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Once in a decade a documentary is produced that
outshines all others on the subject by far. The newly released “The
Phenomenon” (2020) with narrator Peter Coyote and Official Trailer on
YouTube is just that one with a slow burn buildup and
technology climax that is well worth the wait. With Presidents
and top Senators in the movie, it brings the UFO subject up to
the standard of a Congressional Hearing (also included), with
never before seen footage, historically accurate details, and
only $3.99 to view: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eviKoBUIkWg, also
on Netflix (88% on Rotten Tomatoes rating). We hope this will
facilitate our galactic future.
A nice
gesture from EngineerLive.com brings us a FREE copy of their
monthly magazine with an online viewer (Yudu) that nicely flips
pages on wind turbines at
sea, blue energy, game changing grid technology, and
much more:
Story #1 offers us a view of our near future with
German supplied flying cars with vertical takeoff and landing.
That’s not all however, since these will compete with Uber and
Lyft for smart phone reserved flights around Orlando and Tampa,
Florida. Furthermore, we feature it in our Future Energy eNews
since these are all-electric flying cars with a one-hour charge.
Story #2 is exciting with a new contactless
approach, reported in Nature, to producing hydrogen by using
microwave catalysis to induce the water-splitting at low temperature. Valencia
University in Spain is the source of this innovation.
Story #3 is a great bioenergetics answer to the
recent complex discussion about vaccines and the question of
whether they can prevent the initial infection from a
coronavirus. Medical researchers at Columbia University have come
up with the answer in the form of a nasal spray. Specifically, it
is a intranasal fusion inhibitory lipopeptide that prevents
direct contact SARS-CoV-2 transmission as reported on
bioRiv: DOI:
10.1101/2020.11.04.361154 Similar
to colloidal silver spray, it may prevent infection in people
exposed to the new coronavirus, since it blocks the usual pathway
for the virus to enter the body. “People who cannot be vaccinated
or do not develop immunity will particularly benefit from the
spray. The antiviral is easily administered and, based on
the scientists’ experience with other respiratory viruses, protection
would be immediate and last for at least 24 hours. The scientists
hope to rapidly advance the preventative approach to human trials
with the goal of containing transmission during this pandemic.”
Story #4 is a breakthrough close to one of our IRI
Projects on “zero bias diode energy harvesting”. With specially
designed tiny infrared antennas, a semiconductor diode is used to
convert waste heat into electricity by treating it as
electromagnetic waves in the terahertz range. This discovery has
boosted interest in our institute’s research on this subject
since the Saudi team uses zero applied voltage (zero bias) that
is a passive feature that switches the MIM diodes on when IR
energy is present, harvesting energy solely from the radiation. A paper detailing the
project – Optical rectification through an Al2O3 based
MIM passive rectenna at 28.3 THz – has been published
in Materials Today
Energy.
Story #5 is a new avenue for producing hydrogen
from an abundant resource: sea water. Now Penn State University
researchers have reached close to the ideal of producing hydrogen
from wind or solar by electrolyzing sea water into H2 and O2. By
using a semi-permeable membrane, the chlorine from salt in the
water is prevented from entering the reaction and chloride ions
are left behind. Originally developed for reverse osmosis, the
ion-exchange membrane does the trick and may become a commercial
product sometime soon.
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1) Central Florida Lands Hub for Flying Cars
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The
nation’s first regional hub for “flying cars” is being built in
central Florida and once completed in five years, the vehicles
will be able to take passengers from Orlando to Tampa in a half
hour, officials said Wednesday.
The
Tavistock Development Corp. said it was constructing a
Jetsons-like aviation facility in Orlando’s Lake Nona area, the
mixed-use planned community it built. Lake Nona already is home
to several medical and research facilities.
The
aircraft will be supplied by Lilium, a Germany-based aviation
company that manufacturers the industry’s only five-passenger
“electric vertical takeoff and landing” aircraft. At the moment,
the Lilium Jets can travel up to 185 miles (nearly 300 kilometers)
on a one-hour charge.Passengers wanting a ride on the aircraft
will be able to book reservations via their phones in a way
similar to ride-share companies Uber and Lyft, officials said.
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2) H2 New Water-splitting technique brings Green
Hydrogen
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Researchers
in Spain have uncovered a new approach to producing hydrogen via
water splitting which could help overcome some of the drawbacks to
this promising alternative fuel source.
In a
study published in Nature Energy, Valencia University researcher
José Manuel Serra, professor José M Catalá-Civera, and their
colleagues describe a method for producing hydrogen gas by
blasting microwave radiation at a watery chemical soup. The
approach could make extracting hydrogen from water cheaper, and
more importantly, reduce the capital costs of the necessary
machinery.
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3) Nasal Spray Can Prevent Coronavirus
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Scitech
Daily, November 2020
A nasal
antiviral created by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos
College of Physicians and Surgeons blocked transmission
of SARS-CoV-2 in ferrets, suggesting the nasal spray also
may prevent infection in people exposed to the new coronavirus.
The compound
in the spray—a lipopeptide developed by Anne Moscona, MD, and
Matteo Porotto, PhD, professors in the Department of Pediatrics and
directors of the Center for Host-Pathogen Interaction—is designed
to prevent the new coronavirus from entering host cells.
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4) Diode Harvests Infrared Energy to Generate
Electricity
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The
Engineer, November 2020
The team from KAUST (King Abdullah
University of Science and Technology) has developed a
proof-of-concept device that utilises infrared radiation, plus waste
heat from industrial processes, by transforming
quadrillionth-of-a-second wave signals into useful electricity.
Infrared
heat can be harvested 24 hours a day and one way to achieve this is
to treat waste or infrared heat as high-frequency electromagnetic
waves. Using appropriately designed antennas, collected waves are
sent to a rectifier, often a semiconductor diode, that converts
alternating signals into an electric current.
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