Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Recycled Wind Turbines Could Be Made into Plexiglass, Diapers or Gummy Bears

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August 30, 2022

Dear Reader,

Wind turbine blades are made from cheap material, which helps construct the massive structures at minimal cost, but hinders the willingness to recycle them. As a result, they end up in landfills or buried in the ground; by 2050, more than two million tons of blade material could be discarded each year. So engineers are working on a variety of different solutions to encourage recycling, including a resin for holding blades together that can be recycled into the substances used in plexiglass, diapers—and even candy.

Sophie Bushwick, Associate Editor, Technology

Materials Science

Recycled Wind Turbines Could Be Made into Plexiglass, Diapers or Gummy Bears

A new resin can hold fiberglass wind turbines together for years and then be recycled into valuable products, making green energy even greener

By Sophie Bushwick

Computing

Making Computer Chips Act More like Brain Cells

Flexible organic circuits that mimic biological neurons could increase processing speed and might someday hook right into your head

By Kurt Kleiner,Knowable Magazine

Space Exploration

NASA's Moon-Bound Megarocket Will Send a Spacecraft to an Asteroid, Too

The launch of NASA's Artemis I mission will also be the start of the first deep-space rendezvous to be conducted by a solar-sail-propelled spacecraft

By Steven Ashley

Engineering

Sandcastle Engineering: A Geotechnical Engineer Explains How Water, Air and Sand Create Solid Structures

Building the ultimate sandcastle

By Joseph Scalia,The Conversation US

Artificial Intelligence

This Artificial Intelligence Learns like a Baby

Engineers at the company DeepMind built a machine-learning system based on research on how babies' brain works, and it did better on certain tasks than its conventional counterparts.

By Christopher Intagliata | 02:36

Pollution

Cheap New Method Breaks Down 'Forever Chemicals'

A new technique destroys persistent PFAS without requiring high pressures and temperatures

By Giorgia Guglielmi,Nature magazine

Conservation

AI Diagnoses Devastating Olive Tree Infection

Predicting severity can help address deadly effects to olive groves

By Maddie Bender
FROM THE STORE

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"The reality of deploying Evolv scanners is very different than marketing materials suggest. Some school administrators are reporting that the scanners have caused 'chaos'--failing to detect common handguns at commonly-used sensitivity settings, mistaking everyday school items for deadly weapons, and failing to deliver on the company's promise of frictionless school security."

Aaron Gordon and Janus Rose, Vice

FROM THE ARCHIVE

World's Largest Wind Turbine Would Be Taller Than the Empire State Building

Massive, flexible blades would bend with storm winds like the palm trees that inspired them

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