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Technology

Following a Nanomaterial’s Journey from Wheat to Plastics

Following a Nanomaterial's Journey from Wheat to Plastics

Rigorous chemical treatments of pure bleached pulp are the most common approaches used to obtain cellulose nanofibrils. These processes incur significant expenses and are detrimental to the environment.

Following a Nanomaterial

Study: Lignocellulosic nanomaterials production from wheat straw via peracetic acid pretreatment and their application in plastic composites. Image Credit: OskarsK/Shutterstock.com

A paper published in the journal Carbohydrate Polymers reports the synthesis of lignocellulosic nanofibrils (LCNF) using wheat straw (WS) feedstock. The LCNF shows great promise in bioplastic applications.

Cellulose Nanofibrils – A Green Alternative to Plastics

Products manufactured from green and renewable sources are in high demand. Cellulose, a plenteous natural resource, is renewable, non-toxic, and biodegradable.

Plastic detritus has accumulated because of the regular dumping of non-biodegradable plastics, causing severe contamination of terrestrial as well as marine environments. Cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) are a more environmentally friendly alternative to plastics in a variety of applications.

The poor manufacturing volume and significant production costs of cellulose nanofibrils prevent them from reaching their true potential in different industries. Therefore, inexpensive and efficient production techniques must be developed to encourage the use of cellulose nanofibrils as viable alternatives to plastics.

How Are Cellulose Nanofibrils Synthesized?

Cellulose nanofibrils are typically made using bleached kraft fibers, a quality raw material providing nearly pure cellulose. The kraft fibers are mechanically fibrillated to extract the cellulose nanofibrils.

Mechanical fibrillation processes require a considerable amount of energy. To advance the fibrillating phase and minimize energy needs, pre-treatment procedures may be used.

An extensively used pre-treatment process for synthesizing cellulose nanofibrils is TEMPO (2,2,6,6 Tetramethylpiperidin-1-oxyl) oxidation. This technique stimulates cellulose fiber oxidation, which increases the charge density on their surface. This ultimately leads to electrostatic repulsion among the cellulose nanofibrils and yields significant fibrillation output.

Drawbacks of Using TEMPO

The downsides of employing the TEMPO oxidation technique include substantial chemical expenses and the toxic nature of TEMPO. Moreover, costly removal methods like dialysis are required to eliminate small quantities of leftover TEMPO from the cellulose nanofibrils, making scalable application of the approach quite difficult.

Fabrication of cellulose nanofibrils needs a more economical conversion technique if the scalable implementation of CNFs is to be achieved.

Developing Lignocellulosic Nanofibrils with Wheat Straw

To avoid the drawbacks of TEMPO oxidation, fabrication of LCNF may be the key. LCNF production requires less expensive lignin-carrying feedstock rather than completely bleached pulp. Moreover, moderate treatment procedures may suffice for LCNF, resulting in high-output products comprised of lignin, cellulose, and hemicellulose constituents.

Production of wheat creates a byproduct known as wheat straw. WS contains the residual stalk left after the harvest of the wheat grains.

Wheat straw acts as a suitable raw material for the manufacture of LCNF because it is abundantly available. Being an agricultural leftover, the expenses of using wheat straw are much less as compared to other raw materials.

Wheat straw therefore provides a low-cost and plenty of non-wooden fiber resource to produce LCNF.

Advantages of Peracetic Acid Treatment

Peracetic acid (PAA) is a biodegradable reagent that can engage in reactions with lignocellulose biomass at temperatures less than 100 °C. Therefore, using PAA for pre-processing of LCNF appears to be a viable strategy.

PAA treatment produces greater yields because of its high oxidizing capability, which selectively eliminates lignin while preventing solubilization of the carbohydrates.

Peracetic acid can trigger the oxidation of the reducing parts of carbohydrates, which results in a negative charge on the surface. This could aid in the nanoscale fibrillation process and produce stable colloidal suspensions.

Compared with the traditional TEMPO oxidation process for cellulose nanofibril synthesis, peracetic acid treatment provides several benefits. PAA has lower toxicity and is ecologically friendlier than TEMPO, and it allows more control over the removal of hemicellulose and lignin from the pulp material.

The architecture and content of nanofibrils generated by peracetic acid treatment differ significantly from the cellulose nanofibrils produced by traditional TEMPO oxidation.

Applications of Cellulose Nanofibrils in Plastic Composites

Cellulose nanofibrils may be utilized as reinforcements in plastic composites to minimize the quantity of petroleum components while also improving the characteristics of the plastic composites.

Hydrophilic and biodegradable polymers, like polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), show weaker mechanical characteristics than their synthetic alternatives, necessitating the addition of different additives to improve their qualities.

Higher aspect ratios and better interface interactions with the polyvinyl alcohol array enable cellulose nanofibrils to enhance the mechanical properties of PVA nanocomposites when introduced in small quantities (<5% wt.).

Results of the Study

The team showed that it is possible to fabricate lignocellulosic nanofibrils having excellent plastic reinforcement characteristics using low-cost agricultural residue. They achieved this by alkaline peroxide pulping, after which the LCNF was treated with PAA.

The lignin and hemicellulose parts of the nanofibrils, formed using wheat straw, were retained, which was critical for enhancing productivity.

While the PAA treatment generated nanomaterials with a lower charge density on the surface than TEMPO oxidation, the material characteristics were unaffected. All specimens demonstrated high colloidal stability under aqueous conditions.

PAA-treated materials improved thermal stability due to their decreased charge density and increased lignin level. Furthermore, irrespective of charge density, all nanofibrils dispersed well in the polyvinyl alcohol matrix. This enhanced the tensile strength and Young’s modulus of the composites, showing a unique case of concurrent strengthening and toughening.

The study established a novel way of producing lignocellulosic nanofibrils from agricultural residue. This economically feasible approach has the potential to enable scalable production of nanomaterials with commodity product costs, allowing them to be used in high-volume industries like bioplastics.

Reference

Pascoli, DU, Dichiara, A., Roumeli, E., Gustafson, R., & Bura, R. (2022). Lignocellulosic nanomaterials production from wheat straw via peracetic acid pre-treatment and their application in plastic composites. Carbohydrate Polymers. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbpol.2022.119857

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are those of the author expressed in their private capacity and do not necessarily represent the views of AZoM.com Limited T/A AZoNetwork the owner and operator of this website. This disclaimer forms part of the Terms and conditions of use of this website.

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US

Pro-Trump activists swamp election officials with sprawling records requests

Pro-Trump activists swamp election officials with sprawling records requests

Aug 3 (Reuters) – Pro-Trump operatives are flooding local officials with public-records requests to seek evidence for the former president’s false stolen-election claims and to gather intelligence on voting machines and voters, adding to the chaos rocking the US election system .

The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in Arizona, an election battleground state, has fielded 498 public records requests this year – 130 more than all of last year. Officials in Washoe County, Nevada, have fielded 88 public records requests, two-thirds more than in all of 2021. And the number of requests to North Carolina’s state elections board have already nearly equaled last year’s total of 229.

The surge of requests is overwhelming staffs that oversee elections in some jurisdictions, fueling baseless voter-fraud allegations and raising concerns about the inadvertent release of information that could be used to hack voting systems, according to a dozen election officials interviewed by Reuters.

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Republican and Democratic election officials said they consider some of the requests an abuse of freedom-of-information laws meant to ensure government transparency. Record requests facing many of the country’s 8,800 election offices have become “voluminous and daunting” since the 2020 election, said Kim Wyman, head of election security at the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Last year, when she left her job as Washington secretary of state, the state’s top election official, her office de ella had a two-year backlog of records requests.

“You still have a group of people in each state that believe that the election was stolen,” said Wyman, a Republican.

In April, the official in Arizona’s Maricopa County in charge of responding to public records requests, Ilene Haber, assigned four of her nine staffers to pull 20,000 documents out of holding boxes, sort them for scanning, and then carefully return them to their proper place . It took four days.

The staffers were filling just one of several records requests from Haystack Investigations, who had asked for chain-of-custody records for all 2.1 million ballots cast in the election. The firm says on its website that it conducts a variety of investigations for companies, law firms and individuals. The company worked on Arizona’s “forensic audit,” the examination of Trump’s defeat in the county by pro-Trump partisans that ended last year without uncovering voter fraud.

The labor-intensive Haystack requests illustrate the growing challenge facing stretched election offices across the country. In Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, extensive requests like the one submitted by Haystack make up about one-quarter of the total the office has received this year, said Haber, the director of communications and constituent services in the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.

“The requests are getting bigger, more detailed, more burdensome, and going back even further” in time, she said.

Heather Honey, who heads Pennsylvania-based Haystack, said the requests were unrelated to the firm’s work on the Arizona audit and were for her own investigation. “All are meaningful and contribute to specific professional research activities,” said Honey, who has sought similar election-related records in Pennsylvania.

The local officials told Reuters that the surge in requests from election deniers is drowning their staffs in extra work at a time when they are struggling to recruit and retain voting administrators vital to democracy. Election workers have already endured an onslaught of death threats and harassment from Trump activists. Reuters has documented more than 900 such hostile messages since the 2020 vote.

“The concern is burnout,” said Jamie Rodriguez, the interim registrar of voters in Washoe County, Nevada. “With burnout does come the potential for mistakes.”

Rodriguez took over this week from the former registrar, who resigned after being targeted with death threats and other harassment.

Ryan Macias, an election security consultant for CISA, likened the swarm of records request to a denial-of-service cyber-attack, in which hackers attempt to overwhelm a network with internet traffic, and said it was creating potential security risks given the stresses already weighing on election workers.

“We have the attrition rate; we have people who are under threat from the community, people who are getting death threats, people who are overworked,” Macias said at a gathering of state election directors in Wisconsin on July 19.

SECURITY RISKS

All 50 US states have freedom-of-information laws that are used routinely by journalists, advocates, academics and everyday citizens to access records on government. Such statutes aim to ensure the public has the information needed to hold their leaders accountable. Local officials told Reuters they believe in the importance of such laws and said they are trying to find creative ways to lessen the burden of the election-related requests on their staffers.

Rather than ask for a bigger budget, Haber of Maricopa County said she has trained her whole team to help respond. Washoe County temporarily halts the production of documents at a certain point prior to the election, to ensure staff can focus on administering the vote, Rodriguez said. Donald Palmer, a commissioner on the federal Election Assistance Commission, told a gathering of secretaries of state on July 8 in Baton Rouge that they should help local officials more efficiently respond to the deluge of requests by, for instance, creating a “reading room” site to simultaneously respond to duplicative requests from different people.

Rodriguez said most of her nine current staffers joined in 2021 or 2022 after a rash of staff departures. She is trying to limit their overtime to keep them fresh for November.

But the records requests aren’t letting up. One request sought various information on the county’s election workers during the 2022 primary, including their phone number, mailing address and party affiliation. Another one was filed in late June by Robert Beadles, a businessman who moved from California to Reno in 2019 and is now leading a movement to push election-fraud theories and target politicians who do not support his agenda. Beadles requested 38 different data sets.

Beadles tells visitors to his website, operationsunlight.com, to send requests to their county clerks for a list of voters in the November 2020 election, broken down by voting method, and the total number of ballots cast for each candidate. He asks them to email the records to Shiva Ayyadurai, a leading purveyor of election fraud conspiracies.

Neither Beadles nor Ayyadurai responded to emails seeking comment.

As strapped government staffs struggle to keep up with the extensive inquiries, some election officials express concern about slipping up and releasing information that could compromise election security.

Samuel Derheimer, director of government affairs at voting-equipment manufacturer Hart InterCivic, said his company has seen an explosion of requests from election officials for help determining when releasing certain records threatens election integrity. Public records requests sometimes target operational manuals containing security protocols that should not be released to the public, he said.

Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said one of the challenges is analyzing whether seemingly separate individuals or groups might be working together to piece together sensitive information about voting equipment and processes.

“That’s when your antenna starts going up,” she said. “We are having to spend a lot of extra time thinking in those terms.”

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Reporting by Nathan Layne; editing by Jason Szep and Brian Thevenot

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Categories
Business

Metricon to cut staff by 9 per cent, home building confidence weakens

Metricon to cut staff by 9 per cent, home building confidence weakens

Demand is weakening across the board. New mortgage lending shrank at the fastest pace in more than two years in June, according to separate official figures published this week. The PCI, published by Ai Group and the Housing Industry Association, shows housing activity weakened for a third month in July.

The monthly index of activity in detached house building – based on a sentiment survey of purchasing managers in the sector – fell 4.6 points to 34.6 points on an index where a figure below 50 indicates contraction.

‘End to the boom’

“Confidence in the housing sector has been adversely impacted by rising rates which will compound the rise in the cost of construction,” HIA economist Thomas Devitt said.

“This has not yet materialized in slowing sales or approvals of new homes and there is still a large volume of building work in the pipeline to complete. Recent declines in confidence … reflect an anticipation on the part of builders of less new work entering the pipeline in coming months as the RBA’s current tightening cycle will, inevitably, bring an end to the boom.”

For a company such as Metricon, which expanded rapidly thanks to the federal government’s HomeBuilder scheme and other stimulus programs – its dwelling commencements surged 33 per cent – ​​that means a huge hangover has set in as it is crunched by surging material costs and labor shortages.

Metricon, which had 6052 housing starts last year, said on Tuesday it had started a consultation process with affected staff that would lead to redundancies.

Mr Langfelder said Metricon expected to continue to sign 100 contracts a week, in line with pre-pandemic levels, and that it expected more than 6000 housing starts next year.

The Gold Coast and Brisbane home building markets have suffered some of the biggest increases in overall construction costs, in residential and commercial, and it was in these markets that Metricon earlier this year tried to renegotiate higher prices with contracted customers, before giving up on the idea.

In mid-May, the builder also suffered the sudden loss of founder and chief executive Mario Biasin, who was said to have experienced mental health issues.

It is not the only home builder caught between fixed-price contracts and rapidly rising costs. Sydney-based Rawson Group last year received a $40 million loan from parent company Daiwa House to help it trade through the current tough conditions.

Categories
Technology

10 Fixes The Game Needs

A collage of images from Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series, alongside the box art for Klonoa Beach Volleyball

Despite his long absence from the gaming scene, Klonoa has remained as a fond memory in gamers’ hearts — just check the secondhand prices on copies of the original two games for proof. Fortunately, the Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series has returned the fuzzball to modern consoles, upscaling the classic 2.5D platformers into HD and allowing a new generation of players to discover what makes these games so special.



RELATED: The Best 2D Games With 3D Graphics

But while Klonoa’s return is cause for celebration, Namco missed a few opportunities to make this collection into a true celebration of the series.

THEGAMER VIDEO OF THE DAY

10 Bring Back The Cel-Shading

Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series compiles and remasters the series’ two mainline console entries, Klonoa: Door To Phantomile and Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil. Both games in their original form featured a charmingly cartoonish graphical style; the first game utilized 2D sprites on 3D backgrounds, while the sequel worked around early-PS2 graphical limitations by using a gorgeous cel-shaded aesthetic.

In the remaster, though, Lunatea’s Veil is presented naturalistically, without the original cel-shading. It’s not bad-looking, and it keeps both games visually in line with each other, but as a result the game doesn’t have quite the same atmosphere.

9 Improve Performance On The Switch

Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series is available on pretty much every major console. It’s no surprise that the game runs like butter on the Playstations and Xboxes of the world, but its performance on the less-powerful Switch is a little rockier.

RELATED: Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series: Beginner Tips

The game targets 60 FPS and hits it the majority of the time, but you’ll likely notice a few glaring hitches every now and then. And while it’s still perfectly playable, it’s disappointing and strange that these decades-old games don’t run perfectly on modern hardware.


8 Let Us Choose Between CG And In-Engine Cutscenes

Klonoa: Door To Phantomile was originally released on the PS1, during an era when developers used the freedom of the CD format to cram their games chock-full of fancy prerendered cutscenes. Klonoa was no different, featuring gorgeous prerenders for major story events… that the Phantasy Reverie Series remaster excises in favor of stiffer in-engine sequences.

It makes sense, since this version of the game is built on the Wii remake rather than the original, but it loses some of the original’s charm.

7 Stop With The Dang Tutorials

When you boot up either game in Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series, you’ll jump into a level and instantly be greeted with a series of tutorials. These range from somewhat useful to completely useless, like telling you to collect the glowing collectibles that litter each stage. (What else would you do with them?)

Even worse are the pop-up tutorials that tell you exactly how to defeat bosses, sucking all the fun out of the encounters. And that’s not even mentioning the tutorials that greet you on level loading screens, which display information for levels you’ve already beaten. What gives?

6 Feature More Adjustable Difficulty Options

Klonoa isn’t known for being a challenging series, but the later segments of both games ramp up the challenge, asking you to expertly juggle Klonoa’s flutter-jump and enemy-grabbing abilities while landing precisely on tiny platforms.

So it’s nice that Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series introduces a lower difficulty setting, which provides unlimited lives, increased health, and a longer grab range to make these segments less demanding. Still, you can only take all of these options together — it would’ve been nice to mix and match these options to customize the gameplay and offer more gradients of challenge.


5 Includes A Collectibles Finder

Another way that Klonoa’s levels introduce complexity is through branching, nonlinear paths. The early levels in both games are straightforward romps from beginning to end, but as the games progress, they’ll use their 2.5D perspective to introduce new paths and hide secrets.

It’s a fun twist on a traditional gameplay loop, but it also means that hitting 100% on each level can be frustrating, since certain collectibles are hidden behind optional paths or obscured by environmental elements. It would have been nice to include some kind of hint system or collectible finder to cut down on that frustration.


4 Let Us Skip Through The Text More Quickly

Aside from its cutesy aesthetics and thoughtful gameplay, the Klonoa series sets itself apart from the platforming competition by focusing heavily on its story and world, making the game feel almost like a playable Studio Ghibli film. As such, if you want the full Klonoa experience, you’ll want to pay attention to the dialogue exchanges that bookend the levels.

Phantasy Reverie Series includes the option to skip these scenes, but you can’t just… press X to advance to the next text box. Since you’ll probably read faster than the game displays text, your options are basically to just wait around for the text to advance or to skip over these cutscenes entirely. There’s definitely room for some middle ground there.


3 Include The Other Games

Door To Phantomile and Lunatea’s Veil are easily the most well-known games in the Klonoa series, but they’re by no means the only ones. The cuddly rabbit-cat… uh, dog… dude has had his fair share of spin-offs, like Klonoa Heroes, an overhead action-RPG that mixes Klonoa’s whimsical aesthetic with Zelda-like gameplay. There’s even a Klonoa Beach Volleyball game!

But of these spinoffs, the only ones that made it out of Japan are the breezy GBA platformers Empire Of Dreams and Dream Champ Tournament… and the only way you can play them these days is by going through the dying Wii U eShop. Bandai Namco missed a huge opportunity by leaving these games out of the Phantasy Reverie Series.


two Put A Little More Effort Into The Title Screen

Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series locks two of the most charming, whimsical games ever made behind the blandest title screen you’ll ever see. When you boot the game up, you’re greeted with a flat, washed-out background and a prompt to hit start. There isn’t even any music playing!

RELATED: Things You Didn’t Know About The Klonoa Series

As delightful as these games are, the start screen feels empty and lifeless. It’s a curiously flat gateway into a beloved series.

1 Include Any Supplementary Content…Like, At All

Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series was released to coincide with the series’ 25th anniversary, so you’d think the collection would serve as a celebration of this adorable, underappreciated mascot.

But nearly all the celebratory features you’d expect — like concept art, or an option to listen to the soundtrack, or cute costumes, or developer commentary — are completely missing. That is, unless you’d like to spend $20 on a DLC pack!

NEXT: Klonoa Phantasy Reverie Series Review: Time Travel Is Real And This Game Proves It

Categories
US

Kidnapped Alabama girl, 12, escapes captivity, leads police to 2 decomposing bodies, an arrest

Kidnapped Alabama girl, 12, escapes captivity, leads police to 2 decomposing bodies, an arrest

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A kidnapped 12-year-old girl who escaped captivity and was found walking on the side of a road in rural Alabama helped lead police to discover two decomposing bodies at the residence where she was held, authorities said on Tuesday.

Police responded to a 911 report on Monday before 8:30 am from a driver who noticed a girl walking along a road in Dadeville, Tallapoosa County Sheriff Jimmy Abbett said at a news conference. The girl’s escape sparked a kidnapping investigation over 24 hours that led to the residence of José Paulino Pascual-Reyes, Abbett said.

The search of his mobile home in Dadeville resulted in the discovery of two decomposing bodies, Abbett said.

Pascual-Reyes, 37, was arrested in Auburn, Ala., and charged with first-degree kidnapping, three counts of capital murder and two counts of corpse abuse. He’s being held in Tallapoosa County Jail pending a bond hearing, police said. It’s unclear whether Pascual-Reyes has an attorney.

Court documents indicate that the girl had been tied to bed posts for nearly a week, and was assaulted and drugged with alcohol, according to WSFA in Montgomery, Ala. The girl, who has not been publicly identified, had not been reported missing, Abbett said. She managed to escape when she chewed through her restraints, according to the documents.

“She’s a hero,” Abbett said of the girl.

At the news Tuesday, Abbett declined to give additional details regarding whether the girl had any relationship to Pascual-Reyes or when she might have been kidnapped.

“It’s a fluid investigation,” the sheriff said, adding that authorities wouldn’t address whether the girl and man knew each other “until later.” “Things are changing, and I don’t want to jeopardize the identification of our juvenile.”

Authorities also declined to share information regarding the identification and cause of death for the two bodies found at Pascual-Reyes’s home in Dadeville, located about 60 miles outside Montgomery. The remains were sent to the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences for autopsies and identification.

Tallapoosa County District Attorney Jeremy Duerr told reporters that more capital murder charges could come against Pascual-Reyes.

“Once we continue and finish our investigation, I feel certain that several more charges will follow,” he said.

More than 365,000 reports of missing youths were filed into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center in 2020, according to the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the leading clearinghouse of information about missing children in the United States, has noted that the figures show reports of missing children, not active cases, Reuters reported. As of Dec. 31, 2021, the FBI says that youths under age 18 account for about one-third of the more than 93,000 active missing-person cases.

Abbett said Pascual-Reyes had appeared to have lived in the mobile home since February. The sheriff said other people were at the home when authorities arrived but declined to share details.

“It’s horrendous to have a crime scene of this nature,” he said.

The sheriff praised the many agencies that helped in the arrest of Pascual-Reyes, including the FBI, the Tallapoosa County district attorney’s office, the Alabama State Bureau of Investigation and the Dadeville Police Department.

He also lauded the girl for her bravery in escaping captivity and pointing police toward Pascual-Reyes and the two decomposing bodies. The girl was “doing well” after receiving medical attention, the sheriff said.

“She’s safe and we want to keep her that way,” Abbett said.

Categories
Technology

Pokemon GO Fest Finale 2022 Will Include Encounter With Mythical Pokemon

pokemon go shaymin

It was another big summer season for Pokémon GO, Niantic’s wildly popular mobile adventure game. While the COVID-19 pandemic forced Niantic to adjust how Pokémon GO functioned in order to keep trainers safe while exploring, the game has since been returning to normal over the past year while restrictions have started to relax. Unfortunately, a portion of the player base hasn’t been thrilled with these changes as many player friendly changes have been reverted to their pre-pandemic style.

GAMERANT VIDEO OF THE DAY

One major piece of Pokémon GO that was shelved due to the pandemic were the GO Fest events, these massive gatherings and celebrations for the community at various cities. However, Niantic finally brought back the in-person event this year, splitting it into 3 different locations from Berlin, to Seattle, and finally Sapporo. Offering unique opportunities and special research, these events have also introduced Ultra Beasts into the mobile game for the first time including the likes of Buzzwole, Xurkitree, and others.

RELATED: Pokemon GO Players Call for New Egg Feature

During the latest Pokemon Presents direct, Pokémon GO also had a few announcements in store for fans. While the Sapporo GO Fest is happening this coming weekend, the reveal touched on what fans can expect for the Finale event coming on August 27 from 10am-6pm local time. All four Ultra Beasts, Nihilego, Buzzwole, Pheromosa, and Xurkitree will be gathering at the FInale global event, open to all trainers across the globe to participate in.


During the Finale, players will also encounter Pokemon not normally seen in the wild while also helping the GO Ultra Recon Squad character Rhi with the Ultra Beast and figure out what happened to Professor Willow. Special Research will also be available and those who manage to complete it will encounter the mythical Sky Forme Shaymin. Originally introduced inside of Generation 4, Shaymin’s Sky Forme is a dual Flying and Grass type that looks a little more imposing than it’s traditional hedgehog-like grass form.

Along with the GO Fest Finale, August is set to be a busy month for Pokémon GO players as Niantic recently revealed the schedule of activities including which Legendaries and Mega Raids will be available. For August, players can go up against the likes of Palkia, Genesect, and then the Sword and Shield legendaries, Zacian and Zamazenta. In addition, Pokémon GO will have limited time events including one called Bug Out which, as expected, features only bug-type Pokemon to catch for a limited time.


Pokémon GO is available on Android and iOS.

MORE: Pokemon GO – All August 2022 Events

Categories
US

Wikipedia restricting new users from editing ‘recession’ page

Wikipedia restricting new users from editing 'recession' page

Job Creators Network President and CEO Alfredo Ortiz slams Biden trying to claim to the American people that the United States is not in recession

Wikipedia is changing the editing permissions for users who try to change the page for “recession” following a disagreement over its exact definition.

Wikimedia, the company that runs the online encyclopedia, will force new and anonymous users to have their updates reviewed and accepted by an editor before making their changes public on the page. Last week the Commerce Department announced the United States’s economy shrank for a second straight quarter.

“Semi-protected articles can only be edited by logged-in users whose accounts are at least 4 days old and have made at least 10 edits,” Wikimedia said in an emailed statement to Bloomberg. “Volunteer editors use these and other tools on a regular basis to help ensure that Wikipedia content is neutral and well-sourced.”

Originally, the definition of recession had been two straight quarters of falling gross-domestic-product. The US GDP fell at a 0.9% annualized rate in the second quarter, following a 1.6% decline in the first quarter of 2022.

Recession fears mount

The Commerce Department sparked fears of a recession last week after announcing the US GDP fell for a second quarter in a row at a 0.9% annualized rate. (iStock / iStock)

FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF MINNEAPOLIS CEO SAYS INFLATION IS ‘VERY CONCERNING’ AND ‘SPREADING OUT’ ACROSS ECONOMY

However, the news caused a debate with Wikipedia users who rushed to the page and change the exact definition of the term. Originally, the company semi-locked the page, meaning only users with accounts of at least four days old and 10 verified edits could make changes to the “recession” page.

The encyclopedia plans to lift the semi-lock and allow volunteer editors to handle all requested changes.

“Volunteer editors know this, and have created tools and mechanisms for responding to an influx of edits on articles that are in the public eye in order to maintain the standards of neutrality and verifiability that govern the site,” a Wikimedia spokesperson told The Hill. “Protecting an article is one common tool they use.”

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Currently, Wikipedia’s definition of a recession states, “Although the definition of a recession varies between different countries and scholars, two consecutive quarters of decline in a country’s real gross domestic product (real GDP) is commonly used as a practical definition of a recession. “

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Categories
Technology

Smart lighting system based on quantum dots more accurately reproduces daylight — ScienceDaily

Bioscientists use mixed-reality headset, custom software to measure vegetation in the field -- ScienceDaily

Researchers have designed smart, colour-controllable white light devices from quantum dots — tiny semiconductors just a few billionths of a meter in size — which are more efficient and have better color saturation than standard LEDs, and can dynamically reproduce daylight conditions in a single light.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, designed the next-generation smart lighting system using a combination of nanotechnology, color science, advanced computational methods, electronics and a unique fabrication process.

The team found that by using more than the three primary lighting colors used in typical LEDs, they were able to reproduce daylight more accurately. Early tests of the new design showed excellent color rendering, a wider operating range than current smart lighting technology, and wider spectrum of white light customization. The results are reported in the journal Nature Communications.

As the availability and characteristics of ambient light are connected with wellbeing, the widespread availability of smart lighting systems can have a positive effect on human health since these systems can respond to individual mood. Smart lighting can also respond to circadian rhythms, which regulate the daily sleep-wake cycle, so that light is reddish-white in the morning and evening, and bluish-white during the day.

When a room has sufficient natural or artificial light, good glare control, and views of the outdoors, it is said to have good levels of visual comfort. In indoor environments under artificial light, visual comfort depends on how accurately colors are rendered. Since the color of objects is determined by illumination, smart white lighting needs to be able to accurately express the color of surrounding objects. Current technology achieves this by using three different colors of light simultaneously.

Quantum dots have been studied and developed as light sources since the 1990s, due to their high color tunability and color purity. Due to their unique optoelectronic properties, they show excellent color performance in both wide color controllability and high color rendering capability.

The Cambridge researchers developed an architecture for quantum-dot light-emitting diodes (QD-LED) based next-generation smart white lighting. They combined system-level color optimization, device-level optoelectronic simulation, and material-level parameter extraction.

The researchers produced a computational design framework from a color optimization algorithm used for neural networks in machine learning, together with a new method for charge transport and light emission modelling.

The QD-LED system uses multiple primary colors — beyond the commonly used red, green and blue — to more accurately mimic white light. By choosing quantum dots of a specific size — between three and 30 nanometres in diameter — the researchers were able to overcome some of the practical limitations of LEDs and achieve the emission wavelengths they needed to test their predictions.

The team then validated their design by creating a new device architecture of QD-LED based white lighting. The test showed excellent color rendering, a wider operating range than current technology, and a wide spectrum of white light shade customization.

The Cambridge-developed QD-LED system showed a correlated color temperature (CCT) range from 2243K (reddish) to 9207K (bright midday sun), compared with current LED-based smart lights which have a CCT between 2200K and 6500K. The color rendering index (CRI) — a measure of colors illuminated by the light in comparison to daylight (CRI=100) — of the QD-LED system was 97, compared to current smart bulb ranges, which are between 80 and 91 .

The design could pave the way to more efficient, more accurate smart lighting. In an LED smart bulb, the three LEDs must be controlled individually to achieve a given colour. In the QD-LED system, all the quantum dots are driven by a single common control voltage to achieve the full color temperature range.

“This is a world-first: a fully optimised, high-performance quantum-dot-based smart white lighting system,” said Professor Jong Min Kim from Cambridge’s Department of Engineering, who co-led the research. “This is the first milestone toward the full exploitation of quantum-dot-based smart white lighting for daily applications.”

“The ability to better reproduce daylight through its varying color spectrum dynamically in a single light is what we aimed for,” said Professor Gehan Amaratunga, who co-led the research. “We achieved it in a new way through using quantum dots. This research opens the way for a wide variety of new human responsive lighting environments.”

The structure of the QD-LED white lighting developed by the Cambridge team is scalable to large area lighting surfaces, as it is made with a printing process and its control and drive is similar to that in a display. With standard point source LEDs requiring individual control this is a more complex task.

The research was supported in part by the European Union and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

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Australia

Police release images, footage of alleged gunmen involved in Fawkner shooting

Police release images, footage of alleged gunmen involved in Fawkner shooting

Detectives say one of two gunmen who crashed into a fire hydrant after shooting ex-Mongols bikie Suleiman “Sam” Abdulrahim also tried to hide in a restaurant garbage bin when fleeing the crime scene.

Police have released CCTV footage of two men they say were in a Mazda SUV when they ambushed and shot Abdulrahim, 30, multiple times as he left a funeral at Fawkner cemetery in June.

The Mazda sped away from the scene before crashing into a fire hydrant and a pole on Box Forest Road, near Sydney Road, where the pair ran from the damaged vehicle.

The footage shows one of the alleged offenders, dressed in black and attempting to hide his face with an item of clothing, climbing into a bin filled with cardboard boxes near a fast food restaurant on Sydney Road.

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He momentarily hides in the bin before climbing out and walking away, the CCTV vision shows.

The second man allegedly carjacked a woman and child at gunpoint, taking a Ford Territory wagon that police later located at Brunswick Drive in Epping

Police said CCTV footage shows the man walking in Epping wearing a black hoodie and carrying a bag.

Police also believe one of the men attended a hardware store in Epping on June 15, 10 days before the shooting, purchasing two petrol cans that were later located in the crashed Mazda SUV.

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US

Former Treasury secretaries push Manchin bill

Former Treasury secretaries push Manchin bill

Five former Treasury secretaries — including Hank Paulson, who served under President George W. Bush — signed a statement strongly backing the “Inflation Reduction Act” brokered by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Sen. Joe Manchin (DW.Va.).

Why it matters: The bipartisan support will help the White House and Democrats push back against the Republican contention that millions of Americans who make under $400,000 a year would see their taxes rise.

  • The others who signed on are Robert Rubin and Larry Summers (President Clinton), Tim Geithner and Jacob Lew (President Obama).
  • Senate votes are expected to begin later this week on the health, climate and tax plan.

“As former Treasury Secretaries of both Democratic and Republican Administrations,” the statement says, “we support the Inflation Reduction Act which is financed by prudent tax policy that will collect more from top-earners and large corporations.

“Taxes due or paid will not increase for any family making less than $400,000/year. And the extra taxes levied on corporations do not reflect increases in the corporate tax rate, but rather the reclaiming of revenue lost to tax avoidance and provisions benefitting the most tributary.

The selective presentation by some of the distributional effects of this bill neglects benefits to middle-class families from reducing deficits, from bringing down prescription drug prices, and from more affordable energy. This legislation will help increase American competitiveness, address our climate crisis, lower costs for families, and fight inflation — and should be passed immediately by Congress.”

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