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An innovative and potentially impactful new device can turn air into drinkable water, even in the driest climates. The tool, which comes from researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, could be a huge step toward making safe drinking water worldwide a reality. The lack thereof impacts 2.2 billion people, per a study on the invention, which was recently published in the journal Nature Water. The device was developed by Professor Xuanhe Zhao, the Uncas and Helen Whitaker Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, and his colleagues. According to the study, the contraption is made from hydrogel, a material that absorbs water, and lithium salts that can store water molecules. The substance is enclosed between two layers of glass, and at night it pulls water vapor from the atmosphere. During the day, the water condenses and drips into tubes. It is about the size of a standard window, but even in environments that are hot and dry, its able to capture water. Zhao’s team tested the tool in the driest environment in the U.S.Death Valley, California. Even in the ultradry conditions, the tool was able to capture 160 milliliters of water per day (about two-thirds of a cup).The success of the model has the scientists thinking on a bigger scale. We have built a meter-scale device that we hope to deploy in resource-limited regions, where even a solar cell is not very accessible, says Zhao, per MIT News. He continued: Its a test of feasibility in scaling up this water-harvesting technology. Now people can build it even larger, or make it into parallel panels, to supply drinking water to people and achieve real impact. The new design addresses several issues that past similar devices have come up against. It’s better at absorbing water than metal-organic frameworks that can also capture water from air. The new design, which has a sophisticated composition and added materials, is also better at limiting salt leakage. During the experiment, that meant that the water collected met criteria for safe drinking water. We imagine that you could one day deploy an array of these panels, and the footprint is very small because they are all vertical, Zhao says. Then you could have many panels together, collecting water all the time, at household scale.
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E-Commerce
Two key U.S. Republican senators agreed to a revised federal moratorium on state regulation of artificial intelligence to five years and to allow states to adopt rules on child online safety and protecting artists’ images or likelinesses. Senate Commerce Committee chair Ted Cruz originally proposed securing compliance by blocking states that regulate AI from a $42 billion broadband infrastructure fund as part of a broad tax and budget bill. A revised version released last week would only restrict states regulating AI from tapping a new $500 million fund to support AI infrastructure. Under a compromise announced Sunday by Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a critic of the state AI regulatory moratorium, the proposed 10-year moratorium would be cut to five years and allow states to regulate issues like protecting artists’ voices or child online safety if they do not impose an “undue or disproportionate burden” on AI. Tennessee passed a law last year dubbed the ELVIS Act to protect songwriters and performers from the use of AI to make unauthorized fake works in the image and voice of well-known artists. Texas approved legislation to bar AI use for the creation of child pornography or to encourage a person to commit physical self-harm or commit crime. It is not clear if the change will be enough to assuage concerns. On Friday, 17 Republican governors urged the Senate to drop the AI plan. “We cannot support a provision that takes away states powers to protect our citizens. Let states function as the laboratories of democracy they were intended to be and allow state leaders to protect our people,” said the governors, led by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick voiced his support for the revised measure, calling it a pragmatic compromise. “Congress should stand by the Cruz provision to keep America First in AI,” Lutnick wrote on X. Congress has failed for years to pass any meaningful AI regulations or safety measures. Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington state, the top Democrat on the Commerce Committee, said the Blackburn-Cruz amendment “does nothing to protect kids or consumers. It’s just another giveaway to tech companies.” Cantwell said Lutnick could simply opt to strip states of internet funding if they did not agree to the moratorium. By David Shepardson, Reuters
Category:
E-Commerce
U.S. stocks are adding to their records on Monday as Wall Street nears the finish of a second straight winning month. The S&P 500 was 0.3% higher in its first trading after completing a stunning rebound from its springtime sell-off of roughly 20%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 218 points, or 0.5%, as of 11:40 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% higher. Stocks got a boost after Canada said its rescinding a planned tax on U.S. technology firms and resuming talks on trade with the United States. On Friday, U.S. President Donald Trump had said he was suspending talks with Canada because of his anger with the tax, which he called a direct and blatant attack on our country. One of the main reasons U.S. stocks came back so quickly from their springtime swoon has been the hope that Trump will reach deals with other countries to lower his stiffly proposed tariffs. Otherwise, the fear is that trade wars could stifle the economy and send inflation higher. Many of Trump’s announced tariffs are currently on pause, and they’re scheduled to kick back into effect in a little more than a week. In an interview with Fox News Channels Sunday Morning Futures, Trump said his administration will notify countries that the trade penalties will take effect unless there are deals with the United States. Letters will start going out pretty soon before the approaching deadline, he said. The U.S. stock market being back at a record high could raise the risk of renewed escalations on tariffs, according to strategists at Deutsche Bank led by Parag Thatte and Binky Chadha. They point to the pattern in 2018 and 2019 of rallies for the market prompting escalations for tariffs, which then drove market pullbacks followed by relents on tariffs that then sparked rallies again. Despite the rhetoric to the contrary, this dynamic looks alive and well, the strategists wrote in a report. In our view, beyond the market reaction, if negative impacts of tariffs on growth, earnings or inflation start to materialize, we will get further relents. On Wall Street, Oracle’s 4.8% rise was one of the strongest forces lifting the S&P 500. CEO Safra Catz said the tech giant is off to a strong start in its fiscal year and that it signed multiple large cloud services agreements, including one that could contribute over $30 billion in annual revenue two fiscal years from now. Bank stocks were also strong after the Federal Reserve said on Friday that they are financially strong enough to survive a downturn in the economy. JPMorgan Chase climbed 1.8%, Wells Fargo rose 1.5% and Citigroup gained 1.1%. GMS stock jumped 11.8% after the supplier of specialty building products said it agreed to sell itself to a Home Depot subsidiary in a deal that would pay $110.00 per share in cash. That would give it a total value of roughly $5.5 billion, including debt. Less than two weeks ago, another company, QXO, said it was offering to buy GMS for $95.20 per share in cash. After the announcement of the Home Depot bid, QXOs stock rose 2.2%, and Home Depots stock slipped 0.8%. Hewlett Packard Enterprise rallied 13.7% and Juniper Networks climbed 8.4% after saying they had reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice that could clear the way for their merger go through, subject to court approval. HPE is trying to buy Juniper in a $14 billion deal. In the bond market, Treasury yields eased a bit ahead of major economic reports later in the week. The highlight will be Thursdays jobs report. Its often the most anticipated economic data of each month, and it will come a day earlier than usual because of the Fourth of July holiday. The job market has remained relatively steady recently, even in the face of tariffs, but hiring has slowed. Economists expect Thursdays data to show another slowdown in overall hiring, down to 115,000 jobs in June from 139,000 in May. Such data has kept the Federal Reserve on hold this year when it comes to interest rates. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said repeatedly that its waiting for more data to show how tariffs will affect the economy and inflation before resuming its cuts to interest rates. Thats because lower rates can fan inflation higher, along with giving the economy a boost. Trump, meanwhile, has been pushing for more cuts to rates and for them to happen soon. Two of his appointees to the Fed have said recently they could consider cutting rates as soon as the Feds next meeting in less than a month. The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.26% from 4.29% late Friday. In stock markets abroad, indexes dipped modestly in Europe following a more mixed finish in Asia. Stocks fell 0.9% in Hong Kong but rose 0.6% in Shanghai after China reported its factory activity improved slightly in June after Beijing and Washington agreed in May to postpone imposing higher tariffs on each others exports, though manufacturing remained in contraction. Stan Choe, AP business writer AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
Category:
E-Commerce
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