before the cancer settles in, according to a study published yesterday in Nature Communications.

Cancers don’t just metastasize anywhere. When cells break off from tumors, they flow in the blood to specific environments that are cozy for them. In the past researchers have found that immune cells play an important role in creating these microenvironments, and that the metastasizing cells tend to follow the immune cells.

In the study, the researchers tested sponges just a fifth of an inch in diameter made of a biocompatible plastic called PLGA on mice with breast cancer. They implanted the sponges in the mice’s abdomens and under their skin, places where cancer doesn’t usually spread. When they removed the sponges 28 days later, the researchers found that they contained cancer cells, though there were no cancer cells in the same tissues without the sponge.

The researchers hypothesize that, when the immune cells flocked to the site of the implanted sponge, the metastatic cancer cells followed, then stayed there when trapped by the sponge. This could help researchers detect metastatic cancer cells sooner, so they can intervene earlier. What’s more, the sponge seemed to soak up other cancer cells from the original tumor environment as well, reducing the number of their cells by 10 percent, which could make the original cancer easier to treat.

Since this experiment was limited to breast cancer, it’s hard to know if it would work as well in other types of cancer without solid tumors, like leukemias. What’s more, researchers still aren’t sure that early metastasis detection improves a patient’s overall outcome—something the researchers hope to pursue in future studies, the BBC reports. And though they will pursue those studies in animals, they hope to test the sponge in humans soon.

The auto world seems hyper-sensitive to hacking these days — and rightly so. Good-guy hackers have exposed numerous vulnerabilities in today’s telematics systems, which could be exploited to frustrate drivers, pilfer personal information about owners, or worse.

But are these worries just growing pains? Could they be a normal part of new technology maturing? (Insert your favorite Afterschool Special song here. We’re going with "Nadia’s Theme".)

According to analysts Colin Bird and Egil Juliussen at IHS Automotive, the answer to both questions is a resounding "yes". In fact, they insist that the continued computerization and networking of cars will offer huge benefits for drivers and automakers alike.

How so? Because computerization and networking will allow automakers to fix problems with their cars on the fly via over-the-air (OTA) software updates.

CARS: THE NEW SMARTPHONES

Think about it: there’s a bug in your laptop’s operating system, or the news media freaks out about a security hole in your favorite app. How do you fix it? You don’t take your computer or phone to the shop where you bought it (as if most of the staff there could do do anything about it anyway). You download an update, install it, reboot, and voila.

Relatively few automakers have begun doing OTA updates yet, but IHS expects that to change dramatically in the near future. Remote updates have the potential to cut warranty costs, boost rates of completion for software recalls, and extend the performance of many components. OTA updates will also make customers happier because drivers won’t have to take time out of their day to schlep to a dealership for repairs or even fiddle with a USB drive.

And that’s not all: OTA updates stand to improve automakers’ bottom lines, too. IHS predicts that cost savings from remote updates will swell from a "mere" $2.7 billion this year to $35 billion in 2022.

That dramatic growth is, in part, because the number of vehicles capable of benefiting from OTA updates is set to balloon from 1.2 million cars on the road today to around 32 million by 2022.

NOT ALL UPDATES ARE EQUAL

There are four areas that IHS identifies for targeted OTA updates. App updates are the easiest to carry out, because app software is relatively compact and doesn’t often interfere with more critical functions of a vehicle. Infotainment and telematics systems are tougher to handle because they’re larger, which means that updates take more bandwidth to download and more time to install. (Also, as we’ve seen, those systems can provide access to sensitive parts of a car’s operating system.)

The last — and hardest — area to target for OTA updates is the electronic control unit (ECU) software. While BMW, Ford, Hyundai, Toyota, and Volkswagen have already begun carrying out OTA updates in other areas (or are about to), only Tesla has ventured into updating the ECU. Why? Because, as IHS points out, Tesla built its system from the ground up with OTA updates in mind:

Tesla has designed its system and ECU architecture with experienced staff from the PC and consumer electronics (CE) industries and has included OTA features in the basic design. It certainly helped that Tesla did not have legacy systems and could start the system architecture with a clean sheet.

And yet, Tesla won’t be alone in this arena for long. Today, there are only about 86,000 vehicles capable receiving ECU updates over the air, but that number will swell to 25.7 million vehicles by 2022.

Of course, OTA updates won’t solve every problem with every car. There will always be squeaks and other issues for dealers and their mechanics to fix. But the cash cow known as the dealership repair and service center could start to run dry before long.

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Elon Musk has often been compared to Tony Stark. The billionaire entrepreneur is the brains behind SpaceX’s reusable rockets, Tesla’s electric cars, and the solar power provider SolarCity. But last night when comedian Stephen Colbert pressed Musk to decide whether he’s a superhero or a supervillain, Musk was evasive.

Now we know why. Later on in the interview, Musk admitted that he advocates detonating thermonuclear explosives on neighboring planet Mars.

The businessman has often stated that he thinks humans should colonize Mars, and now it seems he’ll stop at nothing to get his way.

“It is a fixer-upper of a planet,” Musk told Colbert. “But eventually you could transform Mars into an Earth-like planet.”

There’s a fast way and a slow way to do that. The slow way involves setting up lots of pumps and generators to warm up the red planet so that its frozen carbon dioxide melts and wraps the planet in a thicker atmosphere. The thicker blanket of CO₂ helps the planet warm up further, thus melting more carbon dioxide, and the positive feedback loop continues. (This is essentially what we’re doing on Earth, and it’s called global warming.)

There’s a simpler and cheaper way to warm up Mars. “The fast way is, drop thermonuclear weapons over the poles,” said Musk.

Watch the full clip here: