During the August 21 total solar eclipse, solar power systems across the U.S. continued to operate without major outages. Data from over 300,000 systems tracked by SolarEdge showed rapid recovery, while California and North Carolina grid operators maintained supply with backup resources.
HP has launched the Jet Fusion 3200 and 4200, its first new 3D printers since entering the market in 2014. The company claims the machines print at half the cost and ten times the speed of rivals, with the 3200 priced at $130,000 and aimed at manufacturers.
Beijing's municipal development and reform commission announced Tuesday that coal use will be nearly eliminated in the city's plain areas and six downtown districts by 2020, with a citywide coal consumption cap of 5 million tonnes. The plan aims to replace coal-fired heating and industrial boilers with clean energy, electricity, and gas, while renewable sources are projected to exceed 8 percent of total energy consumption.
The Florida Aquarium is importing a UK-developed technique to induce corals to spawn monthly instead of once a year, aiming to scale up restoration. At current rates, removing Staghorn coral from the endangered species list would take 550 years, and asexual cloning limits genetic diversity needed to survive bleaching and disease.
A Harvard study published in Geophysical Research Letters found that Earth's crust rebounds and warps as ice melts, with deformations larger than previously thought. The effects can influence ecosystems for thousands of years and may create a feedback loop that displaces more ice, according to planetary scientist Sophie Coulson.
Researchers at the University of Central Florida combined titanium with organic molecules to create a metal-organic framework that absorbs blue light and converts carbon dioxide into formate and formamides. The work, published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry A, addresses a long-standing barrier: cheaper materials previously worked only under ultraviolet light, which makes up about 4 percent of sunlight.
A small fire at the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System on May 9 shut down one of its three towers, leaving the Mojave Desert plant operating on a single unit because a second tower was already offline for maintenance. Fire officials attributed the blaze to misaligned mirrors, and the plant faces a July deadline to meet its power purchase agreement output.
The EPA has updated its cost-benefit analysis to assign a zero value to human life, eliminating the 'value of a statistical life' metric previously set at $11.7 million. This change is expected to weaken regulations on ozone and fine particulate matter, potentially reversing gains made since the Clean Air Act, according to Fortune and economist Michael Greenstone.
NOAA data show the contiguous US averaged 76.89 degrees Fahrenheit in July, hotter than July 1936 during the Dust Bowl, according to the source. Meteorologist Jeff Masters attributes the record to a strong El Niño layered on human-caused climate change, with drought and wildfires compounding the impact.
The United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, killing about 80,000 people instantly, with total deaths from the Japan blasts estimated at over 200,000. The United Nations calls nuclear weapons the most dangerous on Earth, and the source asks how far disarmament has come.