CleanTechnica: California To Begin Hydrogen-Powered Passenger Train Service In San Bernardino
The California Department of Transportation, otherwise known as Caltrans, plans to convert its full fleet of intercity locomotives to zero emission, or ZE, technology by 2035. To achieve that goal, trains operated by local transportation agencies will be powered by hydrogen, which is considered a sustainable, less polluting, and potentially cost effective alternative to fossil fuels and other sources of energy. Hydrogen power will put California’s passenger train fleet on the fastest track toward a zero emission future, the agency says.
The Guardian reports that a new train powered by a hydrogen fuel cell will begin operating between the cities of Redlands and San Bernardino, near Los Angeles, early next year. Test runs are being conducted today. From the outside, it looks like any other commuter train, but inside, it is unlike anything the region – or the country – has ever seen before. The $20 million Zero Emission Multiple Unit train, known fondly as Zemu, uses a hydrogen fuel cell and battery system to power the electric traction motors and run the onboard electrical systems. The only byproduct of the fuel cell is water vapor, which is a welcome change in an area that suffers from some of the worst air quality rates in the country.
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My colleague Michael Barnard is not a believer in hydrogen fuel cells for cars, trucks, and trains. Although, he might be persuaded to change his mind if more green hydrogen was available and if it didn’t suck up every bit of renewable energy available in the process of making it. Caltrans may be over the moon about trains and trucks powered by hydrogen, but until it is produced commercially without creating its own cloud of pollution, its promise will remain largely illusory.
The Verge: New VWs will answer some of your questions with ChatGPT
The company previously announced its ChatGPT integration plan at CES in January. At the time, it wasn’t clear how it would all work. Volkswagen says that OpenAI’s chatbot along with a “multitude” of other models are provided by automotive chatbot company Cerence, which will take over for IDA when requests are more complex than tweaking your air conditioning settings. For instance, the company says when drivers ask for things like restaurant recommendations or for the chatbot to tell you a story, that will go to the cloud.
Manton Reece: xAI rush in Memphis
It sounds like there were good reasons for choosing Memphis. Elon Musk’s companies are scattered… San Francisco, Austin, somewhere in Nevada, the bottom tip of Texas. Those all seem reasonable locations for each office or factory.
Today I caught up reading about how it has been going since then in Memphis, now that the AI cluster is up and running with 100,000 Nvidia H100s. The scale is sort of hard to imagine for those of who run only a handful of servers.
A good post from Manton about the impact of Musk’s new AI center.
Wales Online: Three ways to protect your bank account as scams hit record level
More than half were in relation to customer-approved online bank transfers, also known as authorised push payment (APP) scams. The quarterly scam complaints total is the highest since the FOS started tracking the data from the first quarter of the 2018/19 financial year.
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The ombudsman is also seeing more cases of multi-stage fraud where funds pass through several banks before reaching the fraudster. This is particularly prevalent in cryptocurrency investment scams as well as “safe account” scams — where people are cold called by fraudsters posing as a trusted entity, such as their bank, and persuaded to transfer money to another account.
ScienceAlert: Bacteria in Your Mouth Reproduce in a Strange, Rare Way, Scientists Discover
Thanks to this strange process, a colony of C. matruchotii can grow very fast indeed, up to half a millimeter per day — which might help explain why plaque starts to return to your teeth within hours, no matter how strenuously you clean them.
“These biofilms are like microscopic rainforests. The bacteria in these biofilms interact as they grow and divide. We think that the unusual C. matruchotii cell cycle enables this species to form these very dense networks at the core of the biofilm,” Chimileski says.
Guardian: Canada: New Democratic party withdraws support for Trudeau’s Liberals
Canada’s New Democratic party says it has “ripped up” a key agreement with prime minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, sowing uncertainty into the country’s politics as party leaders brace for a possible election.
NDP leader Jagmeet Singh made the surprise announcement on social media on Wednesday afternoon, accusing Trudeau of “caving” to corporate greed. “The Liberals have let people down. They don’t deserve another chance from Canadians,” he said.
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In exchange for supporting the Liberals, the NDP was able to push through a new dental care program for low-income Canadians, plans for a national pharmacare programme and legislation to ban the use of replacement workers during a lockout or strike.
Guardian: Volkswagen has ‘a year, maybe two to turn around’, financial chief warns
Carmaker defends plan to close German plants as Volvo ditches target to sell only electric cars by 2030.
Guardian: Kamala Harris now leads in US polls but state-level data puts race on knife-edge
Analysis of 2024 polling and previous elections involving Donald Trump suggests race is still too close to call.
Guardian: Stock plunge wipes out Trump Media’s extraordinary market gains
Shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of Truth Social, closed below $17 on Wednesday, reversing all their gains since the company’s rapid rise took hold in January.
The former president has been prohibited by a lock-up agreement from starting to sell shares in the firm until late September. While his majority stake in the firm is still worth some $2bn on paper, its value has fallen dramatically from $4.9bn in March.
PBS News: Trump and Harris say they’ll kill taxes on tips. How would that work?
It’s an idea that sounds broadly appealing, experts say, but may not affect workers substantially, if at all, since many low-wage employees don’t make enough to pay taxes.
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And in some cases, eliminating taxation on tips could potentially change behaviors in ways that actually harm laborers.
ScienceAlert: 60% of Earth’s Food Crops Aren’t Being Visited by Enough Pollinators
Some of our favorite food crops around the world aren’t reaching their full potential because of fewer visits from the insects that pollinate them, a new study has found.
Insects that provide the crucial service of pollination are declining en masse, and that has serious consequences for the world’s food crops, 75 percent of which depend at least partially – if not entirely – on insect pollination.
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This open-source database, CropPol, is an international effort that has so far captured three decades' worth of data on crop pollinators, flower visits, and pollinations.
Within this detailed picture, Turo and colleagues found that up to 60 percent of global crop systems are being limited by insufficient pollination. The phenomenon is affecting 25 of the 49 different crop species analyzed, with blueberry, coffee, and apple crops being the worst affected.
Pollinator limitation is occurring in 85 percent of the countries in this database, spanning all six continents represented.
Last Updated: 04.Sep.2024 20:07 EDT
