Technologies
This article aims to gather tech relevant for the well being of the populations and the planet. Technology can be used for good and evil this is a good reason to keep up-to-date on the problems and opportunities and good solutions.
“Technology ("science of craft", from Greek τέχνη, techne, "art, skill, cunning of hand"; and -λογία, -logia) is the collection of techniques, skills, methods, and processes used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment of objectives, such as scientific investigation.”
Automation
“Automation is the technology by which a process or procedure is performed with minimal human assistance.”
AI
“Artificial intelligence (AI), sometimes called machine intelligence, is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by humans and animals. Colloquially, the term "artificial intelligence" is used to describe machines that mimic "cognitive" functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as "learning" and "problem solving".”
- 'Regulation of Artificial Intelligence' at the w:Library of Congress (loc.gov)
- 'Regulation of Artificial Intelligence: Comparative Summary' at loc.gov
- 'Regulation of Artificial Intelligence: International and Regional Approaches' (loc.gov)
- 'Regulation of Artificial Intelligence: The Americas and the Caribbean' (loc.gov)
- 'Regulation of Artificial Intelligence: East/South Asia and the Pacific' (loc.gov)
- 'Regulation of Artificial Intelligence: Europe and Central Asia' loc.gov
- 'Regulation of Artificial Intelligence: Middle East and North Africa' (loc.gov)
- 'Regulation of Artificial Intelligence: Sub-Saharan Africa' (loc.gov)
Gibson Dunn & Crutcher (gibsondunn.com) is a global law firm, founded in Los Angeles in 1890. They publish a quarterly legal update on "Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems"
- 'Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems Legal Update Quarter 4 2018' at Gibson & Dunn
- 'Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems Legal Update Quarter 1 2019'
- 'Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems Legal Update Quarter 2 2019'
- 'Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems Legal Update Quarter 3 2019'
AI is can be divided to multiple subfields:
- w:Machine learning (ML) is the scientific study of w:algorithms and w:statistical models that w:computer systems use to effectively perform a specific task without using explicit instructions, relying on patterns and inference instead. ( Wikipedia )
- w:Natural language processing (NLP) is a subfield of w:computer science, information engineering, and w:artificial intelligence concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages, in particular how to program computers to process and analyze large amounts of w:natural language data. ( Wikipedia )
- w:Expert system is a computer system that emulates the decision-making ability of a human expert. ( Wikipedia )
Ecological tech
There are various interesting ecological technologies being piloted.
Hydrogen
Hydrogen can be produced by from water by electrolysis even on an industrial scale, with #Hydrogen panels or from hydrocarbons by steam reforming.
Hydrogen fuel produced from (locally) harvested energy either by hydrogen panels or electrolysis plants can be considered and is being widely marketed as carbon-free, whereas steam reforming from other fuels causes carbon emissions.
“The Hydrogen economy is the use of hydrogen as a low carbon fuel, particularly for heating, hydrogen vehicles,[1] seasonal energy storage and long distance transport of energy.[2]”
Hydrogen panels
Researchers from KU Leuven, Belgium have created hydrogen panels, that convert water vapor to hydrogen and oxygen using sunlight.
- KU Leuven News: 'Looking past the hype: KU Leuven researchers shed more light on their hydrogen panel' (March 2019)
Hydrogen aviation
ZeroAvia.com has been developing fuel cell-based powertrains for aviation.
Links
Hydrogen purified steel
HYBRIT is an abbreviation of HYdrogen BReakthrough Ironmaking Technology, where iron for steel making is not purified by a process called coking, but instead using massive amounts of hydrogen to purify it.
w:SSAB and partners are building a small-scale pilot production line in Luleå, Sweden, slated to be launched in 2020.
- Official HYBRIT development website for more info.
Ecological electric
Sodium batteries
Broadbit sodium batteries
- http://www.broadbit.com/ is a technology company developing revolutionary new batteries using novel sodium-based chemistries to power the future green economy.
IBM sodium batteries
- 'Free of Heavy Metals, New Battery Design Could Alleviate Environmental Concerns' at IBM Research Blog, a Dec 2018 post
Plant-based batteries and supercapacitors
“A supercapacitor is a high-capacity capacitor with a capacitance value much higher than other capacitors, but with lower voltage limits, that bridges the gap between electrolytic capacitors and rechargeable batteries. It typically stores 10 to 100 times more energy per unit volume or mass than electrolytic capacitors, can accept and deliver charge much faster than batteries, and tolerates many more charge and discharge cycles than rechargeable batteries.”
“Supercapacitors are used in applications requiring many rapid charge/discharge cycles, rather than long term compact energy storage — in automobiles, buses, trains, cranes and elevators, where they are used for regenerative braking, short-term energy storage, or burst-mode power delivery.”
- 'Interconnected Carbon Nanosheets Derived from Hemp for Ultrafast Supercapacitors with High Energy', a 2014 scientific article published in w:ACS Nano, a monthly, peer-reviewed, w:scientific journal, published by the w:American Chemical Society.
- BBC.com article on 'Hemp fibres "better than graphene"' (2014)
CO2 capture
CO2 capture can refer to capturing CO2 from an industrial process or just grabbing it from air.
Power-to-gas
Power-to-gas technologies are advancing. Power-to-gas involves energy losses in the conversion, but the power of gaseous energy that it is much cheaper to store than electricity, plus the distribution networks largely exist already.
Potential target fuels are hydrogen and methane. Hydrogen is being mixed into natural gas networks in Germany with no negative side-effects.
w:Methanation is the process of making methane from carbon oxides and hydrogen. Methane is a drop-in replacement for LNG and therefore could help us away from fossil dependence/capitalism. The price of proton-exchange electrolyzers has dropped by roughly 40 percent during the past decade the Scientific American Reports
Converting excess electricity from solar and wind farms to gases may be a very good idea as they can then readily be used to produce electricity during low-output times of solar and wind energy and because the systems to store the gas already exist.
Recycling tech
Plastics-to-fuel
Researchers from Purdue University have developed a technology entitled 'Use of Supercritical Water for the Liquefaction of Polypropylene into Oil' that works on polyolefin waste, the sort of plastic used for grocery bags, toys, and shrink wrap. This sort of plastic accounts for about 23% of plastic waste, according to researchers who describe the process in a paper published in Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering, a publication of the American Chemical Society. The new technique uses a process called hydrothermal liquefaction, in which very high temperatures melt pellets of polyolefin and then dissolve them in water. The by-products of this process are oil, gas, or solvents.[3]
Links about plastics-to-fuel
- 'Chemical Conversion of Plastic Waste into Fuel', a Youtube by Purdue Engineering (2019-02)
Food tech
Food from air and electricity
In Finland Solar Foods Ltd. has demonstrated making protein called Solein with renewable electricity and CO2 as raw material and are building their first real plant soon.
Water demand of this new method is fraction of plant-based nutrition, let alone meats and it is slightly CO2 negative if the electricity is not from CO2 emitting power plants.
- YLE (Finnish public broadcasting corporation) reporting on Solein: Finnish breakthrough: Making protein out of thin air and electricity (2017)
- The Guardian reporting on 'Plan to sell 50m meals made from electricity, water and air' (2019)
Cattle emissions
According to Australian research, if 2% dry matter of the Asparagopsis taxiformis seaweed is added to cattle fodder, the bovines' methane production falls to a tiny fraction (fall of 98.9%) in 72 hrs compared to cattle fed with traditional feed.
Scientific articles
- 'The red macroalgae Asparagopsis taxiformis is a potent natural antimethanogenic that reduces methane production during in vitro fermentation with rumen fluid' was published in Animal Production Science, a journal by CSIRO Publishing in February 2016
- 'Asparagopsis taxiformis decreases enteric methane production from sheep' published in Animal Production Science in August 2016
Links
Hemp tech
Development of sound hemp products has suffered from the prohibition of the plant since 1937
Wikipedia's list of hemp products is not complete by a far shot.
Links
- 'We Should Be Pouring Time And Money Into Hemp, Period.', a September 2018 Forbes article
- 'Growing our way out of climate change by building with hemp and wood fibre', a 2014 article by The Guardian
Hemp wood
From seed to building material in less than a year is a reality in Kentucky as the first HempWood factory has opened. HempWood is said to have slightly better characteristics than oak.
Hempcrete
w:Hempcrete is a w:bio-composite material for construction.
Mobility tech
Lists of shared and alternative transport and traveler routers lists carsharing, carpooling and traveler router services around the world.
Ultimate mobility app of the future
w:self-driving cars + w:carsharing fleets + w:peer-to-peer carsharing services integration + w:carpooling services integration + public transport travel routing integration of maximum smoothness.
GoMore.dk already made the "world first" of having p2p carsharing and carpooling in same app. They also offer leasing if you want to be the one sharing your ride. Hooray for Denmark.
They currently work in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France and Spain.
Consumerium tech
See systems selections for newest going ons
- Debian GNU/Linux LAMP virtual private servers-from-cloud
- w:shell (computer), shell tools, shell script, w:secure shell, w:public key cryptography,w:private key cryptography
- Core MediaWiki and it's categories, templates, extra namespaces, extensions and widgets, mw:Universal Language Selector
- w:Xen and w:KVM w:virtualization by the hosting guys ( ecological )
- DBpedia & Wikidata, w:SPARQL queries to query RDF subject/predicate/object w:triplets that are safely stored in a w:Triplestore
- w:Wikiteam backs up wikis, XML Import-Export
- Security, backups on dumps.consumium.org, backups on archive.org courtesy of w:Wikiteam, off-line backups on removable media and other storage w:mysqldump, Special:Export, w:anachronistic scheduler, rsync-over-ssh, w:Tripwire, w:GPG, w:MD5, w:HTTPS, triple security
- Networking, TCP/IP, w:VPN, w:VNC, closed w:subnet, w:iptables firewall
- Languages, w:PHP, w:python, w:perl, w:regex, SPARQL, Français, SQL, XML, RDF ...
- Stats, w:analog (program), hosting guys' stats, historical stats, http://stats.consumium.org potentially a breadcrumbs solution
- Internet Relay Chat - RecentChanges irc feeds - RecentChanges regex stalk irc feeds with BetaCommandBot or similar - ircbot/mediawikibot integration -> ConsUtilityBot ( probably in w:python based on the pyWikipediaBot framework )