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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Abstract from Science:

    Storing sunlight in a compact and rechargeable form remains a central challenge for solar energy utilization. Molecular solar thermal (MOST) energy storage systems, which harness photon energy and release it as heat on demand, provide a direct approach, but have long failed to meet practical benchmarks. Inspired by the architecture of DNA, we report a pyrimidone-based MOST system that stores energy in the strained Dewar photoisomer upon excitation at 300 nm. Designed with sustainability in mind, the system operates solvent-free and remains compatible with aqueous environments while overcoming one of the field’s greatest hurdles: the controlled extraction and transfer of stored heat. When catalyzed by acid, the Dewar isomer releases enough heat to boil water (~0.5 mL). These advances help point the way toward decentralized solar heat storage and off-grid energy solutions.



  • I have neighbours homeschooling their kids, that ate similarly aged to mine. Sometimes we see them at the school playground on the weekend. The kids seem fine, the parents seem normal. They mentioned they take the kids to a weekly home school kids play date, and there is some sort of education resource worker that makes sure the kids are learning what they need to.






  • I’d rather be part of the EU than part of the USA and I think Canadians could be convinced to trade their LOONIES for L-EU-NIES.

    But

    Canada is twice the size of the entire EU with a population less than that of Spain (a little more then Poland). The capital of our easternmost province is closer to Brussels than it is to the capital of our westernmost province (it’s also closer to Berlin, Vienna, Bratislava, and maybe even Rome). I don’t think that a governing system designed to meet the needs of European countries is going to be that good of a fit, we have many European values, but our econo-political-geography is probably too dissimilar for it to work.

    If the EU created some sort of half-in, half-out affiliation for us to join then maybe?