Automated Additive Construction (AAC) for Earth and Space Using In-situ Resources

Using Automated Additive Construction (AAC), low-fidelity large-scale compressive structures can be produced out of a wide variety of materials found in the environment. Compressionintensive structures need not utilize materials that have tight specifications for internal force management, meaning that the production of the building materials do not require costly methods for their preparation. Where a certain degree of surface roughness can be tolerated, lower-fidelity numerical control of deposited materials can provide a low-cost means for automating building processes, which can be utilized in remote or extreme environments on Earth or in Space. For space missions where every kilogram of mass must be lifted out of Earth’s gravity well, the promise of using in-situ materials for the construction of outposts, facilities, and installations could prove to be enabling if significant reduction of payload mass can be achieved. In a 2015 workshop sponsored by the Keck nstitute for Space Studies, on the topic of Three Dimensional (3D) Additive Construction For Space Using In-situ Resources, was conducted with additive construction experts from around the globe in attendance. The workshop explored disparate efforts, methods, and technologies and established a proposed framework for the field of Additive Construction Using In-situ Resources. This paper defines the field of Automated Additive Construction Using In-situ Resources, describes the state-of-the-art for various methods, establishes a vision for future efforts, identifies gaps in current technologies, explores investment opportunities, and proposes potential technology demonstration missions for terrestrial, International Space Station (ISS), lunar, deep space zero-gravity, and Mars environments

Stock Returns and Inflation: Some New Evidence

Using aggregate and industry-wise monthly UK data over a period of 44 years we examine the long run relationship between stock return index (St) and retail price index (Pt) in a VAR framework. Univariate tests confirm Pt as I(2); nevertheless pairs of St and Pt are co-integrated and share common I(1) trend. There is no evidence of shared I(2) trend. We find evidence of shifts in the co- integrating ranks and parameters, and accounting for these shifts improved estimates’ precision. The long run price elasticity of return index is consistently above unity, a finding that stands in sharp contrast to the existing ones. Overall our results suggest that tax-paying stock investors are fully insulated against inflation in the long run

Towards synthetic biological approaches to resource utilization on space missions.

This paper demonstrates the significant utility of deploying non-traditional biological techniques to harness available volatiles and waste resources on manned missions to explore the Moon and Mars. Compared with anticipated non-biological approaches, it is determined that for 916 day Martian missions: 205 days of high-quality methane and oxygen Mars bioproduction with Methanobacterium thermoautotrophicum can reduce the mass of a Martian fuel-manufacture plant by 56%; 496 days of biomass generation with Arthrospira platensis and Arthrospira maxima on Mars can decrease the shipped wet-food mixed-menu mass for a Mars stay and a one-way voyage by 38%; 202 days of Mars polyhydroxybutyrate synthesis with Cupriavidus necator can lower the shipped mass to three-dimensional print a 120 m(3) six-person habitat by 85% and a few days of acetaminophen production with engineered Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 can completely replenish expired or irradiated stocks of the pharmaceutical, thereby providing independence from unmanned resupply spacecraft that take up to 210 days to arrive. Analogous outcomes are included for lunar missions. Because of the benign assumptions involved, the results provide a glimpse of the intriguing potential of 'space synthetic biology', and help focus related efforts for immediate, near-term impact

Economic and Environmental Impacts from Industrial Symbiosis Exchanges: Guayama, Puerto Rico

Industrial symbiosis (IS) engages traditionally separate industries in a collective approach to competitive advantage involving the physical exchange of material, energy, water, and/or by-products. Although IS has been advocated as a business-friendly approach to environmental problems, there are few analyses of the financial and other business-related consequences for the individual participants in the exchanges. In this article, the nascent system of IS exchanges in Guayama, Puerto Rico, is explored from the environmental, business, and regulatory perspectives of the individual participants and the community. A coal-fired power plant built, owned, and operated by the AES Corporation is critical from the resource flow perspective with regard to uptake of water and sale of energy products. The article presents estimates of the economic and environmental costs and benefits for the symbiosis participants, concluding that there are substantial business reasons to engage in symbiosis, although the benefits fall unevenly on participating firms.

China's Changing Energy Intensity Trend: A Decomposition Analysis

China experienced a dramatic decline in energy intensity from the onset of economic reform in the late 1970s until 2000, but since then rate of decline slowed and energy intensity actually increased in 2003. Most previous studies found that most of the decline was due to technological change, but disagreed on the role of structural change. To the best of our knowledge, no decomposition study has investigated the role of inter-fuel substitution in the decline in energy intensity or the causes of the rise in energy intensity since 2000. In this paper, we use logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) techniques to decompose changes in energy intensity in the period 1980-2003. We find that: (1) technological change is confirmed as the dominant contributor to the decline in energy intensity; (2) structural change at the industry and sector (sub-industry) level actually increased energy intensity over the period of 1980-2003, although the structural change at the industry level was very different in the 1980s and in the post 1990 period; (3) structural change involving shifts of production between sub-sectors, however, decreased overall energy intensity; (4) the increase in energy intensity since 2000 is explained by negative technological progress; (5) inter-fuel substitution is found to contribute little to the changes in energy intensity.

Frontier In-Situ Resource Utilization for Enabling Sustained Human Presence on Mars

The currently known resources on Mars are massive, including extensive quantities of water and carbon dioxide and therefore carbon, hydrogen and oxygen for life support, fuels and plastics and much else. The regolith is replete with all manner of minerals. In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) applicable frontier technologies include robotics, machine intelligence, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, 3-D printing/additive manufacturing and autonomy. These technologies combined with the vast natural resources should enable serious, pre- and post-human arrival ISRU to greatly increase reliability and safety and reduce cost for human colonization of Mars. Various system-level transportation concepts employing Mars produced fuel would enable Mars resources to evolve into a primary center of trade for the inner solar system for eventually nearly everything required for space faring and colonization. Mars resources and their exploitation via extensive ISRU are the key to a viable, safe and affordable, human presence beyond Earth. The purpose of this paper is four-fold: 1) to highlight the latest discoveries of water, minerals, and other materials on Mars that reshape our thinking about the value and capabilities of Mars ISRU; 2) to summarize the previous literature on Mars ISRU processes, equipment, and approaches; 3) to point to frontier ISRU technologies and approaches that can lead to safe and affordable human missions to Mars; and 4) to suggest an implementation strategy whereby the ISRU elements are phased into the mission campaign over time to enable a sustainable and increasing human presence on Mars

Camera-based Image Forgery Localization using Convolutional Neural Networks

Camera fingerprints are precious tools for a number of image forensics tasks. A well-known example is the photo response non-uniformity (PRNU) noise pattern, a powerful device fingerprint. Here, to address the image forgery localization problem, we rely on noiseprint, a recently proposed CNN-based camera model fingerprint. The CNN is trained to minimize the distance between same-model patches, and maximize the distance otherwise. As a result, the noiseprint accounts for model-related artifacts just like the PRNU accounts for device-related non-uniformities. However, unlike the PRNU, it is only mildly affected by residuals of high-level scene content. The experiments show that the proposed noiseprint-based forgery localization method improves over the PRNU-based reference

Standardization Framework for Sustainability from Circular Economy 4.0

The circular economy (CE) is widely known as a way to implement and achieve sustainability, mainly due to its contribution towards the separation of biological and technical nutrients under cyclic industrial metabolism. The incorporation of the principles of the CE in the links of the value chain of the various sectors of the economy strives to ensure circularity, safety, and efficiency. The framework proposed is aligned with the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development regarding the orientation towards the mitigation and regeneration of the metabolic rift by considering a double perspective. Firstly, it strives to conceptualize the CE as a paradigm of sustainability. Its principles are established, and its techniques and tools are organized into two frameworks oriented towards causes (cradle to cradle) and effects (life cycle assessment), and these are structured under the three pillars of sustainability, for their projection within the proposed framework. Secondly, a framework is established to facilitate the implementation of the CE with the use of standards, which constitute the requirements, tools, and indicators to control each life cycle phase, and of key enabling technologies (KETs) that add circular value 4.0 to the socio-ecological transition