A coalition of 100 investors announced plans to build a "Chinese-controlled economic zone" populated by skyscrapers and luxury residences. Their new city will be in Kenya, but the goal is to "match the glamour of Dubai." What would motivate investors to go to the trouble of building a massive new city in a country other than their own? It’s pretty simple, actually.
The world’s ever-growing demand for gas is driving companies deeper and further into the ocean to drill for it. And, to do so, they’re building a new type of ship: small city-sized floating factories that drill, process, refine, and barrel gas while still out on the open sea. Think of them as one-stop gas shops that, crucially, can operate in international waters.
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A quarter-century ago, after the Exxon Valdez’s captain downed one too many drinks and left a third mate in charge, the oil tanker struck a reef and bled 11 million gallons of oil across 1,300 miles of Alaska’s coastline. But the catastrophic oil spills have continued in the US—and we’re still not prepared to handle them.
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You might not realize it, but quitting our addiction to oil means more than just finding something besides gasoline to put in our cars. If we really want to stop using fossil fuels, we have to change the way we make roads—and cooking oil might just be the answer.
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You think rents are high in San Francisco? Try Williston, North Dakota. No wait, don’t—there’s nowhere to live. According to a new study by Apartment Guide, the most expensive rents in the country can be found in this relatively tiny North Dakota town.
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France’s equivalent of DARPA has a lofty task for you. The National Research Agency is challenging engineers to design and build an autonomous oil-drilling robot that can operate continuously for six weeks at a time. And they’re willing to pay you handsomely.
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Canada’s tar sands are an unequivocal environmental nightmare, ravaging the landscape and spewing billions of gallons of toxic water into the world. Now, oil companies are claiming they’ve figured out what to do with all that poisonous water: Turn Alberta into one giant man-made lake district.
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Conventional wisdom designates Los Angeles as a young, capricious metropolis—an underage drinker in the geopolitical nightclub—but it’s simply not true. L.A. is actually an ancient city, and the proof is bubbling right up to the surface at the La Brea Tar Pits, one of the richest paleontological sites in the world and the only one being actively excavated in an urban setting.
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The 2010 Deepwater Horizon may be forgotten to many, but remnants of its destruction still remain in the Gulf of Mexico. Mercifully, it appears that researchers at Texas A&M University “have developed a non-toxic sequestering agent-iron oxide nanoparticles coated in a polymer mesh that can hold up to 10 times their weight in crude oil.” In layman’s terms, they’ve engineered a material that can safely soak up oil. As the story goes, the nanoparticles “consist of an iron oxide core surrounded by a shell of polymeric material,” with the goal being to soak up leftover oil that isn’t captured using conventional mechanical means. The next step? Creating an enhanced version that’s biodegradable; as it stands, the existing particles could pose a threat if not collected once they’ve accomplished their duties.
Source: Materials 360 Online, Inside Science, ACS Nano
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