NNadir
NNadir's JournalA New Type of Niobium Phosphate Compositing Carbon Nanotube Used as Anode Material...
I came across this paper in the journal ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering:
P4Nb2O15@CNTs: A New Type of Niobium Phosphate Compositing Carbon Nanotube Used as Anode Material for High-Rate Lithium Storage (Peng Hei, Shanshan Luo, Kuo Wei, Junshuang Zhou, Yufeng Zhao, and Faming Gao ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering 2021 9 (1), 216-223)
One of the great technical tragedies of our age is the pernicious belief that energy storage is both "green" and "sustainable." It is not.
Another is to confuse these magical terms, "green," and "sustainable" with human justice.
The great tragedy of lithium batteries, about which I often rale, is the dependence on cobalt, which is mined under horrendous conditions in Central Africa, conditions that should - but somehow doesn't - appall anyone concerned with human rights.
(Don't worry; be happy. Elon Musk says his cobalt is "fair trade." He's full of shit, but we have to believe him, because he's Elon Musk, Ayn Randian hero of everything.)
The authors of this paper have an idea. Let's replace cobalt with, um, niobium.
Niobium is a cogener of tantalum. Tantalum is widely used in cell phones and other electronic devices, which is also a conflict metal mine mined "under horrendous conditions in Central Africa, conditions that should - but somehow doesn't - appall anyone concerned with human rights." All tantalum ores are also niobium ores.
How anyone can call this substitution "sustainable" is beyond me.
Sorry to get "political" about "science," but these things almost drive me insane.
In these times, reality is defined by marketing and nothing else.
History will not forgive us nor should it.
"It was the last meaningful election we ever had. We chose unity and we got dictatorship."
Garry Kasparov opinion piece on CNN:
A feeble truth commission was quickly abandoned by President Boris Yeltsin, and soon even the Soviet archives were closed, although not before researchers like Vladimir Bukovsky revealed some of the KGB's atrocities. The KGB's name was changed to the FSB and its members quietly stayed in touch and intact. The result? A mere nine years after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Russia elected a former KGB lieutenant colonel, Vladimir Putin, to the presidency. It was the last meaningful election we ever had. We chose unity and we got dictatorship.
America should not make a similar mistake. The truth may hurt, but lies will do far greater damage in the end. Americans should be prepared for a long fight against these anti-democratic forces. The attack on the Capitol has opened every eye; there can be no more feigned ignorance of the crisis...
Full text:
Garry Kasparov: What happens next
I just watched "1917."
My grandfather was a terrible alcoholic who used to beat my Grandmother, and my father, his brother and his sisters.
He'd disappear for years at a time, come home on a bender, get violent.
The last time my father saw his father alive, he threw him down the stairs and told him never to set foot in the house again. My grandfather was trying to burn my grandmother's face off with a hot iron.
Two or three weeks later, they dragged my grandfather's body out of the East River, full of stab holes with live eels eating them. My father, then in his late teens or early 20's, identified the body. The cops never looked for the murderer.
They were going to bury him in Potter's field in NYC, but someone contacted the British Government, who in light of his combat experience and medals in the Scottish Black Watch, buried him with full military honors in soil transported from Scotland. The funeral was so elaborate, it was the only time in my father's life that my father was proud of his.
The last time I saw my Aunt, we took her to a restaurant. She was a loquacious but in her own way elegant woman, gracious to a fault. Thinking it might be the last time I saw her - it was - I asked her about her father, my grandfather, of whom I'd only heard stories, none of the them flattering. My aunt, then in her late 80's, began cursing like a sailor, right in the Restaurant, so loudly that my wife and I wanted to crawl under the table.
Surprisingly, my grandmother continued to love him for decades after his death. All she would say of him was "He was a nice man until he got that silver plate in his head."
"Until he got that silver plate in his head..." It happened during the war, of course. A piece of his skull was blown away.
My cousins and I used to laugh when she said that, "He was a nice man until..."
Of course, this was a time when no one discussed PTSD.
The Second World War was the First, restarted after an interlude. The first changed my life, I think, as much as the Second, of which my father was a veteran.
This movie, "1917," made understand something about my family.
It's a very powerful film.
Environmental Inequality Deepened During the COVID-19 in the Developing World
The "Scientific Opinion" paper to which I refer in this post is this one: Environmental Inequality Deepened During the COVID-19 in the Developing World (Yilin Chen, Niru Senthilkumar, Huizhong Shen, and Guofeng Shen Environmental Science & Technology 2021 55 (1), 7-8)
Like all Covid papers, this brief paper is open sourced, and can be read in full at the link.
Some excerpts:
The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in swift and radical changes in human activities, including a dramatic reduction in transportation emissions during strict lockdown periods. As a result, NO2 was found to decline during the quarantine period over multiple countries hit by the pandemic.(3) Aside from that, the impact of the pandemic on air quality is mixed...
...Wu and colleagues (2020)(7) fitted negative binomial mixed models using COVID-19 deaths and PM2.5 at the county level in the U.S. as the outcome and exposure, respectively. After adjusting several confounding factors, they found that an increase of 1 ?g/m3 in PM2.5 was associated with an increase of 5% (2–15% as 95% CI) in the COVID-19 death rate. Similar links between ambient air pollution exposure and COVID-19 incidence and mortality was also reported in China,(8,9,11) India,(3) Pakistan,(11) and Indonesia.(11) It has been suggested that the ambient aerosols facilitate the transmission of the virus.(8)...
...As the pandemic goes on, COVID-19 gets widely spreading in rural areas in developing countries. The observed positive relationship between enhanced air pollutant exposures and COVID-19 deaths indicates that the pandemic may be further deepening environmental inequality. Over half of the population in the developing world still rely on solid fuel as their household energy source, exposing to a high level of PM2.5 daily. Besides previous chronic exposure to ambient NO2 and PM2.5, indoor air pollution exposure in developing countries would increase during quarantine, especially in those households heavily relying on solid fuels.(14) As a known leading environmental risk factor for many diseases and premature death, household solid-fuel use may increase the risk to develop severe symptoms among the infected population in the developing world...
I have no additional comment; it speaks for itself.
Bright side of the Covid Crisis: Princeton Plasma Physics Labs "Science on Saturday" now on Zoom!
There's really nothing like attending the lectures live, the donuts - especially the donuts - the fun conversations before and after the talks, but this year's are on Zoom. Not quite the same, but then again, people logged in from all over the world.
These lectures, only a few of which each year are about plasma physics and fusion energy, are purely wonderful; I've been attending them for years. They are hosted by Andrew Zweicker, a physicist at the lab responsible for community outreach who also holds a second job as Democratic Assemblyman in the NJ assembly.
It's fun; it's free; and now everyone can "be there," without being there:
Register and sign in on Saturday morning: PPPL Ron Hatcher Science on Saturday.
Last week's was on the revival of the Stellator concept in fusion reactors.
The program:
Forbes: We Will Assume That Any Company Hiring a Trump Spokesperson Is Lying In Anything Reported.
This article is written by the Chief Content Editor of the business magazine Forbes, Randall Lane:
A Truth Reckoning: Why We’re Holding Those Who Lied For Trump Accountable
Forbes will assume that any business that hires these people is engaged in fraud and lying.
An excerpt:
That Donald Trump devolved from commander-in-chief to liar-in-chief didn’t surprise Forbes: As we’ve chronicled early and often, for all his billions and Barnum-like abilities, he’s been shamelessly exaggerating and prevaricating to our faces for almost four decades. More astonishing: the number of people willing to lend credence to that obvious mendacity on his behalf.
In this time of transition – and pain – reinvigorating democracy requires a reckoning. A truth reckoning. Starting with the people paid by the People to inform the People.
As someone in the business of facts, it’s been especially painful to watch President Trump’s press secretaries debase themselves. Yes, as with their political bosses, spins and omissions and exaggerations are part of the game. But ultimately in PR, core credibility is the coin of the realm.
From Day One at the Trump White House, up has been down, yes has been no, failure has been success. Sean Spicer set the tone with the inauguration crowd size – the worst kind of whopper, as it demanded that people disbelieve their own eyes. The next day, Kellyanne Conway defended Spicer’s lie with a new term, “alternative facts.” Spicer’s successor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied at scale, from smearing those who accused Trump of sexual harassment to conjuring jobs statistics. Her successor, Stephanie Grisham, over the course of a year, never even held a press conference, though the BS continued unabated across friendly outlets. And finally, Kayleigh McEnany, Harvard Law graduate, a propaganda prodigy at 32 who makes smiling falsehood an art form...
This lecture from two years ago, by Jeffrey Rosen will explain, in Madisonian terms, this last week.
It is addressed to a dying but essential breed, Civics Teachers.
I cannot post it as a direct video, but it is available here: CSPAN James Madison and Democracy.
It qualifies as (TL; DR) (Too Long; Didn't Read) and explains, beautifully, that "Too Long; Didn't Read," or in this case, "Too Long; Didn't Listen," is killing our Democracy.
A student who worked briefly as an intern where my son is employed...
...put her experience there on her LinkedIn page.
She was not hired, but my son said she never talked politics there.
She joined the terrorist attack on the Capitol and his bragging all over the internet about it.
My son's boss, the owner of the company, has been fielding calls about it all day, and explaining the situation.
I turned off NPR today, when they started interviewing racists and thugs to get their "views."
They're fucking racists, OK?
They've got enough attention from the media. I don't give a shit about interviewing them to see "how they feel now."
They're racists. They don't need more bullhorns to tell us who they are. They're racists.
The media should stop interviewing them. We know who they are. They're racists, white supremacists, pure and simple.
Did I say they're racists?
Thanks for listening.
I just can't sleep. The horror of the day is killing me. I need to let go of this anger.
It's pretty bad, about as bad as 9/11 and 2016 when this racist thug was "elected."
I can't let this kill me. I need to make it at least to January 20.
I just needed to say this.
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