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Gizmorama - August 31, 2015
Good Morning,
Have you ever heard of the Hyperloop? They're the unique transportation concept from entrepreneur Elon Musk, according to the article involves "high-speed frictionless train travel through pressurized, above-ground tubes." Sounds good to me!
Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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*-- Elon Musk's Hyperloop concept closer to becoming a reality --*
LOS ANGELES - The concept of high-speed frictionless train travel through pressurized, above-ground tubes began life as a fanciful dream -- one popularized by serial entrepreneur Elon Musk.
Last year, Musk expressed interest in an idea called Hyperloop -- a plan to propel pod-like trains through tubes at upwards of 500 miles per hour. But with Musk's energies devoted to his car and space travel projects, Tesla and SpaceX, he called on other entrepreneurs, engineers and problem-solvers take up the concept in his name.
Several start-ups sprouted. And now, one of them is announcing a significant step forward.
On Thursday, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies announced two new partners, Aecom and Oerlikon.
Aecom is a sizable and well-respected Fortune 500 engineering design firm. The publicly-traded company employs more than 100,000 people and pulled in $19 billion in 2014. Aecom has been involved in a number of large construction and infrastructure projects, including the Abu Dhabi International Airport and the Barclays Center?.
"HTT's technology is very exciting and could have a significant impact on transportation infrastructure in the future," Andrew Liu, vice president of new ventures at Aecom, told seattlepi.com.
Though it's not clear how Aecom fits into the project, Oerlikon says it will be lending at least 12 of its employees to HTT's cause. Oerlikon is a slightly smaller Swiss tech firm that's worked on a number of highly specialized projects, including providing specialized vacuum components to CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
The partnerships were announced by Dirk Ahlborn, HTT's CEO, in a press release this week.
Ahlborn also said the company would be working with architecture firm Hodgetts & Fung, and plans to have passengers on test pods by 2018.
"Our team continues to grow and, along with these new alliances, is representative of the collaborative spirit of HTT and are key to our success in breaking ground in 2016," Ahlborn said in a press release. "We receive applications from professionals and are approached by industry leading companies every day."
Earlier this year, HTT announced it had secured to rights to several acres in Quay Valley, north of Los Angeles, on which to build the company's Hyperloop test track. HTT expects to break ground there in 2016.
"We have everything basically figured out for Quay Valley, but we are still trying to continuously develop new ways of making things better or more economical," Ahlborn told Tech Insider. "The timing always varies a little bit, but we are making steady progress, and, for now, we are still in our timeline and everything looks good."
"What we are doing has never been done before, so that is a very big challenge," Ahlborn said. "Over the next couple of months, we are going to reveal some things we have been working on for quite sometime."
*-- New study quantifies microplastics pollution --*
PLYMOUTH, England - Though tiny, it's not hard to find microbeads, or microplastics, in the cosmetics industry. They're in toothpastes, facial soaps, exfoliants and more.
It's an increasingly well-documented source of plastic waste, but exactly how big is the problem?
Recently, researchers at Plymouth University, in England, set out to quantify the pollutant. Scientists there measured the concentration of microplastics in various cosmetic products, and tallied the threat.
Using a vacuum filtration device and an electron microscope, researchers measured the number of microbeads present in several brands of face wash. For every five ounce sample, scientists found between 137,000 and 2.8 million microparticles.
Researchers estimated that every time one these products is used, at least 100,000 microbeads escape into the environment.
Over the course of a year, the waste adds up. The new study -- published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin -- estimates the cosmetic industry is responsible for 80 million tons of microplastic waste entering the sea.
"As the study unfolded I was really shocked to see the quantity of microplastics apparent in these everyday cosmetics," study leader Imogen Napper, a PhD student at Plymouth, said in a press release. "Currently, there are reported to be 80 facial scrubs in the UK market which contain plastic material, however some companies have indicated they will voluntarily phase them out from their products. In the meantime, there is very little the consumer can do to prevent this source of pollution."
Researchers say at least 700 species of marine animals encounter -- and might potentially ingest -- microplastic waste in their natural habitats. A study in Australia showed that some coral species on the Great Barrier Reef are unable to distinguish between their normal dinner of plankton and tiny fragments of plastic.
The growing threat of microplastics has moved some legislators in the United States to ban the use of microbeads in toothpaste and facial scrubs.
"Using these products leads to unnecessary contamination of the oceans with millions of microplastic particles," said Richard Thompson, a Plymouth biology professor and pollution expert. "There is considerable concern about the accumulation of microplastics in the environment; our previous work has shown microplastics can be ingested by fish and shellfish and there is evidence from laboratory studies of adverse effects on marine organisms."
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