By Trevor Hunnicutt WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden's re-election campaign said on Tuesday that a decision by Alphabet Inc's

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Engineers have figured out how to repurpose disused wind turbine blades to serve as bridges capable of supporting up to 30 tonnes of weight. Turbine blades have a lifespan of around 20 to 25 years, meaning hundreds of wind farms set up at the start of the century are now being upgraded. Decommissioned blades are typically sent to landfill or incinerated, with the thousands of non-biodegradable units now posing a major environmental challenge. In an effort to address the issue, five universities and research institutes in Ireland, Northern Ireland and the US set up the Re-Wind Network, which has come up with several ways the blades can be recycled. Potential solutions include bus shelters, street furniture and telecommunications towers, however bridges already offer a practical way to repurpose the blades, with two footbridges successfully built in Draperstown and Cork. “With so many of these blades due to reach the end of their lifespan, we need to find ways to transform them into something useful,” said Jennifer McKinley, a professor at Queen’s University Belfast’s School of Natural and Built Environment. “I am delighted that by working together we’ve been able to find a way to repurpose wind turbine blades. This can only be a good thing, as without intervention they would end up in landfill or they would have to be incinerated.” A third bridge is set to be built in Atlanta, Georgia, before the research team turn their focus towards increasing the length and size of the bridges. The researchers estimate that there will be around 8.6 million tonnes of scrapped wind turbine blades within the next 20 years, though the glass fibre reinforced polymer material could prove useful for building a huge range of objects, like motorway noise barriers and playground equipment. Three of the engineers from the Re-Wind Network project have also formed a spin-out startup called BladeBridge that will look to commercialise the idea, while also looking for new ways to reuse old turbine blades. “We are partnering with well-known designers here in Ireland to create a portfolio of durable and sustainable products, such as greenway furniture and bridges,” said BladeBridge co-founder Dr Angie Nagle. Read More Fossil fuels ‘becoming obsolete’ as solar panel prices plummet Fossil fuels ‘becoming obsolete’ as solar panel prices plummet Solar panel breakthrough could supercharge ‘miracle material’ production Scientists invent solar panels that work in a snow blizzard

LINDON, Utah--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 14, 2023--

OAKLAND, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 17, 2023--

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We use letters every day of our lives, but apparently, there's one lowercase letter that we do not recognise. Psychologists at Johns Hopkins University have discovered that most people aren't aware that there are two types of the lowercase letter g. One of them is the open tail 'g' which most of us would have written out by hand with its image comparable to "a loop with a fishhook hanging from it. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Then, there is the loop tail 'g' which appears in print form e.g. books and newspapers as well as in Serif fonts such as Times New Roman and Calibri - we've all seen this type of letter millions of times, but it seems remembering it is an entirely different challenge altogether. There were 38 volunteers in the study published by the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance and they were asked to list letters that they thought had two variations in print. In the first experiment, "most participants failed to recall the existence of looptail g" while only two people could write looptail g accurately. "They don't entirely know what this letter looks like, even though they can read it," co-author Gali Ellenblum said. Next participants were asked to look for examples of the looptail g in the text and were asked to reproduce this letter style after this and in the end, only one person could do this while half the group wrote an open tail g. Finally, those taking part in the study were asked to identify the letter g in a multiple-choice test with four options of the letter where seven out of 25 managed to do this correctly. So how can we know a letter but not recognised it? It could be to do with the fact we are not taught to write this kind of 'g," according to Michael McCloskey, senior author of the paper. "What we think may be happening here is that we learn the shapes of most letters in part because we have to write them in school. 'Looptail g' is something we're never taught to write, so we may not learn its shape as well," he said. "More generally, our findings raise questions about the conditions under which massive exposure does, and does not, yield detailed, accurate, accessible knowledge." In a play-along video on John Hopkin's YouTube channel, four different g's labelled from one to four appear on the screen where it asked viewers to guess which is the correct looptail 'g'. (*Spoiler ahead*) The correct answer is number 3. Meanwhile, this study has also led research to question the impact that writing less and using more devices has on our reading abilities. "What about children who are just learning to read? Do they have a little bit more trouble with this form of g because they haven't been forced to pay attention to it and write it?" McCloskey said. "That's something we don't really know. Our findings give us an intriguing way of looking at questions about the importance of writing for reading..." Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.