Top Emerging Tech 3/10: Recyclable thermoset plastics

A new kind of plastic to cut landfill waste

Plastics are divided into thermoplastics and thermoset plastics. The former can be heated and shaped many times and are ubiquitous in the modern world, comprising everything from children’s toys to lavatory seats. Because they can be melted down and reshaped, thermoplastics are generally recyclable. Thermoset plastics, however, can only be heated and shaped once, after which molecular changes mean they are "cured," retaining their shape and strength even when subjected to intense heat and pressure.

Due to this durability thermoset plastics are a vital part of our modern world. They are used in everything from mobile phones and circuit boards to the aerospace industry. But the same characteristics that have made them essential in modern manufacturing also make them impossible to recycle. As a result, most thermoset polymers end up as landfill. Given the ultimate objective of sustainability, there has long been a pressing need for recyclability in thermoset plastics.

In 2014 critical advances were made in this area with the publication of a landmark paper in Science announcing the discovery of new classes of thermosetting polymers that are recyclable. Called poly(hexahydrotriazine)s, or PHTs, these can be dissolved in strong acid, breaking apart the polymer chains into component monomers that can then be reassembled into new products. Like traditional unrecyclable thermosets, these new structures are rigid, resistant to heat and tough, with the same potential applications as their unrecyclable forerunners.

Although no recycling is 100 percent efficient, this innovation—if widely deployed—should speed up the move toward a circular economy, with a big reduction in landfill waste from plastics. We expect recyclable thermoset polymers to replace unrecyclable thermosets within five years, and to be ubiquitous in newly manufactured goods by 2025.

Source: Scientific American

Can Time Have A Beginning?

The answer laid out by Professor John D Norton of Pittsburgh University (more here):

Can time have a beginning?

YES

At first this seems impossible. If time has a beginning, there must be a first event or at least a clustering of events near it. Surely something must have happened before them?

Einstein's cosmology of 1917 was the first of many ever stranger cosmologies to be devised on the basis of his general theory of relativity. Einstein's first universe was static in time. The cosmologies that followed, starting in the 1920s, were not. They portrayed space itself as continually expanding. We can think of Einstein's universe as a three dimensional analog of a two dimensional spherical surface, somewhat like a balloon. Then this expansion simply corresponds to the inflation of the balloon.

Here is a picture of this expansion. The universe is represented by a sphere and time advances up the screen. So the small universe of long ago grows up the page to the universe of the present.

Now imagine this expansion in reverse. As we look further and further back in time, the balloon gets smaller and smaller. In the typical cosmologies considered nowadays, not too long into the past the balloon would have shrivelled to nothing. At that point in our story, space would have ceased to be. One might try to image times before that moment. But it would be futile, since there is no space associated with the time. Indeed there is something highly suspect about the moment at which the balloon shrivels to a point. Then the curvature of the space becomes infinite and the basic equations of Einstein's theory break down. This first moment is not really a moment in time at all. It really amounts to a lower bound on our projections into the past. If we think of it as "time=0," then only moments with a time coordinate greater than 0 have physical meaning. It is the beginning of time and is otherwise known at the "big bang."

To see why it is the "big bang", let us return our imagination to the forward direction and imagine what happens around the beginning of the expansion. Take any moment you like, as close as you like to the big bang. By choosing that moment closer and closer to the big bang, you can make space shrivel up as close to a point in size as you like. From that moment, everything--space and all its matter-- explodes outwards. All this happened not so long ago. It was around 10 billion years ago.

GCHQ always listening to our customers

The image has been around for a while. It's just funny.

 

Munich sees 12,000 Migrants arrive in one day

The numbers are incredible. Here is a snapshot from the NYTimes and AP news:

The Latest: Munich Sees Over 12,000 Migrants Arrive in 1 Day

 

BUDAPEST, Hungary — The latest developments as European governments rush to cope with the huge number of people moving across Europe. All times local (CET):

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9:25 p.m.

German police say a total of 12,200 migrants came to Munich on Saturday and the flow is continuing into the city, the main point of entry to Germany.

Federal police spokesman Simon Hegewald said more than 700 people fleeing their homelands have arrived at the city's main station on Sunday morning. Police didn't immediately have an estimate of how many more might land during the day.

Officials in Munich were putting up tents but say their capacity to house the newcomers arriving from Hungary via Austria is being stretched to the limit. They are calling for more help from other places in Germany.

Hegewald said three special trains from Munich were planned Sunday to move migrants onto other destinations in the country.

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9 a.m.

The flow of migrants into Hungary has hit another record as Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government prepares an unprecedented border clampdown.

Police said 4,330 migrants were detained Saturday, over 700 more than the previous one-day mark. Hungary is rushing to complete a fence on its border with Serbia and starting Tuesday, new rules criminalizing illegal border crossings and speeding up decisions about asylum requests take effect.

Hungarian authorities hope the 4-meter (13-feet) high fence, more police at the border and tighter migration rules should deter migrants from trying to enter the country as they strive to reach Germany or other destinations in Western Europe.

At the least, authorities hope it will bring order to their mandatory registration system — which has crumbled as the number of migrants has grown.

 

Tories attempt first attack on Corbyn

The Conservative Party had the attack add below ready to go just as soon as Corbyn was announced as the new Labour Leader Today. It's alright in the typical Westminster village childish attack way but it's out a little too quickly, as if they couldn't wait. So many attack lines. 10 Christmas' at once etc. I am not a Corbyn fan but I don't think this kind of stuff puts the Tories in a good light. We shall see how it all pans out.