Winner Precipice

"Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought."

-- Albert Einstein

Deep below Iceland, 'CarbFix' scientists turn heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas in to harmless stone

10 JUNE 2016       JAPAN TIMES       

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Associated Press) -- Scientists have for the first time found a quick way  -- but not a cheap one -- to turn heat-trapping carbon dioxide gas into harmless rock.

Experts say the results of a two-year, $10 million experiment called CarbFix, conducted about 540 meters deep in the rocks of Iceland, offer new hope for an effective weapon to heap fight man-made global warming. 

When an international team of scientists pumped a carbon dioxide and water mix into underground basalt rock, basic chemistry took over.  The acidic mixture dissolved the rocks' calcium magnesium and formed limestone, a permanent natural jail for the heat-trapping gas, according to Juerg Matter of the University of Southampton in England.  He is the lead author of a study detailing the experiment published Thursday in the journal Science. 

"It's no longer a gas," Matter said.  "Basically, carbon dioxide is converted into stone." 

Scientists, who had done this before in the lab, thought the process could take thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years.  But after just two years, 95 percent of the gas was captured and converted, the study said. 

"It's what we hoped for . . . and in some ways better," said David Goldberg, a Columbia University geophysicist who wasn't part of the team but praised it. "What's going on here is a natural process being accelerated." Read More

Japanese banks enter ranks of world's biggest energy lenders

9 JUNE 2016       JAPAN TIMES       ASJYLYN LODER, GARETH ALLAN

(Bloomberg) --  Japanese banks, known for the risk-aversion that spared them the worst of the credit crisis, have quietly grown into some of the world's largest energy lenders.

Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc., the nation's largest bank, disclosed last month it has become one of the biggest oil and gas lenders with ¥9.2 trillion, or about $85 billion, in exposure -- $45 billion more than it had reported at the end of the year. 

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc. is not far behind, with about $77 billion, and Mizuho Financial Group Inc has about $48 billion, calculations based on the companies' websites show. Read More

Sewage-sampling robots could help eliminate diseases in cities, says MIT architect Carlo Ratti

9 JUNE 2016       DEZEEN       DAN HOWARTH

Robots could soon be infiltrating urban sewage systems to identify potential outbreaks of disease before they happen, according to architect and MIT professor Carlo Ratti.

Ratti's team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has created a prototype robot called Luigi, which is able to collect samples from city sewers, as part of a project called Underworlds. 

According to Ratti, these samples could be used create a map of human health from biological data that would help scientists predict outbreaks of disease and possibly prevent them. 

"We could be looking at epidemics before they happen," said Ratti.  "So we're able to see the influenza virus before people have influenza." 

The ongoing Underworlds project, which includes a team of MIT biologists and researchers, aims to prove that cities can make use of their waste water systems. 

"We're collecting this information and we're using it to understand the micro-biome of the city," Ratti told Dezeen.  "The applications of this are diverse." 

The tube-shaped Luigi robot contains filters and can be guided via an iPhone app to collect samples from key points in a city's waste system, and is currently being used for pilot studies in a city's waste system, and is currently being used for pilot studies in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Boston.  The filters collect the samples and can be removed for analysis and replaced to collect new data and the robot is cleaned after each use. 

Ratti said the data the team was collecting with Luigi could also show patterns of drug consumption in cities and help detect problems like antibiotic resistance. Read More