List of All Articles with Tag 't'

Engineers have figured out how to repurpose disused wind turbine blades to serve as bridges capable of supporting up to 30 tonnes of weight. Turbine blades have a lifespan of around 20 to 25 years, meaning hundreds of wind farms set up at the start of the century are now being upgraded. Decommissioned blades are typically sent to landfill or incinerated, with the thousands of non-biodegradable units now posing a major environmental challenge. In an effort to address the issue, five universities and research institutes in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the US set up the Re-Wind Network, which has come up with several ways the blades can be recycled. Potential solutions include bus shelters, street furniture and telecommunications towers, however bridges already offer a practical way to repurpose the blades, with two footbridges successfully built in Draperstown and Cork. “With so many of these blades due to reach the end of their lifespan, we need to find ways to transform them into something useful,” said Jennifer McKinley, a professor at Queen’s University Belfast’s School of Natural and Built Environment. “I am delighted that by working together we’ve been able to find a way to repurpose wind turbine blades. This can only be a good thing, as without intervention they would end up in landfill or they would have to be incinerated.” A third bridge is set to be built in Atlanta, Georgia, before the research team turn their focus towards increasing the length and size of the bridges. The researchers estimate that there will be around 8.6 million tonnes of scrapped wind turbine blades within the next 20 years, though the glass fibre reinforced polymer material could prove useful for building a huge range of objects, like motorway noise barriers and playground equipment. Three of the engineers from the Re-Wind Network project have also formed a spin-out startup called BladeBridge that will look to commercialise the idea, while also looking for new ways to reuse old turbine blades. “We are partnering with well-known designers here in Ireland to create a portfolio of durable and sustainable products, such as greenway furniture and bridges,” said BladeBridge co-founder Dr Angie Nagle. Read More Fossil fuels ‘becoming obsolete’ as solar panel prices plummet Fossil fuels ‘becoming obsolete’ as solar panel prices plummet Solar panel breakthrough could supercharge ‘miracle material’ production Scientists invent solar panels that work in a snow blizzard

A natural phenomenon consisting of polka-dot-style formations has been cropping up around the world, and scientists are baffled as to why. The circular-shaped patches of ground have been seen in deserts in Australia and Namibia but now experts believe they are more widespread than originally thought. Known as “fairy circles”, there are now 263 known sites across the globe where they can be found, according to new research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). They have been documented in 15 countries, across three continents, including the Sahel region of Africa, Madagascar, and in Middle-West Asia. And yet, despite the spread of these anomalies, scientists are still none the wiser about how they actually form. A team led by environmental scientist Emilio Guirado, of the University of Alicante in Spain, explained in their paper on the "intriguing" phenomenon: “We conducted a global and systematic assessment of fairy circle-like vegetation patterns and discovered hundreds of [fairy-circle]-like locations on three continents. “Our study provides insights into the ecology and biogeography of these fascinating vegetation patterns and the first atlas of their global distribution.” The mysterious circles appear in desert regions and can be as wide as 12 metres (39 feet) in diameter. They are almost always spaced out and rarely connect or overlap with one another. Several theories have been put forward as to what causes them, including, tiny insects, termites, and plant toxins. But, none have been accompanied by any significant evidence and some have been debunked completely. One significant factor limiting their study is they are often found in places that are difficult to access and are inhospitable. Locating the 263 different sites of “fairy circles” involved analysing high-resolution satellite imagery. Guirado and his team wrote in their paper: “[The sites] include those already identified in Namibia and Western Australia, as well as areas never described before, including the Sahel, Western Sahara, Horn of Africa, Madagascar, Southwest Asia, or Central and Southwest Australia. “By doing so, our study provides a global atlas of areas showing FC-like vegetation patterns and expands the known existence of this vegetation type to new countries and continents.” The team hopes that locating new sites will enable them to find common traits that may point towards their cause. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The US government aims to restore sweeping regulations for high-speed internet providers, such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon, reviving "net neutrality" rules for the broadband industry -- and an ongoing debate about the internet's future.

Donald Trump has gone on a bizarre rant about offshore wind turbines, claiming they are driving whales “a little batty” and killing them “in numbers never seen before”. The former US President made the claim, which is rooted in a climate sceptic conspiracy theory, at a rally in South Carolina this week. There, he was taking aim at President Joe Biden’s regulations to impose speed limits on speed boats, vowing to overturn the rules on “day one” should he be voted in. Trump told the South Carolina crowd that the “Biden speed limit” would “demolish the charter fishing business, crush boat manufacturers and desecrate your cherished Low Country traditions.” That was when he got sidetracked by whales and wind turbines, or “windmills”, as he prefers to call them. “The windmills are driving them crazy. They’re driving the whales a little batty. And they are washing up on shore in levels never seen before.” It comes days after Trump praised Rishi Sunak for rolling back several key UK climate change promises. He congratulated the Prime Minister for “recognising this SCAM before it was too late”. As for this week's speech, it isn't the first time Trump has gone to war with wind turbines. In 2019, he suggested that wind turbines cause cancer, which is a lie. Months later, he attacked renewable energy again, suggesting that wind power doesn’t work when it’s not windy. This is also untrue. Wind-powered electricity supply isn’t affected by wind not blowing all the time because energy is stored for when it's needed. The US Department of Energy website even says that it's not a problem. At Trump's South Carolina rally, he was likely trying to appeal to a vocal community of misinformed protestors. In February, thousands of people gathered at New Jersey’s Point Pleasant beach to demand authorities pause offshore wind projects in response to recent whale deaths. Since 2023, 10 whales have washed ashore on the New York and New Jersey coastlines. Conspiracy theorists claim the noise created by wind turbines has been messing with the whales’ navigation systems. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has called the deaths “unusual mortality events”, and said there is no link between the wind turbines and whale deaths. “It’s just a cynical disinformation campaign,” Greenpeace oceans director John Hocevar told to USA Today. That’s hardly going to stop former President Trump though, is it? Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Idris Elba stars in the downloadable expansion 'Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty'.

Senior art director Jacinda Chew has explained why they didn't want Venom to be "too scary".

SAG-AFTRA is threatening a walkout by its members working in the video games industry.

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova on Tuesday urged Alphabet's Google, Microsoft, Meta

ChatGPT has a new upgrade that lets the viral artificial intelligence tool “see, hear, and speak”, according to OpenAI. The update for OpenAI’s artificial intelligence chatbot will allow users to have voice conversations with the AI chatbot and interact with it using images as well, the firm said in a blog post on Monday. “ChatGPT can now see, hear, and speak,” the firm also said in a post on X/Twitter. The features will be rolled out “over the next two weeks” and enable users to “use voice to engage in a back-and-forth conversation” with the AI assistant. With the new features, ChatGPT can be used to “request a bedtime story for your family, or settle a dinner table debate,” according to the company, bringing it closer to the services offered by Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri AI assistants. Providing an example of how the feature works, OpenAI shared a demo in which a user asks ChatGPT to come up with a story about “the super-duper sunflower hedgehog named Larry”. The chatbot replies to the query with a human-like voice and also responds to questions such as “What was his house like?” and “Who is his best friend?” OpenAI said the voice capability is powered by a new text-to-speech model that generates human-like audio from just text and a few seconds of sample speech, the company said. “We collaborated with professional voice actors to create each of the voices. We also use Whisper, our open-source speech recognition system, to transcribe your spoken words into text,” the company said. The AI firm believes the new voice technology is capable of crafting realistic-sounding synthetic voices from just a few seconds of real speech, and could opens doors to many creative applications. However, the company also cautioned that the new capabilities may also present new risks “such as the potential for malicious actors to impersonate public figures or commit fraud”. Another major update to the AI chatbot allows users to upload an image and ask ChatGPT about it. “Troubleshoot why your grill won’t start, explore the contents of your fridge to plan a meal, or analyze a complex graph for work-related data,” OpenAI explained. This new feature, according to the company, also lets users focus on a specific part of the image using a drawing tool in the ChatGPT mobile app. This kind of multimodal recognition by the chatbot has been forecast for a while, and its new understanding of images is powered by multimodal GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. These models can apply their language reasoning skills to a range of images, including photographs, screenshots and documents. OpenAI said the new features will roll out within the next two weeks in the app for paying subscribers of ChatGPT’s Plus and Enterprise services. “We’re excited to roll out these capabilities to other groups of users, including developers, soon after,” the AI firm said. Read More Spotify makes AI voice clones of podcasters and uses them to speak other languages Meta plans to develop chatbot with ‘sassy robot’ persona for young users, report says ChatGPT can now generate images and create illustrated books Meta plans to develop ‘sassy robot’ chatbot for young users, report says Fossil fuels ‘becoming obsolete’ as solar panel prices plummet New discovery is ‘holy grail’ breakthrough in search for aliens, scientist say

Since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, Florida has been toughening up building codes and touting them as a way

By Mike Scarcella A lawsuit by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission against Amazon.com, expected to be filed as

France will target to double the pace at which it adds new solar and biogas production capacity for