• An independent watchdog says TVA needs to improve its operations.
  • The report was issued as TVA races to meet ambitious decarbonization goals.
  • TVA is not consistently tracking technology it adopts, the report says.
  • TVA also is not properly tracking how it saves and secures research and development information.

As the Tennessee Valley Authority pushes to meet its ambitious goals for decarbonization, the authority’s independent watchdog is asking the nation’s largest public power company to bring more discipline to its operations.

Among its key conclusions, the TVA Office of the Inspector General found TVA needs to improve how it chooses and tracks new technologies, such as small modular nuclear reactors, to generate electricity for 10 million people across Tennessee and parts of six other states, as well as industrial and federal facilities.

Additionally, the inspector general warned that TVA is not effectively tracking what research and development records it is creating,

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Workers typically rely on plastic hard hat styles designed in the 1960s. But newer technology does a better job at protecting brains, especially from oblique impact caused by falls.

Al Bello/Getty Images


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Al Bello/Getty Images


Workers typically rely on plastic hard hat styles designed in the 1960s. But newer technology does a better job at protecting brains, especially from oblique impact caused by falls.

Al Bello/Getty Images

A new generation of hard hats is promising better protection against on-the-job concussions, also known as mild traumatic brain injuries.

These hard hats incorporate technology that not only protects the head from a direct impact, but also from a glaring blow that causes the head to rotate suddenly – a major cause of concussions.

“The human brain is readily injured by a rotational force,” says Michael Bottlang, director of the Legacy Biomechanics Lab in Portland, Ore. For example,

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The National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA) is tracking Hurricane Fiona by plane and drones. Through NOAA’s new research program, sail drones are taking us closer than ever before to one of Earth’s most destructive forces.

In partnership with NOAA, Saildrone Inc. is deploying seven ocean drones to collect data from hurricanes during the 2022 hurricane season with the goal of improving hurricane forecasting.

“We’re really excited about this new technology. It’s going to allow us to fly the drones for up to two to three hours at a time collecting all the data that we either previously

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Pain-free tattoos? The company Micro Biomedical, backed by a study at the Georgia Institute of Technologysays it’s developed painless and bloodless tattoos that can be self-administered.

After all, getting a tattoo can be a painful affair, depending on one’s tolerance for pain. What if there was a painless way to do it?

The new biomedical tech involves a low-cost skin patch containing microscopic, ink-filled needles. The patch is pressed into the skin to apply the tattoo, and the “microneedles” can be arranged in different shapes to create a design, as Digital Trends reported.

“We’ve miniaturized the needle so that it’s painless but still effectively deposits tattoo ink in the skin,” Micro Biomedical head Mark Prausnitz explains.

The painless tattoo process was developed within the realm of medical tattoos. Medical tattoos often cover up scars or restore nipples after breast surgery, among many other applications.

“This could be a way

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Luis Enrique is gaining something of a reputation for his innovative training methods and ahead of Spain’s upcoming fixtures against Switzerland and Portugal, a new addition was present during practice.

Previously Luis Enrique has had a tower installed at the side of the pitch at Las Rozas so that he can observe the session from a height. In their last international call-up, he also had a giant screen installed next to the training pitch so that he could do video analysis quickly and in detail during training.

On Tuesday the Spanish media team released a video showing off Luis Enrique’s gadget. Lucho had a radio that he could use and it was connected to the GPS vests that the players were wearing, with another radio inside them.

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The Lenexa Police Department is using new technology to keep people safe. It’s called SPIDR Tech and Lenexa is one of the first departments in the country to use it. The technology sends text messages to some callers after they talk to a 911 dispatcher. The messages could include the status of officers on the way to the call, how to prepare for the arriving officers, and the case number of the report. Danny Chavez, the public information officer for Lenexa Police, said he hopes this will improve the customer service experience for callers. “We think it’ll be a positive thing just in terms of police communications with individuals, again, enhancing the customer service experience,” Chavez said. “We know that if someone’s calling us, it’s probably already a bad day to begin with.”He said the text messages will take the burden off the individual to reach out to the department …

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Nissan announces that it has worked with Tohoku University’s Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences to develop a new technology that inactivates viruses.

According to the release, the collaboration leverages “Nissan’s technologies and expertise in automotive development, and the Tohoku University faculty’s technologies related to drug development, drug evaluation, and other pharmaceutical sciences, catalyst preparation, and catalyst performance evaluation.”

Nissan's New Tech That Inactivates Viruses

How radical catalysts work

So how does this new tech work? The technology uses organic nitroxyl radical oxidation catalysts, or otherwise known as radical catalysts. They are used as additives in the polymer base materials of automotive paints, as well as in the fiber and organic polymer materials used in vehicle interiors and exteriors.

In Nissan cars, radical catalysts prevent photodegradation reactions such as cracking, embrittlement, and fading over long periods of time. The automaker has been researching and developing other uses of radical catalysts in an effort to make the most of

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In a repurposed mushroom barn in Chester County, Sycamore International Inc. recycles electronic equipment, including refurbishing 30,000 old laptops a month for resale. Steven Figgatt, Sycamore’s chief executive, says his West Grove company is all about the circular economy.

In keeping with its sustainable mission, Sycamore earlier this year installed a rooftop solar system to convert its operations to renewable energy. But Figgatt, 36, only declared his company’s freedom from the electric grid in late August, when he commissioned a new innovative battery storage system that assures his business is supplied by solar power even when the sun isn’t shining.

“We’re calling it our Energy Independence Day,” he said.

Figgatt went out on a limb with his choice of energy-storage technology, selecting a novel system called an iron-flow battery, the first of its kind on the East Coast.

Iron-flow batteries are among many promising grid-scale energy storage technologies that

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Depending on your tolerance for pain, getting a tattoo can be an uncomfortable experience, but new technology developed by scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology could be about to change that.

A team led by chemical engineer Mark Prausnitz has created a low-cost skin patch containing microscopic needles smaller than a grain of sand. Each of the so-called “microneedles” acts like a pixel and can be arranged in different patterns. Each one is then filled with ink before being pressed onto the skin a single time to transfer the design, with no pain or bleeding involved. The process can even be self-administered.

Tattoos created by microneedle technology.While the patch could clearly present a welcome breakthrough for folks keen on getting a cosmetic tattoo but who are currently put off by the pain, the team actually began its research with another group in mind: medical patients.

“We’ve miniaturized the needle so that it’s painless,

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As the world builds out ever larger installations of wind and solar power systems, the need is growing fast for economical, large-scale backup systems to provide power when the sun is down and the air is calm. Today’s lithium-ion batteries are still too expensive for most such applications, and other options such as pumped hydro require specific topography that’s not always available.

Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a new kind of battery, made entirely from abundant and inexpensive materials, that could help to fill that gap.

The new battery architecture, which uses aluminum and sulfur as its two electrode materials, with a molten salt electrolyte in between, is described today in the journal naturein a paper by MIT Professor Donald Sadoway, along with 15 others at MIT and in China, Canada, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

“I wanted to invent something that was better, much better, than lithium-ion

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