“New Cobalt-Free Lithium-Ion Battery Reduces Costs Without Sacrificing Performance”
July 19th, 2020Cobalt is the ugliest part of high performance lithium ion batteries, and the most difficult to eliminate. This research out of University of Texas might be good news.
Via: UT News:
For decades, researchers have looked for ways to eliminate cobalt from the high-energy batteries that power electronic devices, due to its high cost and the human rights ramifications of its mining. But past attempts haven’t lived up to the performance standards of batteries with cobalt.
Researchers from the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin say they’ve cracked the code to a cobalt-free high-energy lithium-ion battery, eliminating the cobalt and opening the door to reducing the costs of producing batteries while boosting performance in some ways. The team reported a new class of cathodes — the electrode in a battery where all the cobalt typically resides — anchored by high nickel content. The cathode in their study is 89% nickel. Manganese and aluminum make up the other key elements.
More nickel in a battery means it can store more energy. That increased energy density can lead to longer battery life for a phone or greater range for an electric vehicle with each charge.
The findings appeared this month in the journal Advanced Materials. The paper was written by Arumugam Manthiram, a professor in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Texas Materials Institute, Ph.D. student Steven Lee and Ph.D. graduate Wangda Li.
State-Linked Chinese Firm Uses Own Workers As Guinea Pigs In Unregulated Vaccine “Pre-Test”
July 19th, 2020“Special volunteers.”
Via: ZeroHedge:
A major Chinese state-run pharmaceutical company is going to extreme, and some might say dangerous, lengths to develop a coronavirus vaccine at a moment the global race is on to get one safely out.
The company announced this week that its Chinese employees and even top executives stood in as guinea pigs for a “pre-test” of its potential new vaccine.
SinoPharm said that 30 of its own “special volunteers” had the experimental vaccine administered to them prior to it going through a rigorous regulations and official approval process. It’s bringing up serious ethical questions over to what degree state-linked Chinese firms are coercing their employees into participating in unregulated and experimental pharmaceutical tests.
Signaling Virtuous Victimhood as Indicators Machiavellianism, Narcissism and Psychopathy
July 19th, 2020Via: Journal of Personality and Social Psychology:
The obligation to alleviate others’ pain can be found in most of the world’s moral systems. It also appears to be built into the structure of the mind by evolution, as evidenced by the human tendency to feel distress at signs of suffering. It is therefore not surprising that many people are motivated to help perceived victims of misfortune or disadvantage. But the downside of this proclivity is that it can also lead people to be easily persuaded that all victim signals are accurate signals, particularly when they perceive the alleged victim as being a “good person.” When this occurs, well-meaning people might allocate their material and social resources to those who are neither victims nor virtuous, which necessarily diverts resources from those who are legitimately in need. Effective altruism requires the ability to differentiate between false and true victims. Credulous acceptance of all virtuous victim signals as genuine can also enable and reward fraudulent claims, particularly by those with antisocial personality traits.
The Media’s Jihad Against Sweden’s No-Lockdown Policy Ignores Key Facts
July 19th, 2020Via: Mises:
As soon as it became clear that the Swedish state had no plans to implement harsh lockdowns, global media organizations like the New York Times have implemented what can only be described as an ideological jihad against Sweden.
For many weeks, there has been an incessant drumbeat of articles with titles touting the “the failure of the country’s no-lockdown coronavirus strategy,” that “Sweden Has Become the World’s Cautionary Tale,” and “How Sweden Screwed Up.”
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Sweden’s total deaths per million in population as of July 14 is 549. That’s considerably lower than the deaths per million rate in the UK, which is 662, and in Spain, which is 608. In Belgium, the death rate is 884.
Moreover, the Sweden deaths per million is many times better than the rates found in New Jersey and New York: 1,763 and 1,669.
Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles To Grab Protesters Off Portland Streets
July 17th, 2020Via: Oregon Public Broadcasting:
Federal law enforcement officers have been using unmarked vehicles to drive around downtown Portland and detain protesters since at least July 14. Personal accounts and multiple videos posted online show the officers driving up to people, detaining individuals with no explanation of why they are being arrested, and driving off.
The tactic appears to be another escalation in federal force deployed on Portland city streets, as federal officials and President Donald Trump have said they plan to “quell” nightly protests outside the federal courthouse and Multnomah County Justice Center that have lasted for more than six weeks.
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Blinded by his hat, in an unmarked minivan full of armed people dressed in camouflage and body armor who hadn’t identified themselves, Pettibone said he was driven around downtown before being unloaded inside a building. He wouldn’t learn until after his release that he had been inside the federal courthouse.
“It was basically a process of facing many walls and corners as they patted me down and took my picture and rummaged through my belongings,” Pettibone said. “One of them said, ‘This is a whole lot of nothing.’”
Pettibone said he was put into a cell. Soon after, two officers came in to read him his Miranda rights. They didn’t tell him why he was being arrested. He said they asked him if he wanted to waive his rights and answer some questions, but Pettibone declined and said he wanted a lawyer. The interview was terminated, and about 90 minutes later he was released. He said he did not receive any paperwork, citation or record of his arrest.
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“It’s like stop and frisk meets Guantanamo Bay,” said attorney Juan Chavez, director of the civil rights project at the Oregon Justice Resource Center.
On Eve of Bankruptcy, U.S. Firms Shower Execs with Bonuses
July 17th, 2020Via: Reuters:
Nearly a third of more than 40 large companies seeking U.S. bankruptcy protection during the coronavirus pandemic awarded bonuses to executives within a month of filing their cases, according to a Reuters analysis of securities filings and court records.
Under a 2005 bankruptcy law, companies are banned, with few exceptions, from paying executives retention bonuses while in bankruptcy. But the firms seized on a loophole by granting payouts before filing.
Back To School? “No Thanks” Say Millions Of Newly Homeschooling Parents
July 16th, 2020Via: ZeroHedge:
With dehumanizing COVID-19 restrictions awaiting students at schools, many parents are opting to keep on homeschooling…
Eviction Looms for Millions of Americans Who Can’t Afford Rent
July 16th, 2020Via: Morningstar:
Millions of Americans who have missed rent payments due to the coronavirus pandemic could be at risk of being evicted in the coming months unless government measures to protect them are extended, economists and housing experts say.
Nearly 12 million adults live in households that missed their last rent payment, and 23 million have little or no confidence in their ability to make the next one, according to weekly Census Bureau data.
About a third of the country’s renters are protected by an eviction moratorium that covers properties with federally insured mortgages. That expires July 25. Many renters are jobless and depend on supplemental weekly unemployment benefits of $600 that are due to end on July 31.
Billionaires Get Out of Stocks After Dead Cat Bounce
July 16th, 2020Via: ZeroHedge:
UBS’ head of global family offices told Reuters, the surge in equities from March to May netted significant returns for its wealthiest clients. Now they’re disposing of equities by locking in gains and moving money into “illiquid and private assets.”
“We had record loans written during the middle of March and the middle of April, of significant family offices who asked us for balance sheet and then went into the market,” Josef Stadler said. “They bought, for example, U.S. equities, but they didn’t buy $50 million. They bought a billion-plus of those equities to rebalance. And they made a lot of money.”
Buying the dip, in the tune of billions of dollars, led family offices to outperform hedge funds, and hit their target benchmarks through May, according to the bank’s latest survey of family offices.
Twitter Owned, Attacker Tweets Bitcoin Scam from Prominent Users’ Accounts
July 16th, 2020Via: Reuters:
Twitter said late Wednesday hackers obtained control of employee credentials to hijack accounts including those of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, former president Barack Obama, reality television star Kim Kardashian, and tech billionaire and Tesla founder Elon Musk.
In a series of tweets, the company said: “We detected what we believe to be a coordinated social engineering attack by people who successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.”
The hackers then “used this access to take control of many highly-visible (including verified) accounts and Tweet on their behalf.”
The company statements confirmed the fears of security experts that the service itself – rather than users – had been compromised.
