Technology Updates

tahanson43206 · 2023-11-19 20:19:47

I've chosen this topic to report an unexpected benefit of this evening's Google Meeting....

In working through the details of how to share a movie created by GW Johnson, we (or at least I) learned that the Google Drive available via a gmail account is not the same thing as the My Drive that some of us have on our computers. I am wondering now (that the meeting is over) if that My Drive might be a Microsoft offering. In any case, in order to take advantage of the Google file sharing offer, it is necessary to upload a file to be shared to the Google Shared Drive.

At that point, there is a sharing option with view, edit or comment privileges, and it is possible to connect individuals or groups to the file.

The key concept that came out of this evening's session is that in the browser window, the drop down where sharing is found is deployed by clicking on the My Drive icon in the top center left of the panel where files to be shared are listed.

The documentation of this can be improved. This is just a first draft.

*** >> Update a bit later .... Rather than risk the memory of what we learned this evening fading I decided to go back over the procedure.

1) Start by opening the browser and connect to google.com
2) The screen I get is blank except for the big Google in the center, and a scattering of options at the bottom and along the top.
3) Go to the upper right and click on the 9 dots (3x3) to the right of Gmail and images
4) That icon will open up a display of apps. Look for the one that says "Drive" and click on it
5) In the leftmost panel you will see My Drive under Home >> click on it
6) It is the files listed in the center panel that are available to be shared.
7) To add a file from your hard drive to this list, you can upload a file by clicking on the My Drive icon to reveal a drop down list that includes Upload file
8) When the file is uploaded, you can share it by right clicking on the file and follow the prompts. Be sure to set viewing to View only!
9) You can add email recipients to the share, or you can copy the link to the file and send that by email

There might be some details missing but this is (hopefully) a better summary of the procedure than the first draft.

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tahanson43206 · 2023-12-04 19:09:53

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/scie … 00785.html

Who'd a thunk! Tiny power produced as air passes over water droplets!

Scientists discover potential solution to major issue with wind power: ‘Easy and inexpensive’
Rick Kazmer
Sun, December 3, 2023 at 5:45 AM EST·2 min read
314

An international team of scientists has found a way to capture the energy generated when wind passes over droplets.
Chemists and engineers from China, the United States, and the U.K. are working on efficient ways to generate energy from low-speed wind, providing a new way to capture power beyond the sails and wind turbines that require higher speeds, according to a report from Tech Xplore.
If successful, it could provide a way to harvest wind energy during lulls that leave turbines motionless.
This breakthrough involves “anchored ionic droplets,” which are conductive liquid organic salts, and wind speeds of only about 0.7 feet per second (less than 0.5 miles per hour), per Tech Xplore. The research team isn’t moving giant turbines or ships. So, only air power sufficient to move the surface area of a droplet is needed.
“Given the widespread distribution and easy accessibility of low-grade wind, these findings expand the great potential of currently untapped low-speed wind as an attractive energy resource for powering electronics, such as LCD screens,” the research team wrote, per a story on the science from Physicsworld.
The slow air could add to the approximate 7.3% of the world’s energy that data collector Statista reports is already generated by wind power, albeit in small amounts.
The team found that each droplet could produce 0.84 volts. The experts put droplets on a substrate that holds them in place as wind slowly passes over the system. The substrate also has nanowires and other tech needed to capture electricity. In short, when wind moves over the droplets, it causes movement within them that produces energy, per a report from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A video clip shared by the academy shows a droplet system powering a calculator screen.
More droplets produce more energy. Tech Xplore reports that the team was able to scale a device to produce 60 volts. That might not sound like a lot — however, the team said that scaling the operation is “easy and inexpensive,” per Tech Xplore.
And the future of droplet power might be to energize the small tech in our lives. It’s what physicist Patrick James of the U.K.’s University of Southampton describes to Physicsworld as “niche applications.”
James isn’t involved with the study but commented on its possible future use.
“Obviously, these are very low wind speeds,” he said in the report. “The paper talks about a future application of very low power applications so I think a review needs to be clear about this aspect.”
For the team’s part, Physicsworld reported that the experts are now working to upgrade and fine-tune the design to optimize power generation for reliable use.
Join our free newsletter for weekly updates on the coolest innovations improving our lives and saving our planet.
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tahanson43206 · 2023-12-13 08:54:56

This article is about duckweed ...
It appears to have potential to supply a protein that is useful to humans, and apparently it can be made into appetizing foods...

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/why-m … d86e&ei=40

SAN MARCOS, Calif. — I came to this aquatic farm an hour outside of San Diego because I wanted to see what could be the future of humanity’s protein supply.
At the moment, it looks more like a meth lab out of the drama “Breaking Bad,” jokes Tony Martens Fekini, the chief executive of Plantible Foods.
Decrepit recreational vehicles squat on the property. In one corner, people tend to vials, grow lights and centrifuges in a trailer lab. More than a dozen big ponds filled with duckweed, a tiny green plant, bask in the Southern California sunshine.
But the only thing cooking here is protein.
Why meat eaters may soon be digging into duckweed
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post
A lemna pond at the Plantible Foods aqua farm. Rubisco is the world's most abundant protein.
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post
Within each tiny floating aquatic plant is a molecule colloquially called rubisco. Without it, most life on Earth would cease to exist.
Plants use rubisco protein — technically known as Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase — as the catalyst for photosynthesis, combining CO2 from the air with the building blocks for sugars and carbohydrates composing the base of our food chain.
Related video: Here’s Which Processed Meats Are the Most Dangerous and Why You Should Avoid Them in General (Dailymotion)
Rubisco is arguably the most abundant protein on the planet. Every green leaf has it. But this tireless molecule is locked inside plants’ cells, spoiling almost as soon as it comes into contact with the outside world. At the moment, eating salads is the only way to consume much of it.
Plantible's co-Founder Tony Martens Fekini.
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post
But Plantible’s farm may change that. If it succeeds, duckweed may become humanity’s first new major crop in more than a century, a skeleton key to unlock how plants replace animal protein on an unprecedented scale.
Rubisco doesn’t just provide the protein we crave. It’s one of the world’s most versatile proteins, shape-shifting into forms resembling egg whites, meat, milk, gluten or even steak — all extracted from leaves. If we can harvest enough, it may elevate plants from a side dish to the main course — and as I found, it tasted surprisingly good.
Protein problem
The world grows more than enough food to feed everyone on Earth. Much of it goes to livestock. About half of the corn and soybeans grown in the United States are fed to cows, pigs and chickens to support meat-rich diets.
This is not changing anytime soon. Even as protein alternatives proliferate, global meat consumption reached a record high in 2021, roughly doubling since 1990. The typical American consumed about 260 pounds of meat and 670 pounds of dairy last year, according to government statistics.
Advising people to eat less of it isn’t likely to do much. In county after country, as incomes rise, meat consumption follows virtually in lockstep.
That comes at a steep cost to ecosystems and the climate. Meat, at least how most of it is raised today, is the driver behind 57 percent of all food production emissions. The Stockholm Environment Institute estimates current livestock production methods make it virtually impossible to prevent global warming from rising 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, and difficult to avoid a 2-degree increase.
The challenge, then, is not to persuade people to eat more vegetables. It’s how to make plant proteins taste better than their animal counterparts.
For a moment, it seemed like “alternative meat” might succeed. Highfliers like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat, after seeing sales soar in 2020, have faltered. Retail sales of alt-meat dropped more than 10 percent in 2022 amid health questions and high prices. Plant-based milk, while stealing market share from traditional dairy, still accounts for just 9 percent of the volume sold in the United States. Dreams of dethroning Big Meat are out, at least for now.
The problem, in part, is known to anyone who has stirred protein powder into a smoothie, eaten a vegan brownie or bitten into an Impossible burger. Plant proteins aren’t a perfect substitute. They can impart grainy textures, ‘vegetal’ off-flavors or fall short of the savory appeal of eggs, dairy and meat.
So food producers are searching for the holy grail of plant proteins, one that combines the best of plant and animal proteins: affordable, abundant and easy to grow, with the physical properties that make a hamburger or milkshake so alluring.
Rubisco might just be it.
Rubisco: The ‘ideal’ protein?
For more than 200 years, we’ve known leaves contain the protein. But rubisco’s most remarkable qualities have only come to light through modern science.
Rubisco’s composition is a nearly “ideal” protein for humans, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, boasting an amino acids profile rivaling egg whites or casein in milk. Unlike the most common plant protein in soy, wheat and peas, it offers a non-allergenic, easily digestible and complete set of all nine essential amino acids our body can’t produce on its own.
In contrast to alt-meats, rubisco is a versatile shape-shifter on the human palate. Thanks to its molecular structure, it can bind, emulsify, foam or gel. In baked goods, the protein mimics the luscious mouthfeel of butter and eggs, or the springy bounce of gluten. As a binder in plant-based meats, it retains the delicious bite of a juicy burger. In a fluffy omelet or whipped meringue, it replicates the function of eggs.
“Rubisco does live up to a lot of the hype,” says Grant Pearce, a protein chemistry researcher at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.
Duckweed, in a paste form.
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post
The Plantible Foods pilot plant.
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post
Matt Mcauliffe, junior mechanical engineer, and Gene Wang, plant scientist, monitor a duckweed grow pond.
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post
The problem, however, has been getting it out of the leaf. As soon as a leaf is cut, its compounds bind to rubisco, rendering it unusable as a food ingredient. At the industrial scale, harvesting rubisco has proved to be a formidable challenge.
“You just have to process the plant material reasonably quickly so you don’t end up with a brown sludge,” says Pearce. Sugar beet leaves, cauliflower, kale, broccoli stems, radishes and even invasive plant species have all been harvested as protein sources. None proved economical.
And some are skeptical it will ever be.
“It’s just economics,” says Arnold Bloom, a professor of plant sciences at the University of California at Davis. Even at high concentrations, such as in spinach, rubisco represents just a tiny percentage of the plant’s biomass. Harvesting it efficiently is a tall order. Its role as a major protein source, he predicts, will be “negligible.”
But for Fekini, a former agricultural commodities trader, all roads led to a neglected little plant most people associate with pond scum.
A duckweed factory
“It’s a literal weed,” says Fekini, 34, as we stare at the minuscule green plants swirling at our feet.
Duckweed, or lemna, doesn’t get much respect in most of the world. While eaten in parts of Southeast Asia, the pond vegetation is regarded as a nuisance elsewhere. That reputation belies the plant’s remarkable biology.

Duckweed is the world's smallest flowering plant.
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post
The family’s 35 or so species thrive on nearly every continent, surviving at near-freezing temperatures in water conditions lethal to many others. As the world’s smallest known flowering plant, it consists of a single floating leaf, an oval not much larger than the tip of a pen. Its delicate roots dangle millimeters below the surface. In ideal conditions, it grows at a ferocious rate, doubling in mass every two or three days.
“Everyone who learns about lemna, there is a special place in their heart,” says Patrick Shih, a plant bioengineering expert at UC-Berkeley. “There’s nothing like it.”
That’s what inspired Fekini and his co-founder Maurits van de Ven to transport about 100 duckweed strains to Plantible’s R&D laboratory in California. Here, workers test different varieties and select the most promising strains. They tweak the environmental conditions, sample rubisco concentrations and pick the winners. Then the process begins again.
It’s what terrestrial farmers have been doing for millennia, a process that traditionally takes years, if not decades, to refine. Lemna’s prodigious growth means strains can be selected and improved in weeks.
“We’re really trying to create version 2.0 of agriculture,” says Fekini. “We need to develop better tool kits, and the only way is to start from scratch, create better ingredients and tap into novel plants. But it’s definitely not the easiest route.”

A duckweed grow pond.
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post
Plantible's small prototype farm in Southern California is harvesting duckweed, a tiny aquatic pond plant, that promises to make rubisco the next sustainable source of protein.
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post
If he succeeds, duckweed may be one of humanity’s first new major crops in more than a century, since soybeans introduced from China spread globally during the 1900s. Today, just four crops — wheat, rice, corn and soybeans — supply two-thirds of human calories.
With global warming promising punishing conditions for today’s crops, the world needs a new, resilient option to protect the food supply against shocks, says Shih. “To jump to another species that hasn’t even been domesticated, you open the door to a whole new design space that is intrinsically different than row crops,” he says. "But scaling this up is one of the hardest things to do.”
Scaling it up
As we stand in the humid greenhouse in Southern California, a lazy river of duckweed floats past. This is Plantible’s pilot farm: more than a dozen cement ponds, each covered with a luxuriant mat of lemna. Whooshing pumps and a paddle wheel keep the water flowing. Greenhouses keep temperatures balmy. Machinery sits ready to harvest the duckweed.
I note it’s all a rather low-tech way to grow the future of protein. That’s by design, counters Fekini. “Our philosophy has always been finding that balance,” he says. “Agriculture is generally low-tech because low-tech is highly scalable and very affordable.”
To make rubisco in meaningful quantities, Plantible will need to extract it more efficiently than ever before.
The challenge is that while rubisco is abundant globally, the molecule only represents about 1 percent of a leaf by weight. That means processing enormous amounts of biomass to obtain a relatively small amount of protein. Pearce, at the University of Canterbury, estimates 1 metric ton of leaves yields about 11 pounds (5 kilograms) of rubisco, at least on land. If you’re competing against animal protein selling for about $5 per pound, on average, it’s difficult to turn a profit.
But Plantible, backed by Kellogg’s, among other investors, says it has two advantages. The first is productivity. Unlike a field, lemna can grow happily in a few inches of water, year-round, in environments perfectly calibrated to maximize growth. Almost all the water is reclaimed during harvest, and fertilizer demands are modest. Scale also works in its favor.

Machinery turns rubisco contained in duckweed into a paste for cooking.
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post
After being separated into a liquid form, duckweed is put into a vial.
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post
Duckweed remnants in a drum used to transport the plant from a grow pond to a grinder.
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post
Plantible’s new Texas facility, an old Black Angus cattle ranch, is 50 times larger than its California site. Fekini estimates ponds on the 100-acre site can produce 36 metric dry tons per hectare — roughly 10 times more than soy.
Plantible’s other advantage, it argues, is the company’s ability to do everything under one roof, from selecting the plants to processing rubisco. By managing every step, it claims it can turn duckweed into protein with unprecedented efficiency.
That has yet to be proved. But in May, I watched a pond full of lemna turn into a white powder ready for baked goods within a few hours. The plants were harvested and macerated, producing the equivalent of a green smoothie. The slurry was spun in a massive centrifuge, leaving a bright green juice with the aroma of a freshly cut lawn. The rubisco was dried and stored.
At the end of the process, I was handed a bag of fine white powder, almost like flour that I was promised would make delicious cookies.
How does it taste?
When I stirred rubisco into a glass of water, it tasted like nothing at all. The powder dissolved completely, leaving it only slightly more viscous than before. As an industrial food ingredient, that’s the point. The colorless, flavorless all-purpose protein can serve specific needs depending on who’s using it.
For now, Plantible is marketing a replacement for eggs in industrial baking. It will show up in macarons by Sweet Maresa’s starting next month. The New York bakery will later roll other baked goods, like muffins, cakes and cookies, made with Plantible’s rubisco.
Since most consumer packaged goods companies are trying to remove expensive, unreliable ingredients — eggs have seen repeated shortages and price spikes — Plantible is positioning rubisco as a superior substitute for dairy and eggs.

Duckweed samples removed from a grow pond sit in a lab.
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post
Dried duckweed at a Plantible lab.
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post
Brock Kuhlman, a food scientist and chef, works on a rubisco-based cooking paste.
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post
Its second product targets alt-meat manufacturers. Since it binds with fats and oils, the protein can produce a plant-based burger that cooks, tastes and feels closer to the real thing without fats leaking out of the patty. Plantible says it has already begun experimenting with rubisco in plant-based sausages, chicken, fish and even steak.
The money to commercialize rubisco is pouring in. Pearce estimates that more was spent last year on developing rubisco than in the previous 20 years combined.
If it works, the photosynthetic molecule may succeed where other alt-meats have faltered, unlocking the market potential of other plant proteins like soy, peas and other legumes, by making them more palatable for people who prefer eating meat.
For that to happen, rubisco’s promoters must pass the most difficult test: Your taste buds.
Brock Kuhlman, a trained chef who also holds a Ph.D. in food chemistry, sweeps out of Plantible’s test kitchen carrying a platter piled high with baked goods. As a crowd gathered in Plantible’s R&D facility, the company’s senior food scientist whipped up an array of chewy chocolate chip cookies, pound cake and peaky macaroons, still warm from the oven.
Instead of eggs and butter, Kuhlman says, each one was prepared with rubisco. They look moist and delectable. I bite into one, and then another. After savoring all of them, I search my palate for something missing. I can’t find it. The experience of each bite replicates the rich, soft springiness of the best baked goods.
I mention I’m surprised they’re so hard to resist.
“No one will sacrifice their taste buds to save the planet,” says Fekini as we clear the plate, leaving only crumbs. “It’s all about taste. People aren’t compromising on taste because of the cool technology behind it. Consumers are ruthless.”

Plantible's duckweed-based cooking powder can be used to make cookies and other baked goods.
© Eric Thayer/for The Washington Post

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Calliban · 2023-12-13 10:15:41

TH, that is very interesting. On Mars, it is highly unlikely that animal proteins will be affordable. A mass produced plant protein that can be used to simulate these products, is clearly very valuable. The vegan market will see an early application here on Terra.

The productivity of duckweed and its characteristics as a small, floating plant, make it a valuable contender as a staple crop on Mars. Fields under domes are not an affordable option for food production. Neither are polytunnels for anything other than luxury cash crops. But a plant that can grow suspended in water in thin plastic tubes, will be much cheaper to produce. Such a small plant shoukd also do much better in an acetate growth medium, given that acetate must diffuse into the leaves. This allows protein to be produced in compact volumes, with acetate supplied by a chemical reactor, which is in turn driven by a nuclear power source.

Last edited by Calliban (2023-12-13 10:18:17)

tahanson43206 · 2023-12-13 12:36:45

For Calliban re #529

Thank you for noting the duckweed work, and for contributing the possibility of encouraging growth of the plant with acetate. Please consider contacting the folks doing the duckweed work. I am (reasonably) confident Mars is NOT on their minds, so they might not have had a reason to think about acetate. Perhaps ??? it would help them here on Earth?

I noted the article indicates there is modest input of fertilizer. That suggests to me the output of the growing system would NOT be a source of trace elements that humans need for all sorts of reasons. RobertDyck's concepts for Large Ship seems (as I remember them) to include growing plants with plenty of trace elements. In fact, I still am chafing at his poor opinion of iceberg lettuce. In defense of the wildly popular plant, I suspect a bit of TLC by geneticists would improve the trace element carrying capability.

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Mars_B4_Moon · 2024-03-23 16:57:49

During the Maui fire, traditional optical imaging methods were rendered ineffective due to heavy smoke coverage.
https://twitter.com/SkyfiApp/status/1770128267615306062
umbraspace's SAR technology, however, enabled the monitoring of ground conditions in real-time, despite the smoke.

New Mars Forums

Announcement

#526 2023-11-19 20:19:47

Re: Technology Updates

#527 2023-12-04 19:09:53

Re: Technology Updates

#528 2023-12-13 08:54:56

Re: Technology Updates

#529 2023-12-13 10:15:41

Re: Technology Updates

#530 2023-12-13 12:36:45

Re: Technology Updates

#531 2024-03-23 16:57:49

Re: Technology Updates

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