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In the city of Woburn, Massachusetts, a suburb just north of Boston, a cadre of engineers and scientists in white coats inspected an orderly stack of brick-sized, gunmetal-gray steel ingots on a desk inside a neon-illuminated lab space.

What they were looking at was a batch of steel created using an innovative manufacturing method, one that Boston Metal, a company that spun out a decade ago from MIT, hopes will dramatically reshape the way the alloy has been made for centuries. By using electricity to separate iron from its ore, the firm claims it can make steel without releasing carbon dioxide, offering a path to cleaning up one of the worlds worst industries for greenhouse gas emissions.

An essential input for engineering and construction, steel is one of the most popular industrial materials in the world, with more than 2 billion tons produced annually. This abundance, however, comes at a steep price for the environment. Steelmaking accounts for 7 to 11 percent of global greenhouse-gas emissions, making it one of the largest industrial sources of atmospheric pollution. And because production could rise by a third by 2050, this environmental burden could grow.

That poses a significant challenge for tackling the climate crisis. The United Nations says significantly cutting industrial carbon emissions is essential to keeping global warming under the 1.5 degrees Celsius mark set under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. To do so, emissions from steel and other heavy industries will have to fall by 93 percent by 2050, according to estimates by the International Energy Agency.

Facing escalating pressure from governments and investors to reduce emissions, a number of steelmakersincluding both major producers and startupsare experimenting with low-carbon technologies that use hydrogen or electricity instead of traditional carbon-intensive manufacturing. Some of these efforts are nearing commercial reality.

What we are talking about is a capital-intensive, risk-averse industry where disruption is extremely rare, said Chris Bataille, an energy economist at IDDRI, a Paris-based research think tank. Therefore, he added, its exciting that theres so much going on all at once.

Still, experts agree that transforming a global industry that turned over $2.5 trillion in 2017 and employs more than 6 million people will take enormous effort. Beyond the practical obstacles to scaling up novel processes in time to reach global climate goals, there are concerns about China, where over half the worlds steel is made and whose plans to decarbonize the steel sector remain vague.

Its certainly not an easy fix to decarbonize an industry like this, said Bataille. But theres no choice. The future of the sectorand that of our climatedepends on just that.

Modern steelmaking involves several production stages. Most commonly, iron ore is crushed and turned into sinter (a rough solid) or pellets. Separately, coal is baked and converted into coke. The ore and coke are then mixed with limestone and fed into a large blast furnace where a flow of extremely hot air is introduced from the bottom. Under high temperatures, the coke burns and the mixture produces liquid iron, known as pig iron or blast-furnace iron. The molten material then goes into an oxygen furnace, where its blasted with pure oxygen through a water-cooled lance, which forces off carbon to leave crude steel as a final product.

This method, first patented by English engineer Henry Bessemer in the 1850s, produces carbon-dioxide emissions in different ways. First, the chemical reactions in the blast furnace result in emissions, as carbon trapped in coke and limestone binds with oxygen in the air to create carbon dioxide as a byproduct. In addition, fossil fuels are typically burned to heat the blast furnace and to power sintering and pelletizing plants, as well as coke ovens, emitting carbon dioxide in the process.

As much as 70 percent of the worlds steel is produced this way, generating nearly two tons of carbon dioxide for each ton of steel produced. The remaining 30 percent is almost all made through electric arc furnaces, which use an electrical current to melt steellargely recycled scrapand have far lower CO2 emissions than blast furnaces.

But because of the limited scrap supply, not all future demand can be met this way, said Jeffrey Rissman, an industry program director and head of modeling at the San Francisco-based energy and climate policy firm Energy Innovation. With the right policies in place, recycling could supply up to 45 percent of global demand in 2050, he said. The rest will be satisfied by forging primary ore-based steel, which is where most emissions come from.

So if the steel industry is serious about its climate commitments, he added, it will have to fundamentally reshape the way the material is madeand do so fairly quickly.

One alternative technology being tested replaces coke with hydrogen. In Sweden, Hybrita joint venture between the steelmaker SSAB, the energy supplier Vattenfall, and LKAB, an iron ore produceris piloting a process that aims to repurpose an existing system called direct reduced iron. The process uses coke from fossil fuels to extract oxygen from iron ore pellets, leaving a porous iron pellet called sponge iron.

The Hybrit method instead extracts the oxygen using fossil-free hydrogen gas. The gas is created through electrolysis, a technique that uses an electric currentin this case, from a fossil-free energy sourceto separate water into hydrogen and oxygen. (Most pure hydrogen today is made with methane, which produces CO2 when burned.) The resulting sponge iron then goes into an electric arc furnace, where its eventually refined into steel. The process releases only water vapor as a byproduct.

This technology has been known for a while, but its only been done in the lab so far, said Mikael Nordlander, head of industry decarbonization at Vattenfall. What we are doing here is to see if it can work at [the] industrial level.

Last August, Hybrit reached its first milepost: SSAB, which produces and sells the end product, delivered its first batch of fossil-free steel to the automaker Volvo, which used it in vehicle prototypes. It is also planning a plant for commercial-scale production, which it aims to complete by 2026.

Another Swedish venture, H2 Green Steel, is developing a similar commercial-scale hydrogen steel plant with the help of $105 million raised from private investors and companies including Mercedes-Benz, Scania, and IMAS Foundation, an organization linked to Ikea. The company plans to begin production by 2024 and produce 5 million tons of zero-emissions steel annually by the end of the decade. Other companies testing hydrogen-powered steelmaking include ArcelorMittal, Thyssenkrupp, and Salzgitter AG in Germany; Posco in South Korea; and Voestalpine in Austria.

Electricity can also be used to reduce iron ore. Boston Metal, for example, has developed a process called molten oxide electrolysis, in which a current moves through a cell containing iron ore. As electricity travels between both ends of the cell and heats up the ore, oxygen bubbles up (and can be collected), while iron ore is reduced into liquid iron that pools at the bottom of the cell and is periodically tapped. The purified iron is then mixed with carbon and other ingredients.

What we do is basically swapping carbon for electricity as a reducing agent, explained Adam Rauwerdink, the companys senior vice president of business development. This allows us to make very high-quality steel using way less energy and in fewer steps than conventional steelmaking. As long as power comes from fossil-free sources, he added, the process generates no carbon emissions.

He said the company, which currently runs three pilot lines at its Woburn facility, is working to bring its laboratory concept to the market, using $50 million raised last year from an investor group including Breakthrough Energy Ventures, backed by Bill Gates, and the German carmaker BMW. A commercial-scale demonstration plant is expected to be up and running by 2025.

I feel all these solutions have their place, depending on location, resource availability, and targeted product, said Sridhar Seetharaman, a professor of materials science and engineering at Arizona State University. However I do not think for now any one alone will give you a silver bullet to meet the demand.

Hydrogen has a bit of a head start being based on an established system and its also ahead in commercialization, said Bataille, the IDDRI energy economist. But achieving a net-zero steel industry will take more carbon-free pathways, so I think there will be enough room in the market for all of them in the end.

Although greener steelmaking processes appear to be gaining momentum, there remain a number of serious challenges to confront. Chief among them is the massive expansion in renewable energy infrastructure that an industry-wide shift to these new methods would entail, said Thomas Koch Blank, senior principal at the Colorado-based nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute. He estimates that the world would need up to three times the currently installed solar and wind energy sources to electrify the existing primary steel production.

Another barrier is cost. Switching to electricity or hydrogen would require vast amounts of capital spending to erect new plants and retrofit old ones. In the case of the clean hydrogen method, the price tag for steel will increase largely because steel producers are located close to low-cost coking coal rather than low-cost hydrogen, pointed out Koch Blank. These upfront costs will likely drive up the price of both steel and the end products, at least in the beginning.

According to Rissman, the analyst in San Francisco, legislation on both the supply and the demand side could help offset those higher costs and encourage more investment in greener technologies. Governments, he said, could incentivize the use of low-carbon steel for building and infrastructure by requiring state-funded projects to use low-carbon versions of designated construction materials. They could also enforce policies that make it more expensive to buy from countries where rules on emissions are less stringent. That will help domestic producers stay competitive as the market for clean steel grows and new production processes achieve economies of scale, said Rissman.

Perhaps the biggest roadblock is China, where about 90 percent of steel production is achieved using blast furnaces. In September 2020, President Xi Jinping announced that the country aims to become carbon neutral by 2060. In a bid to reduce pollution from domestic steel mills, which account for roughly 15 percent of the nations overall carbon emissions, Beijing has also pledged to achieve peak steel emissions by 2030. Even so, 18 new blast-furnace projects were announced in China just in the first six months of 2021, according to the Helsinki-based research group Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

Steel is one of the most important and challenging industries to decarbonize, said Rissman, so global coordination on it would help greatly.

Back in Boston, Rauwerdink, surveying Boston Metals factory lines, agreed. Its a fantastic challenge that were up against, he said. But, he added, We are showing that solutions existand work.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Image Credit: Tineck elezrny / Wikimedia Commons

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The Race to Remake the $2.5 Trillion Steel Industry With Green Steel - Singularity Hub

Atomic clocks, combined with precise astronomical measurements, have revealed that the length of a day is suddenly getting longer, and scientists dont know why.

This has critical impacts not just on our timekeeping, but also things like GPS and other technologies that govern our modern life.

Over the past few decades, Earths rotation around its axiswhich determines how long a day ishas been speeding up. This trend has been making our days shorter; in fact, in June 2022 we set a record for the shortest day over the past half a century or so.

But despite this record, since 2020 that steady speedup has curiously switched to a slowdowndays are getting longer again, and the reason is so far a mystery.

While the clocks in our phones indicate there are exactly 24 hours in a day, the actual time it takes for Earth to complete a single rotation varies ever so slightly. These changes occur over periods of millions of years to almost instantlyeven earthquakes and storm events can play a role.

It turns out a day is very rarely exactly the magic number of 86,400 seconds.

Over millions of years, Earths rotation has been slowing down due to friction effects associated with the tides driven by the moon. That process adds about 2.3 milliseconds to the length of each day every century. A few billion years ago an Earth day was only about 19 hours.

For the past 20,000 years, another process has been working in the opposite direction, speeding up Earths rotation. When the last ice age ended, melting polar ice sheets reduced surface pressure, and Earths mantle started steadily moving toward the poles.

Just as a ballet dancer spins faster as they bring their arms toward their bodythe axis around which they spinso our planets spin rate increases when this mass of mantle moves closer to Earths axis. And this process shortens each day by about 0.6 milliseconds each century.

Over decades and longer, the connection between Earths interior and surface comes into play too. Major earthquakes can change the length of a day, although normally by small amounts. For example, the Great Thoku Earthquake of 2011 in Japan, with a magnitude of 8.9, is believed to have sped up Earths rotation by a relatively tiny 1.8 microseconds.

Apart from these large-scale changes, over shorter periods weather and climate also have important impacts on Earths rotation, causing variations in both directions.

The fortnightly and monthly tidal cycles move mass around the planet, causing changes in the length of day by up to a millisecond in either direction. We can see tidal variations in length-of-day records over periods as long as 18.6 years. The movement of our atmosphere has a particularly strong effect, and ocean currents also play a role. Seasonal snow cover and rainfall, or groundwater extraction, alter things further.

Since the 1960s, when operators of radio telescopes around the planet started to devise techniques to simultaneously observe cosmic objects like quasars, we have had very precise estimates of Earths rate of rotation.

A comparison between these estimates and an atomic clock has revealed a seemingly ever-shortening length of day over the past few years.

But theres a surprising reveal once we take away the rotation speed fluctuations we know happen due to the tides and seasonal effects. Despite Earth reaching its shortest day on June 29 2022, the long-term trajectory seems to have shifted from shortening to lengthening since 2020. This change is unprecedented over the past 50 years.

The reason for this change is not clear. It could be due to changes in weather systems, with back-to-back La Nia events, although these have occurred before. It could be increased melting of the ice sheets, although those have not deviated hugely from their steady rate of melt in recent years. Could it be related to the volcanic explosion in Tonga injecting huge amounts of water into the atmosphere? Probably not, given that occurred in January 2022.

Scientists have speculated that this recent, mysterious change in the planets rotational speed is related to a phenomenon called the Chandler wobblea small deviation in Earths rotation axis with a period of about 430 days. Observations from radio telescopes also show that the wobble has diminished in recent years; the two may be linked.

One final possibility, which we think is plausible, is that nothing specific has changed inside or around Earth. It could just be long-term tidal effects working in parallel with other periodic processes to produce a temporary change in Earths rotation rate.

Precisely understanding Earths rotation rate is crucial for a host of applications navigation systems such as GPS wouldnt work without it. Also, every few years timekeepers insert leap seconds into our official timescales to make sure they dont drift out of sync with our planet.

If Earth were to shift to even longer days, we may need to incorporate a negative leap secondthis would be unprecedented, and may break the internet.

The need for negative leap seconds is regarded as unlikely right now. For now, we can welcome the news thatat least for a whilewe all have a few extra milliseconds each day.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The Length of Earth's Days Has Been Mysteriously Increasing, and Scientists Don't Know Why - Singularity Hub

Oxygen is the elixir of life. Stop its flowduring a stroke, heart attack, or deathand the bodys tissues respond in a biological storm that eventually leads to their death.

Its not great for organ transplants. Most donated organs struggle to survive beyond death. Deprived of oxygen, they rapidly lose their function. Cells turn into acidic, bloated blobs that leak, injuring their neighbors. The immune system ramps up, pumping out a deadly concoction of hormones and immune chemicals that send the brain and immune system into hyperdrive, damaging most organs in the process. In other words, once death sets in, theres no turning back.

Or is there?

A new study in Nature suggests there might be. Using an external circulation system, a team of scientists partially revived organs in pigs hours after their deaths. The system, dubbed OrganEx, works like an alternative circulatory system. Instead of blood, it pumps a synthetic substitute to trick the body into thinking its still somewhat alive.

To be clear, the scientists didnt make porcine zombies. Although the blood replacement recipe helped to preserve some brain tissue, it didnt reactivate any coordinated electrical activity in neurons. In other words, its extremely unlikely that the pigs regained any consciousness during the procedure. But other bodily organs did get a potential boost for a second life. Cells in the heart, liver, and kidneys repaired themselves based on multiple molecular analyses.

The goal isnt to build a new-age Frankenstein. Rather, its to help with the current organ transplant shortage and health emergencies caused by constricted blood flow. The achievement points to ways to improve transplants and the treatment of strokes and heart attacks, wrote Dr. Robert Porte at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, who was not involved in the study.

Its not the teams first foray into reviving dead organs. Back in 2019, they triggered brain activity in pigs four hours after their passing, sparking a firestorm on how to define death. For most of human history, death was very simplenow, we have to question what is irreversible, said Dr. Christof Koch, president and chief scientist at the Allen Institute of Brain Science at the time.

This is a truly remarkable and incredibly significant study. It demonstrates that after death, cells in mammalian organs (including humans) such as the brain do not die for many hours, said Dr. Sam Parnia at New York University, who was not involved in the study.

The first bits of death arent pretty. When cells are deprived of oxygen, their inner molecular processes go topsy-turvy. The process is dubbed ischemia, which means a lack of blood that normally carries oxygen. Like a valley of crops without water, its a bad sign: ischemia to the heart can trigger a heart attack; to the brain, a stroke.

The solution should be easy. Add more oxygen to the cells, like water to crops, and they should perk right up.

Not quite. With trial and error, scientists realized that pumping oxygen-deprived tissuesay, a brain or heartwith oxygen-rich blood causes more injury. Its like suddenly overwatering a dried-out cactus and rotting its roots.

Were still not quite sure why this happens, but scientists have been cooking up ideas. A first breakthrough from the same team came in 2019, when they developed a technique called BrainEx to help restore some neural function in 32 pig heads after 6 hours of depleted oxygen. Pumping a warmed-up preservative liquid into the brains arteries, the brain cells showed normal metabolic activities and kept their structurewhich would normally collapse in death. Individual neurons also sparked with electrical bursts, but the brains didnt show any signs of sophisticated neural activity or awareness.

Yet the results sparked an idea for study author Dr. Nenad Sestan at Yale University. The brain is an exceptionally delicate organ susceptible to lack of oxygen. If we can somewhat reboot it, why not do the same for organs throughout the body?

If you can regain some function in a dead pig brain, you can do it in other organs, too, he said.

Lets backtrack.

Upon death, the heart stops pumping. This means that all tissues are starved of oxygen and nutrients, and even after reperfusion with blood, they wither away. Their protective membranes break down. Organs lose their structural integrity.

The trick to keeping tissue healthy is a special fluid called cryoprotective perfusate. Think of it as an incredibly nutritious smoothie that goes straight into your blood circulation. Or biological liquid gold. The authors have a recipe: Hemopure, a chemical that mimics proteins in red blood cells to help carry oxygen; chemicals to protect against blood clots; and a wealth of nutrients to protect cells against damage.

But protecting the entire body is a much larger job than just preserving some neural function. In the new study, the authors made a few tweaks to their recipe. A main one was adding components that help keep the immune system in check. Another was a sprinkling of electrolytes to help dying tissues, and changing the type of antibiotics. They dubbed their new technology OrganEx.

To transfuse the artificial blood, the team rigged up an automated system that pumps the perfusate into the pigs bloodstream. They had all died from cardiac arrest an hour earlier and did not have a pulse. The team pitted their OrganEx system against the gold standard of careECMO, or an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machinethat hospitals use as a hail-Mary attempt for people struggling with oxygen, for example, Covid-19.

Six hours later, they checked the results. ECMO wasnt able to properly provide oxygen to all organs. Some of the smaller blood vessels had collapsed. In contrast, animals treated with the OrganEx system had few problems with electrolytes or acidity, which are common issues with decaying cells. Digging deeper, three types of brain cells seemed to preserve better in the prefrontal cortex (a brain region at the front of your head important for reasoning and other executive functions).

Going beyond the brain, the team next tested OrganEx on a whole slew of bodily organs, such as the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and pancreas. The system seemed to kick circulation back into gear, with oxygen flowing to tissues in the body. Some parts of the organs took up glucose, a type of sugar cell often used for metabolism. The livers of OrganEx-treated pigs also pumped out a normal protein, unlike those under ECMO. The cells genetic programming also came back to life, ramping up genes involved in cellular repair and restoration.

Under the microscope, it was difficult to tell the difference between a healthy organ and one which had been treated with OrganEx technology after death, said study author Dr. Zvonimir Vrselja.

Yes, it does. Although OrganEx helps revitalize pigs organs, its far from a deceased animal being brought back to life. Rather, their organs were better protected from low oxygen levels, which occur during heart attacks or strokes.

One could imagine that the OrganEx system (or components thereof) might be used to treat such people in an emergency, said Porte.

The technology could also help preserve donor organs, but theres a long way to go. To Dr. Brendan Parent, director of transplant ethics and policy research at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, OrganEx may force a rethink for the field. For example, is it possible that someone could have working peripheral organs but never regain consciousness? As medical technology develops, death becomes a process, not a moment.

This situation is known in medical communities as the bridge to nowhere, and has already become more common with increased use of ECMO in ECPR [extracorporeal cardiopulmonary resuscitation], wrote Parent.

For now, the study suggests that tissues and organs have a surprising ability to regenerate after being deprived of blood. Overall, further optimization and expansion of our technology will be needed to fully understand its broader effects on ischemic tissues and recovery, the authors said.

Image Credit: David Andrijevic, Zvonimir Vrselja, Taras Lysyy, Shupei Zhang; Sestan Laboratory; Yale School of Medicine. OrganEx restores tissue functions one hour after death; the kidneys regain their structure.

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How Scientists Revived Organs in Pigs an Hour After They Died - Singularity Hub

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One day, perhaps we will finally reach the inevitable entertainment singularity, where everything that could have possibly been done and redone, has been done, ending with a multiversal war between the likes of Paramount, Netflix, and Disney, the entire spectacle captured in a medium that hasnt been invented just yet.

The next stepping stone in Hollywoods ultimate destiny is the recently announced Pac-Man movie, a live-action feature based on the emblematic video game and character of the same name. Spearheaded by the mind of Chuck Williams, who was responsible for 2020s Sonic the Hedgehog (a film that could very well ramp up into a cinematic universe if its sequels stay steady), the Pac-Man prospect is one that should be exercised with equal parts fascination and caution; how could it possibly work, and will we get a Galaga mid-credits scene?

But the world of entertainment wouldnt have a fraction of its traction without the internets incessant reflex to make everything into a meme, and it seems everyone had the same idea when they caught wind of such a project.

With Hollywoods most controversial Chris making some unsavory rounds on Twitter again, it seemed the perfect time to plunge the actor into a ridiculous hypothetical that, if we cast our minds back to the events of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, may not be that ridiculous after all.

The good people of Twitter, of course, are referring to the scene in James Gunns sophomore MCU project where Star-Lord, played by Chris Pratt faces off against his father, Ego. During the fight, Star-Lord dons a husk of various debris made to resemble Pac-Man before crashing into his father.

At this rate, anything could happen. We already know Pratt is set to voice a certain world-famous plumber in the upcoming Super Mario Bros. film project, so why not expand his library of films adapted from video games with Namcos number-one dot muncher?

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Everyone's Making the Exact Same Joke About the 'Pac-Man' Movie - We Got This Covered

Nuclear power could play an important role in decarbonizing the energy sector, but reactors are simply too expensive and complicated to roll out quickly. A new, smaller reactor could soon change that after receiving certification from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission last week.

As countries around the world race to replace fossil fuel power plants, the debate around whether nuclear power should play a role has been heated. While the technology can provide large and reliable amounts of carbon-free electricity, cost and safety concerns have held back its deployment as a solution to the climate crisis.

In recent years though, a crop of new companies have emerged promising to sidestep many of these concerns by shrinking reactors down. So-called small modular reactors (SMRs) are designed to be small enough to build in a factory before being shipped to wherever theyre needed, which should significantly reduce costs. They are also designed to be much safer than existing reactors.

A reactor designed by Oregon-based energy company NuScale Power has become the first small modular reactor design approved for use in the US by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), paving the way for new plants that utilize the reactor. The move wasnt exactly a surprise, because the design passed its final safety evaluation back in 2020, but it is a crucial step towards actually deploying the technology in the field.

While some SMRs under development rely on exotic new designs that use molten uranium or thorium salts as a fuel, the NuScale reactor, which has been named VOYGR, is not dramatically different from traditional full-scale ones. It is based on a design developed at Oregon State University in the early 2000s called the Multi-Application Small Light Water Reactor.

The design consists of a 76-foot-tall, 15-foot-wide cylindrical containment vessel that houses the reactor. Water is passed over a series of uranium fuel rods that generate heat through fission reactions. The heated water then rises up towards steam generators, which use the heat from the water to produce superheated steam. This is then used to drive a turbine that generates electricity.

Each module is designed to generate 50 megawatts of energy, but the company plans to combine up to 12 SMRs to achieve similar outputs to conventional nuclear plants. The SMRs come with novel safety features designed to prevent the kind of disasters that have hardened public opinion against nuclear power.

For a start, control rods used to stop the fission reaction by encasing the fuel rods are held above the reactors core by an electric motor. This means that in the case of a power outage they will automatically drop into position under the force of gravity. The entire reactor is also bathed in a water pool, which can draw away excess heat in case of emergency. Also, by using smaller amounts of fuel, the total amount of heat produced is greatly reduced.

The hope is that these extra safety featurescombined with reduced costs due to the ability to mass-manufacture these reactors in a factory rather than on-sitecould lead to a renaissance in nuclear power. NuScale is working on a number of projects in the US, including one in Idaho that is scheduled to be completed by 2029.

But questions have been raised about whether SMRs will really live up to their billing as a cheaper, safer alternative to traditional nuclear power plants. A study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in May found that contrary to the claims of SMR makers, these smaller reactors are actually likely to produce more radioactive waste than conventional plants.

In an article in Counterpunch, nuclear power expert M.V. Ramana also points out that the cost of renewable energy like wind and solar is already lower than that of nuclear, and continuing to fall rapidly. In contrast, nuclear power has actually become more expensive over the years.

SMRs could cost more than bigger nuclear plants, he adds, because they dont have the same economy of scale. In theory this could be offset through mass manufacture, but only if companies receive orders in the hundreds. Tellingly, some utilities have already backed out of NuScales first project over cost concerns.

Perhaps even more importantly, notes Ramana, SMRs are unlikely to be ready in time to contribute to the climate fight. Projects arent expected to come online until the end of the decade, by which time the IPCC says we already need to have made drastic emissions reductions.

The technology has some powerful boosters though, not least President Joe Biden, who recently touted NuScales groundbreaking American technology while announcing a grant for an SMR plant the company will build in Romania. Engineering giant Rolls-Royce also recently announced a shortlist for the location of its future SMR factory, which will be used to build 16 SMRs for the UK government by 2050.

Whether SMRs can deliver on their promise remains to be seen, but given the scope of the climate challenge facing us, exploring all available options seems wise.

Image Credit: NuScale

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The First Small Modular Nuclear Reactor Was Just Approved by US Regulators - Singularity Hub

Thursday September 15, 2022 05:00 PM EDT09/15/2022 5:00 PM

Cost: $16 ,

From the venue:The third full-length from Tall Heights, Juniors emerged from a period of profound turmoil and revelation for the Massachusetts duo. In the span of five months, Paul Wright and Tim Harrington experienced a convergence of events that included major health and substance-abuse crises among their closest loved ones, saying goodbye to Harringtons grandfather and to a beloved grandfather figure for Wright, andin far happier, yet still intense newsthe announcement that each of their wives was expecting. Compounded by a series of shake-ups in their professional life, that upheaval coincided with the start of the pandemic. Rather than succumbing to the tremendous pressure of that point in time, Tall Heights chose to confront the chaos by creating within it. The result: an album that precisely channels the pain, uncertainty, and unbridled joy of its inception.As they set to work on Juniors, Harrington and Wright discovered an unexpected outcome of the loss that theyd endured: a shift in mindset that enabled them to embrace a boundless curiosity and exploratory spirit even more powerful than when they first formed Tall Heights (an endeavor that began when Harrington, on guitar, and Wright, on cello, used to busk on the streets of Boston back in the late 2000s). In a nod to the wide-eyed perspective that arose from the albums creation, the duo chose a title evocative of youthful wonder. After everything we went through, we came to a place of understanding that we have no control, that each new day is an adventure we need to approach with beginners eyes, says Harrington. Wright adds: Through all the discomfort, we took it as our mission to stay humble and hungry, to know that everything will change and to be prepared to find something of real value in thatand to find ourselves in it, too.The follow-up to 2018s Pretty Colors For Your Actions, Juniors came to life at The Tall Housethe Northeastern Massachusetts home where Wright and Harrington lived together for six years with their wives, pets, and Harringtons firstborn son, eventually moving out in August 2020. In a departure from the elaborate production process that yielded its predecessor, the two musicians wrote and recorded most of Juniors in isolation, holing up on the third floor of the household they liken to a joyfully anarchic artist commune. It all happened in this tiny, hectic, beautiful space where our wives were also working from home, both pregnant, and theres a dog and a cat that hated each other, and then Tims toddler whod just started walking would come barging in and start dancing mid-take, joining in a song with us, Wright recalls. Despite the nonstop disruption, Tall Heights soon found their way to a shapeshifting sound that illuminates their singularity like never before. Because we were cut loose and isolated within this space and time, we ended up capturing something incredibly and uniquely us in the new sound we created, Harrington points out.In putting the finishing touches on Juniors, Tall Heights headed to Omaha and worked with producers Mike Mogis (Paul McCartney, Phoebe Bridgers, Bright Eyes) and Oliver Hill, who helped refine and enrich the backdrop of their emotionally raw songwriting. On the opening track Keeps Me Light, the band muses on the ineffable comfort and safety of true connection, intensifying the tracks radiant mood with the luminous vocals of a Berklee College of Music a cappella group called Upper Structure. Revealing the complexity of Juniors, Tall Heights then drift into the wistful reverie of Locked Out, a song inspired by Wrights struggle to help his wife through a severe bout of anxiety. Paul and I each wrote the lyrics to Locked Out, which I think points back to how intertwined our lives have become, says Harrington. Its so unlikely that I could have felt his pain as hard as I didbut because I was living it too in that house, whats fiercely personal to Paul became fiercely personal to me.The most commanding track on Juniors, Hear It Again took shape as Tall Heights messed around with an assortment of synthesizers theyd borrowed from their friend and tourmate Ben Folds, arriving at a tender rumination on home and belonging. Weve spent so much of our time living on the road, and that song is our way of asking, What if thats the place where we feel the most safety and consistency and stability? says Harrington. In a particularly poignant turn, The Mountain reflects on the losses that Harrington and Wright recently suffered, transforming that heartache into a moment of healing. A friend had texted us a photo of his grandfather on the day before he died: he was sitting in a hospital bed looking out the window at the mountains, and the sun was shining on his face, says Wright. That song came from thinking about our friends grandmother saying goodbye to his grandfather and sending him off on his journey, but in a way it also speaks to how theres been so much collective loss over the past year. Meanwhile, on Raindrop, Tall Heights offer up a meditation on emotional responsibility. Sometimes a relationship can get intense in the wrong place and time, says Harrington. So, in the end, its a song about choosing which relationships deserve your all, and when to let things go and move on with your life.Looking back on the tumultuous year that gave rise to their latest album, Harrington and Wright note that theyve adopted the Juniors outlook as something of a spiritual ethos: a realization that every new endeavorno matter how familiarwill undoubtedly present new challenges and extraordinary surprise, ultimately reminding them that they are still but juniors. I feel ready to view each next chapter of Tall Heights as another round of Juniors, says Harrington. This experience has emboldened us to create in any situationbecause when life got very intense, we doubled-down on what we care about the most: creating songs together. And it felt fresh and new in that context. And although leaving the Tall House proved nothing short of heartbreaking, the duo have found their devoted bond to be stronger than ever. This record gave us the chance to really understand what we have in each other as weird partners on the great journey of self-exploration, says Wright. We know now that the Tall House can be a state of mind, not just a place of refuge. So while chaos continues, were able to fully see the beauty that can come from it.

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And may their illusions rest in peace.

Martha Ketro

Many of us feel that life is accelerating, and we are not keeping up. We respond to e-mails late, do not have time to respond to posts on social networks, read little, and rarely communicate with relatives and children. In general, we are constantly lagging. We feel like we need to be more organized and plan our day better. We are told that to be successful you need to train your brain and learn to manage your time.

As a doctor, I will tell you the truth in fact, all this is useless

The problem is not in us and our disorganization. The problem is the growth of the information flow and the physiological limit of the speed of information processing.

Information singularity what is it and why is it dangerous

Processing speed is the time it takes for our brain to complete a mental task. The rate at which a person identifies information both visually (through letters and numbers) and auditory (through words and familiar sounds). Technically, this is the time between receiving a stimulus and starting to respond to it.

I will not now go into the details of psychometric testing and methods for experimentally determining the speed of information processing that the human nervous system is capable of. There are several groups of tests based on the classic Konner test and the Wechsler memory scale, as well as special tasks that determine the speed of information processing.

With a high degree of certainty, all the above tests show that the human speed of information perception cannot exceed 50 bits per second. At the same time, such indicators are achievable mainly for some women, in whom the hemispheres of the brain are slightly better connected than in most men. For many men, the maximum perceptual rate will be closer to 40 bps.

Facts you almost certainly didnt think about

In 2020, there were 4.5 billion active users of the World Wide Web in the world. On the evening of March 10, 2020, one of the busiest network nodes in the world (Frankfurt DE-CIX) recorded the highest level of traffic in history over 9.1 Tbps. This meant that even if all mankind involved on the Internet tried to understand and process such a data stream, then, due to the physiological limit of perception, people would be able to comprehend less than 0.1 percent of the information transmitted by a single network node.

Considering the rate of accumulation of digital information and the fact that more than 90% of the digital data existing in the world was created over the past 10 years, in 20-30 years (between 2040 2050) an endless gap will form between the physiological parameters of perception and the total amount of information accumulated by mankind. A person will completely lose the ability to independently navigate and effectively move in the global information field.

What does this mean for the lives of each of us?

This will mean a state of information singularity in which almost all information will become virtually inaccessible, and what you can get from the worldwide network will in fact reflect the local information field formed around your person.

How to imagine it?

Never has our brain faced this kind of problem, so the information singularity is difficult to comprehend. All we can do is try to model this situation with a hypothetical example.

Lets say you use a paper address book. This handbook now has 100,000 pages and is a huge book that can hardly fit in your room. If you know the alphabet and have enough time, effort, and perseverance, you can still find the address of a specific person (for example, with the name Raymond Kurzweil). In the state of information singularity, your conditional reference book will have more than 1 quadrillion pages (a number with 62 zeros) and its volume will exceed the volume of our planet. Any search in such conditions will become impossible and all that will remain for you is just to open the page that will be next to you (guess for why it will be nearby). What will be there you will read. Instead of searching, you will be able to receive only the information that was created personally for you.

Was this situation foreseen?

It was not for nothing that I mentioned the name of Raymond Kurzweil, a futurist who predicted the onset of a technological singularity in 2045.

In fact, instead of a technological singularity, we will face a much more dangerous phenomenon an information singularity.

Whats the Difference?

A technological singularity is a moment after which technological progress will accelerate and become so complicated that it becomes inaccessible to human understanding. In other words, the technological singularity is a kind of consumer infantilism raised to the absolute.

But lets honestly ask ourselves, how many people right now understand where the cutting edge of science is, what is known to mankind and how technology is developing? In fact, 99% of people (including many scientists) have been in this state for a long time.

The information singularity is something less pleasant and more dangerous. In the state of information singularity, it becomes impossible to search for and receive third-party (not prepared for you in advance) information. We note for ourselves that the information singularity is not progress and development, but simply the absence of a choice.

Evolution our next move or how to survive and win

We must understand that the development of Internet technologies requires from us not only participation and understanding but also a deep physiological transformation.

In order not to lose control over our own lives, we must increase the speed of information processing available to our nervous system. To do this, we will have to connect our brain with a computer system at the level of neurons and neurophysiology. This will remove the bottleneck in the communication channel the decoding of visual or audio characters.

To do this, in addition to the neurocomputer interface, our brain will need a fast, strong, and maximally accessible assistant. Personal artificial intelligence is not just a new technology. In fact, it is an evolutionary attempt to adapt to the growing ocean of digital information. If we want to maintain the status of the dominant intelligent species in the biosphere, we must immediately begin to modernize our nervous system.

Instead of creating machine intelligence as an alternative to human intelligence, we must turn our biological brain into the heart of a new AI: individual artificial intelligence.

We must realize that we are living in an era of dizzying evolutionary transformation that will culminate in a test of survival.

Exam the date of which is set for 2045.

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How to prepare our minds for the information singularity? - TechTalks

In theory, its possible to create jet fuel from nothing more than water, CO2, and energy from the sun, but doing so outside of the laboratory has proved challenging. Now researchers have created the first fully-integrated system capable of doing it at scale in the field.

Aviation accounts for around five percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and its proven stubbornly difficult to decarbonize. While other sectors have relied on electrification to switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, the stringent weight constraints of aviation make relying on battery power unfeasible anytime in the near future.

Theres growing consensus that any realistic route to decarbonizing aviation by the middle of this century will require the use of sustainable drop-in fuels, which refers to fuels that work with existing jet engines and fueling infrastructure. The logic is that any alternative power source like batteries, liquid hydrogen, or liquid ammonia will require unrealistic levels of investment in new aircraft and fuel storage and distribution systems.

Researchers are investigating a wide variety of approaches to making sustainable aviation fuels. The most common today involves creating kerosene by reacting animal or vegetable oils with hydrogen. The approach is well established, but there are limited renewable sources of these feedstocks and there is competition from biodiesel from the automotive sector.

An emerging approach involves creating fuel by directly combining green hydrogen with carbon monoxide derived from captured CO2. This is much more challenging because all the steps involvedelectrolyzing water to create green hydrogen, capturing CO2 from the air or industrial sources, reducing CO2 to CO and combining them to create keroseneuse lots of energy.

The advantage is that the raw ingredients are abundant, so finding a way to reduce the energy requirements could open the door to a plentiful new source of sustainable fuels. A new plant that uses an array of mirrors to direct sunlight towards a solar reactor on top of a tower could be a promising approach.

We are the first to demonstrate the entire thermochemical process chain from water and CO2 to kerosene in a fully-integrated solar tower system, Aldo Steinfeld from ETH Zurich, who led the research, said in a press release. This solar tower fuel plant was operated with a setup relevant to industrial implementation, setting a technological milestone towards the production of sustainable aviation fuels.

The facility, described in a paper in Joule, features 169 sun-tracking reflective panels that redirect and concentrate sunlight into the solar reactor perched on top of a 49-foot-high tower. Water and CO2 are pumped into the solar reactor, which contains a porous structure made of ceria, an oxide of the rare-earth metal cerium.

The ceria helps drive a redox reaction that strips oxygen from the water and CO2 to create a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen known as syngas. The ceria is not consumed by this process and can be re-used, while the excess oxygen is simply released into the atmosphere. The syngas is pumped down the tower to a gas-to-liquid converter, where it is processed into liquid fuel that contains 16 percent kerosene and 40 percent diesel.

By using the heat of the sun to drive the entire process, the setup provides a way around the considerable electricity demands of more conventional approaches. However, the researchers note that the efficiency of their system is still relatively low. Only four percent of the captured solar energy was converted into chemical energy in the syngas, although they see a route to increasing that to above 15 percent.

The overall production levels are also a long way from what would be required to make a dent in the aviation industrys fuel demands. Despite the facility taking up space equivalent to a small car park, it was only able to produce just over 5,000 liters of syngas in 9 days. Considering only 16 percent of that was then converted into kerosene, the technology will have to scale up considerably.

But this is the largest-scale demonstration of using sunlight to create sustainable fuels to date, and as the researchers point out, the setup is industrially realistic. With further tweaking and a lot of investment, this could one day offer a promising way to make sure our flights are less of a burden on the environment.

Image Credit: ETH Zurich

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This 'Solar Tower' System Produces Jet Fuel From CO2, Water, and Sunlight - Singularity Hub

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Trying to keep up with the pace of modern threats through manual approaches alone is impossible. AI and Automation are now must-have tools for organizations looking to prevent intrusions.

Because of this, today, autonomous cybersecurity provider SentinelOne and Managed Security Service Provider (MSSP) Digital Hands announced a strategic partnership.

As part of this agreement, the two providers will combine the SentinelOnes Singularity XDR Platform with Digital Hands CyGuard Maestro security fabric and security operations center (SOC).CyGuard Maestro will integrate with SentinelOne Singularity to provide additional automated capabilities, such as executing playbooks to isolate endpoints infected with malware and scanning the network for other threats.

The two solutions will also share intelligence, with CyGuard Maestro ingesting data from Digital Hands Harbinger Threat Intelligence feed and comparing it with SentinelOne Singularitys data to provide enterprises with more in-depth contextual threat analysis.

With the cyber skills gap in full swing, most organizations dont have the internal resources they need to protect their resources against advanced threat actors, particularly with the increase in adoption of remote and hybrid working.

Organizations are progressively adopting pure cloud and cloud-focused hybrid information technology models when executing Digital Transformation initiatives and migrating their infrastructure to the cloud to achieve critical business objectives and needs, said chief customer officer at Digital Hands, Charlotte Kibert.

This shift to cloud and SaaS platforms, along with more remoter workers, has increased the traditional enterprises attack surface exponentially leaving more security blind spots and vulnerabilities than ever before, Kibert said.

Kibert notes that this movement toward digitization has made it more difficult to implement robust security monitoring of legacy infrastructure.

Digital Hands and SentinelOnes new partnership aims to address this by providing security teams with the automated capabilities they need to detect and respond to threats across the entire attack surface.

For SentinelOne, the partnership has the potential to enhance its position in the XDR market, which researchers value at $985 million in 2022 and anticipate will reach $2,358 million by 2027.

The organization is competing in the market against some monolithic competitors, including CrowdStrike, which offers its own XDR solution called Falcon XDR.

Falcon XDR ingests data from telemetry throughout the environment, giving the user the option to search structured and unstructured data and automatically identify threats. Crowdstrike recently announced raising Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) of $217 million.

SentinelOne is also competing with endpoint protection providers like Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.

Microsoft Defender for Endpoint uses sensors to collect and process behavioral signals from the users operating system, translating them into insights and recommending responses to threats.

It also provides threat intelligence that can generate alerts on malicious tools, techniques and procedures discovered. Microsoft recently announced raising $51.7 billion in revenue last year.

SentinelOnes new partnership with Digital Hands and claims it has the potential to differentiate it from existing XDR and endpoint protection solutions with greater automation capabilities.

The combination delivers unrivaled coverage, protection, and efficiency, said Brandon Andrews, vice president of Worldwide MSSP at SentinelOne.

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Digital Hands and SentinelOne join forces to automate the SOC - VentureBeat

ALBANY On August 19th, Grampfather will be releasing their latest record, 666G. A record full of bombast, chaos, and an underpinning of guitar virtuosity at its core, it has some great stuff to offer in its short length. Blending elements of punk rock, indie, and alternative, Grampfather has crafted another interesting collection of songs to add to its arsenal.

Starting off with Pawl Mawl Menthawls, the album immediately begins on all cylinders with a full band instrumentation intro. The drums play well off the songs bass and guitar parts. As is common practice throughout this record, the vocal melody follows the guitar part. After the first stanza, theres a brief but tasteful guitar interlude, and midway through, the intro is repeated with added instrumentation. Overall, the song is fairly straight ahead and blends indie rock and punk aesthetics.

Following this song is The Man in the Wall, track two. While not sure how the song was recorded, to this listener, it has a definite live feel to it. The entire piece is extremely in your face with reckless abandon. There are points that feel it could use a bit of a tightening up, but doing so might lose the overall feel of the tune. There are nice dynamic changes halfway, through, that serve the song well, and a ton of punk rock elements in this song.

Track three, To My Rotting Body and Brain, is a really nice touch; the intro is full of polyrhythms. The chorus pattern seems to mimic the intro instrumental section. I really enjoyed the chord progression in this song because the extensions used in the chords follow the melody. At the end, a sudden, and shredding guitar solo appears seemingly out of nowhere, played with such a level of finesse. Impressive, to say the least.

Far and away the longest song on the record, clocking in at eight-minutes-and-ten-seconds, Hot Dog Beach, track four, steers into more of an indie-alternative vibe, and is more straightforward than the previous two. The reverb-washed guitars are a nice touch to this track and remind me of some music I really enjoyed in the early 2000s. The repetitive nature of the guitar part during its interludes allows listeners to grab on to something comfortable and instantly familiar. Perhaps showing my bias as a guitarist, I would feel remiss if I didnt mention the guitars tone: during the solo it is wonderfully throaty and right smack-dab in that overdriven, mid-range sweet spot. As we approach the last minute of the track, the tempo is severely slowed down and the band plays in an almost rubato fashion before speeding up for the final portion, as a guitar solo helps to conclude the piece.

The final two songs, The Singularity (Crossing Over0, and 666G, tracks five and six, respectively, offer more of the same in some regards, while introducing new elements in other aspects. For instance, in the former tune, the piece begins with electric piano, something not yet done on the album. Possibly the most space-y sounding of the album; every instrument seems to be loosely playing off each other. About halfway through, the listeners are exposed to a sharp transition in meter and feel. Theres very stripped back instrumentation at the end, before the track ends. With 666G, the closer and title track of the record, theres plenty of nice and clean guitar tones throughout the intro. More to that point, the guitar in this track really shines, as some of the best playing on the entire record. On an album thats largely focused on guitar proficiency, this is a great closer in that regard.

666G manages to deliver a lot of material and musical ideas in a somewhat short amount of time. The only two comments that might go against the record although it didnt detract too much from the album, in this listeners opinion are the vocals and cohesiveness of the bands performances. Sometimes it sounds like the singer might be straining, and the instrumentation will seemingly get lost in the mix during some of the more chaotic parts on the record. That being said, there are a great number of moments that a fan of alternative rock, punk, and indie can latch onto. Go and grab your copy of the new record by following the link here.

Lucas Garrett: Thank you, James, and nice to talk to you again. I hear your band has a new album coming out soon?

James Kwapisz: Yeah, were real excited about it.

LG: Tell us about the album.

JK: Its been six months since the last release. That seems to be the theme of the album: its called 666G six songs long. I feel the other album was more of a mixed bag, a smorgasbord. This one feels more concise: banger after banger. It feels more realized. Theres definitely still a range of genres, but I think it has a better flow to it.

LG: Theres a lot of different genres like you said, but they work together in ways Id not heard before. Its a very interesting way of writing the music, because Id not really heard elements of punk alongside elements of progressive rock before. They seem to be antithetical of one another, but yet it works in a really interesting way.

JK: One thing I should note: this album is more collaborative than ever. While I still maintain that role of being the main songwriter/composer, and lyricist, the other guys had a large hand in it. For example, Andrew wrote the main riff in the first song, Pawl Mawl Menthawls, and I added some parts to bridge it together so its not that one riff repeating throughout the whole song. The most collaborative is track five, The Singularity.

It actually started off as a nine-minute-long jam. The other guys really wanted to keep it like that, but the buzzing of the snare in the live recording was driving me crazy. I was doing everything I could to mute that but it wasnt really working out. With much protest, lets record this track-by-track and figure out the structure. Its one of my favorite tracks on the album because its so unique from everything weve ever done.

Like I was saying earlier before the interview, Andrew and I switched up instruments. He was playing keyboards on this one. Hes definitely a more proficient lead guitarist than I am, but I used to do all the leads on the earlier albums. It was nice to revisit it and see that I could still shred.

LG: Was this album recorded live, or piece-by-piece?

JK: Its all piece-by-piece.

LG: However, its done, you captured a live feel, which is very cool.

JK: Andrew lets loose a little bit, but the rhythm section is pretty tight: doing the same thing each take. Its nice for the live element, because Andrew is always doing something different and were keeping the same thing. Like with The Singularity, for playing it live, Id want to have a structure. The marriage of structure and improvisation is pretty interesting to me.

LG: Does this album have the same lineup?

JK: Yeah, it does. Its just me, Jake, Tony, and Andrew. Thats part of the reason why we were able to put out this album so quick after the other one. In the past, its been multiple lineups within a year. A lot of the time was spent picking a few songs from a few albums, and teaching and re-teaching the parts. Then, theyd leave the band it was always someone new. It was a stagnant limbo, for me.

Its so nice to have a steady crew. Now we can just progress and make new music. Also, we live within a mile of each other, so that convenience helps a lot.

LG: That is really convenient. Youre pretty prolific now. Whats next on board for you guys?

JK: After this album, we have a bunch of ideas percolating. We had this stupid name for an album, called, Glampfather, where its going to be super poppy and synth-y. On the cover, we had the idea where its going to be me in a white tuxedo on a piano in the woods with an RV and a disco ball. And, then Andrew will be playing piano and Ill have a rose in my mouth, hahaha. Super over the top. Glampfather is going to be the seventh album. I thought itd be funny if it were super poppy on the A-side, and then devolve to bring back some thrashier metal elements from our Magnum Grampus era. Keep people on their toes, ya know?

LG: What else would you like to talk about tonight?

JK: I appreciate your input and getting the word in the Capital Region and beyond.

LG: The album is dropping August 19th. Where can we find it?

JK: Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music Wherever Distrokid sends it!

LG: Do you have any shows coming up?

JK: Were playing Sheeptown, a DIY event in Albany on August 3rd, and an album release party at Snugs in New Paltz on August 20th. Weve been playing the new songs at shows. Its appealing to get that experience of songs that arent released yet.

LG: Thank you very much for your time tonight, James, and good luck with your release!

JK: Yeah, of course!

LG: Ill talk to you soon.

JK: Awesome, thanks for your time, I appreciate it. Good talking with you.

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In Session: James Kwapisz of Grampfather - Nippertown