Silver buckshot or bullet: is a future 'energy mix' necessary?

To displace fossil fuels and achieve the global greenhouse-gas emissions reductions required to meet the Paris Agreement on climate change, the prevalent argument is that a mix of different low-carbon energy sources will need to be deployed. Here we seek to challenge that viewpoint. We argue that a completely decarbonized, energy-rich and sustainable future could be achieved with a dominant deployment of next-generation nuclear fission and associated technologies for synthesizing liquid fuels and recycling waste. By contrast, non-dispatchable energy sources like wind and solar energy are arguably superfluous, other than for niche applications, and run the risk of diverting resources away from viable and holistic solutions. For instance, the pairing of variable renewables with natural-gas backup fails to address many of the entrenched problems we seek to solve. Our conclusion is that, given the urgent time frame and massive extent of the energy-replacement challenge, half-measures that distract from or stymie effective policy and infrastructure investment should be avoided

Multi-step self-guided pathways for shape-changing metamaterials

Multi-step pathways, constituted of a sequence of reconfigurations, are central to a wide variety of natural and man-made systems. Such pathways autonomously execute in self-guided processes such as protein folding and self-assembly, but require external control in macroscopic mechanical systems, provided by, e.g., actuators in robotics or manual folding in origami. Here we introduce shape-changing mechanical metamaterials, that exhibit self-guided multi-step pathways in response to global uniform compression. Their design combines strongly nonlinear mechanical elements with a multimodal architecture that allows for a sequence of topological reconfigurations, i.e., modifications of the topology caused by the formation of internal self-contacts. We realized such metamaterials by digital manufacturing, and show that the pathway and final configuration can be controlled by rational design of the nonlinear mechanical elements. We furthermore demonstrate that self-contacts suppress pathway errors. Finally, we demonstrate how hierarchical architectures allow to extend the number of distinct reconfiguration steps. Our work establishes general principles for designing mechanical pathways, opening new avenues for self-folding media, pluripotent materials, and pliable devices in, e.g., stretchable electronics and soft robotics.Comment: 16 pages, 3 main figures, 10 extended data figures. See https://youtu.be/8m1QfkMFL0I for an explanatory vide

Micro-aerobic bacterial methane oxidation in the chemocline and anoxic water column of deep south-Alpine Lake Lugano (Switzerland)

We measured seasonal variations in the vertical distribution of methane concentration, methane oxidation rates, and lipid biomarkers in the northern basin of Lake Lugano. Methane consumption below the oxic–anoxic interface co-occurred with concentration maxima of 13C-depleted C16 fatty acid biomarkers (with d13C values as low as 270%) in the anoxic water column, as well as characteristic d13CCH4 profiles. We argue that the conspicuous methane concentration gradients are primarily driven by (micro-)aerobic methane oxidation (MOx) below the chemocline. We measured a strong MOx potential throughout the anoxic water column, while MOx rates at in situ O2 concentration . 10 nmol L21 were undetectable. Similarly, we found MOx-related biomarkers and gene sequences encoding the particulate methane monooxygenase in the anoxic, but not the oxic, water. The mechanism of (episodic) oxygen supply sustaining the MOx community in anoxic waters is still uncertain. Our results indicate that a bacterial methanotrophic community is responsible for the methane consumption in Lake Lugano, without detectable contribution from archaeal methanotrophs. Bacterial populations that accumulated both at the suboxic–anoxic interface and in the deeper anoxic hypolimnion, where maximum potential MOx rates were observed throughout the year (1.5–2.5 mmol L21 d21) were mainly related to Methylobacter sp. Close relatives are found in lacustrine environments throughout the world, and their potential to thrive under micro- and anoxic conditions in Lake Lugano may imply that micro-aerobic methane oxidation is important in methane cycling and competition for methane and oxygen in stratified lakes worldwide