The ocean and air work together to balance the carbon dioxide load. So as the concentration has increased in the air, it has also increased in the ocean. But what if that could work backwards? Planetary Technologies is pursuing the idea. “Planetary’s method adds an alkaline substance to seawater, lowering its acidity in the surrounding marine environment. This then converts the dissolved CO2 into a mineral salt, which will remain…
“Freshly passed legislation and new rules from the Biden administration are putting teeth behind a renewed bipartisan push for nuclear power, which has suffered major setbacks in recent decades despite advocates’ repeated predictions over the years that the industry was on the brink of a renaissance.” ~ learn more
This is from the “leading trade show in the natural, organic, and healthy products industry.” Tends include blood sugar balance, recovery and sleep as a benefit, and animal protein skins as snacks. ~ learn more
Some of you may remember that I’m a big fan of the idea of direct air capture. “The material could slash the energy costs associated with so-called direct air capture systems, which conventionally rely on energy-intensive temperature or pressure shifts to switch between carbon capture and release. By instead relying on humidity, the material could yield energy efficiency improvements over five times above current technologies.” ~ learn more
Researchers from Illinois did, and then they created it. The first mass-market insulin came from livestock. Nowadays it’s largely made by bacteria in reactors. Maybe (long shot) things will go full circle back to livestock? “An unassuming brown bovine from the south of Brazil has made history as the first transgenic cow capable of producing human insulin in her milk. The advancement, led by researchers from the University of Illinois…
“Four years after the toilet paper shortage of 2020, bidet converts say they’re never going back.” ~ learn more
“A study of over 20,000 adults found that those who followed an 8-hour time-restricted eating schedule, a type of intermittent fasting, had a 91% higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease.” The full study has not yet been published, and there are many questions, starting with the way they categorized participants based on two days of dietary recall questionnaires. ~ learn more
“Ode to Procore; a case study on niche versus mass-market project management software.” Written by Jackie DiMonte, who happens to be a VC investing in the “niche” market of industrial technology. ~ learn more
This starts out basic and gets complex toward the end. “In this paper, we introduce core concepts, advanced techniques like Chain-of-Thought and Reflection, and the principles behind building LLM-based agents. Finally, we provide a survey of tools for prompt engineers.” ~ learn more
Many of you will remember catching a whiff of chocolate as you cruised past the Blommer Chocolate factory at 600 W Kinzie. This week, they shut down operations at the factory after 85 years. ~ learn more