MAROKO133 Update ai: China’s ‘artificial photosynthesis’ method could create petrol from c

📌 MAROKO133 Breaking ai: China’s ‘artificial photosynthesis’ method could create p

A team of Chinese scientists has unveiled a breakthrough method that turns carbon dioxide and water into valuable chemicals, including the fundamental components of petrol, using sunlight as the energy source. 

Drawing inspiration from photosynthesis – the natural process plants use to convert sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into energy – the approach aims to create a more sustainable way to produce fuel. 

The researchers, coming from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, created a specialized material capable of storing small amounts of electrical energy, which boosts the efficiency of the chemical reactions needed to transform CO2 into useful compounds.

Advancing solar fuel production with CO2 photoreduction

By combining the system with catalysts that transform carbon dioxide into different chemicals, researchers achieved solar-powered production of carbon monoxide. This intermediate can then be further converted into fuels, presenting a potential alternative for industries that are difficult to electrify, including aviation and shipping.

The team noted in a paper published last week in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Communications that their approach establishes a bioinspired charge reservoir strategy for efficient carbon dioxide photoreduction. They emphasized that this method provides a universal pathway for producing solar fuels, bridging a critical gap between renewable energy and high-demand industrial applications, the South China Morning Post writes.

Interest is growing in the light-driven conversion of carbon dioxide, or photocatalysis, as a promising approach to both reducing greenhouse gas emissions and easing pressure on natural resources, the researchers said. One particularly attractive application lies in producing solar fuels – synthetic fuels generated using sunlight that closely resemble conventional fossil fuels and can work with existing fuel infrastructure. 

This process involves transforming carbon dioxide into intermediary chemicals such as carbon monoxide, which can then be further processed into liquid hydrocarbons, offering a potential pathway to create sustainable fuel alternatives without overhauling current energy systems.

Mimicking nature to improve artificial photosynthesis efficiency

Replacing sacrificial agents with water in solar fuel production would be the optimal solution, but it involves connecting multiple complex chemical reactions, including water oxidation and carbon dioxide reduction. Nature, however, performs these processes with remarkable efficiency, using a molecule that temporarily stores photogenerated electrons to facilitate energy transfer.

Drawing inspiration from this natural strategy, the researchers implemented a similar charge storage mechanism in an artificial photosynthetic system, aiming to replicate the efficiency of plants in driving solar-powered chemical transformations.

In an effort to replicate this natural mechanism, the team engineered a silver-modified tungsten trioxide material that can store electrons during light exposure and release them on demand. They reported that the material performs on par with systems using organic sacrificial agents and offers “universal applicability” when combined with a range of different catalysts.

Testing the material under sunlight, the team found that natural light could trigger the reaction, paving the way for solar fuel applications. They noted that this approach removes the need for unsustainable sacrificial agents while offering a versatile design principle for building efficient, stand-alone photocatalytic systems.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 MAROKO133 Update ai: Trade Unions Alarmed by Robots Designed to Do Blue Collar W

When past generations imagined the best version of the future, it was one of leisure. Advertisements, cartoonists, and pulp novelists dared us to dream of a world where the spoils of industrial development were shared with all: robot butlers, transit by pneumatic tube, and more familiar tropes. These developments, it seemed, would make our lives more convenient, more secure, and — dare we say — more abundant.

Now in 2026, it’s clear that even the most modest utopian fantasies have been stolen by the wealthy. The rich have luxurious self-driving cars while the rest of us suffer with crumbling public transit. The rich treat housing as an asset, while the rest of us navigate algorithms meant to maximize rent extraction. The rich have elite private schools, while the rest of us content ourselves to teacher shortages and glitchy AI tutors.

Going forward, the disparity is likely to widen. Having established their giddy desire to automate white collar jobs, tech moguls are increasingly turning their attention toward the trades — jobs which were, rhetorically at least, seen as a safe haven against AI’s rising tide. Now, the boom in robotics and AI spending is driving fear that blue collar labor will be next on the chopping block.

“It’s a whole other challenge on top of the large language models,” Communications Workers of America Union assistant research director Dan Reynolds told Politico about the heightened threat of physical automation. “Having an automated system interacting with the real physical world is a separate… mountain to climb.”

As tech companies look to shoehorn AI software into robotic platforms, it can be difficult for labor organizers to separate actual threats from typical tech industry bluster. Either way, the rapid pace is alarming.

“Our concern right now is [AI robotics] is just moving too quickly, and so it makes it difficult to plan for how this is actually going to affect workers, and what employers are going to do,” David White, director of strategic resources at the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, told Politico. “We are keeping an eye on that as much as we can.”

Labor leaders who spoke to Politico say they’re trying to elbow their way into the conversation as early as possible. As layoffs across the US job market only seem to increase, part of the challenge will be successfully anticipating productive developments in automated systems — easier said than done.

“We’ve been hearing for at least 15 years that we’re going to have driverless trucks next year,” International Brotherhood of Teamsters media coordinator Matt McQuaid told the outlet. “There’s a lot of overpromising and under delivering in the tech industry.”

Still, not having a union prepared to fight automation is a recipe for disaster. While today’s notoriously buggy AI may not actually be capable of replacing human workers, that hasn’t stopped executives from using it as an excuse to cut jobs anyway. If the last few years of AI development have made anything clear, it’s that the tech elite aren’t interested in sharing the future — they want it all to themselves.

More on automation: Experts Growing Worried About World in Which AI Takes Your Job and You Have No Way to Provide for Yourself

The post Trade Unions Alarmed by Robots Designed to Do Blue Collar Work appeared first on Futurism.

🔗 Sumber: futurism.com