Former Shaunavon resident accomplishes major advancement in fusion energy
Town of Shaunavon/MIT News – A major accomplishment by a fusion energy project led by former Shaunavon resident, Dennis Whyte, has his team on track to build the world’s first fusion device that can create and confine a plasma that produces more energy than it consumes.
“It’s really a watershed moment, I believe, in fusion science and technology,” said Whyte, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
Years of intense research and design work resulted in, for the first time ever, a large high-temperature superconducting electromagnet being ramped up to a field strength of 20 tesla, the most powerful magnetic field of its kind ever created on Earth.
This accomplishment resolves one of the most significant technological uncertainties around the possibility of building the first fusion power plant on Earth. That goal has been pursued for decades with limited progress.
Fusion power plants that can produce more power than they consume are being pursued to become practical, inexpensive carbon-free power plants to help limit the effects of global climate change.
“Fusion in a lot of ways is the ultimate clean energy source,” Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice-president for research and E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics explained.
“The amount of power that is available is really game-changing.”
Fusion is the process that powers the sun. It is the merging of two small atoms to make a larger one, releasing massive amounts of energy. No solid material can withstand such high temperatures. Something that hot — 100,000,000 degrees or more — must be suspended so that no contact is made with anything solid. Intense magnetic fields control the hot plasma swirl of protons and electrons by forming what is described as an invisible bottle shaped like a doughnut.
What is innovative about this project’s design is the use of high-temperature superconductors, which enable a much stronger magnetic field in a smaller space than what has been possible with previous electromagnets or low-temperature semiconductors. A new kind of superconducting material became commercially available a few years ago, making this design possible.
The project originated in a Nuclear Science and Engineering course that Whyte is leading at MIT and is being done with start-up company Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). Their demonstration device, called SPARC, is targeted for completion in 2025.
Whyte has been fascinated by fusion energy and physics since he was a student living in Shaunavon. He was introduced to the concepts of energy and voltage through his father’s work for SaskTel.
He pursued his interest at the University of Saskatchewan where he achieved his Bachelor of Engineering Physics before moving on to the University of Quebec to complete his doctorate. For nearly 30 years, he has been dedicated to researching fusion energy in the U.S., publishing numerous papers and receiving many awards. For the last 15 years, he has been researching at MIT.
Ontario removing barriers for immigrants to work as engineers in Canada
CTV – Ontario is introducing legislation to make it easier for immigrants to be licensed to work as engineers by not requiring Canadian work experience.
Licensing bodies would still be able to apply for exemptions that could require Canadian work experience, but Ontario’s labour minister, Monte McNaughton, said they would need government approval.
“They have to make a health and safety case, which would come to the minister for approval,” he said.
What is being proposed would also standardize English-language testing requirements and ensure licensing applications are processed faster, a move McNaughton says will remove barriers immigrants often face. McNaughton hopes to see the changes brought by the legislation take effect in two years.
Ontario is facing a labour shortage with around 293,000 jobs unfilled across the province. This bill would apply to architects, teachers, accountants and social workers as well as 23 trades.
Alberta bill proposes deadlines for registrations
Everything Grande Prairie/CTV Calgary/CBC – Legislation proposed in Alberta would make it possible for engineers and geoscientists applying for jobs in that province from another province to become registered within a month.
The Alberta government introduced the Labour Mobility Act in late October. It applies to more than 100 regulated occupations in Alberta.
Under the bill, a regulator must let an applicant know within 10 days their application was received and a decision on it must be made within 20 working days. That decision must be shared with the applicant within 10 days.
“The act will make Alberta the first and the only jurisdiction in Canada to legislate timelines for registration decisions,” said Labour and Immigration Minister Tyler Shandro.
Information about fees and documentation required in Alberta would need to be published on regulators’ websites. A timely review process would need to be established and a record of decisions would need to be kept for three years.
The changes being proposed are to help Alberta attract skilled labour. The government pointed to a C.D. Howe Institute report from last year that said that reducing the cost of labour mobility by $500 per person per year could help Alberta attracted around 20,000 additional workers a year. That would add $2.8 billion per year to the provincial economy.
Engineers and Geoscientists B.C. completes review to ensure legislative compliance
Engineers & Geoscientists British Columbia — Engineers and Geoscientists B.C. Council and staff reviewed its programs and activities against a framework developed after a legislation change in that province.
The review was done against a framework provided by the Superintendent of Professional Governance.
The Office of the Superintendent of Professional Governance is an oversight body introduced in B.C. through the Professional Governance Act (PGA) in February 2021.
That legislation also brought forward a new regulatory framework while restricting certain advocacy activities for the regulators under its authority. It intends to ensure that regulators focus only on activities that support their regulatory mandate.
The review determined that core operations and most other programs of Engineers and Geoscientists BC can continue.
However, some require modest changes in order to comply with the PGA. Two online directories that allow registrants to advertise their services or employment availability were closed. Also, the Benevolent Fund Society, which provided financial grants to registrants in need, will be dissolved.
The staff and council also considered a registrant motion that had come forward at the 2019 Annual General Meeting proposing that Council consider establishing a separate advocacy body.
Council directed that staff report back to Council (no earlier than fall 2022) with an assessment of whether the question of a separate advocacy body should be revisited.
U of A course aims to uplift Indigenous voices in STEM
University of Alberta Gateway — After seeing a lack of Indigenous representation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) growing up, a University of Alberta professor is working to have those voices be heard.
Associate professor Kim TallBear is the principal investigator of the Indigenous Science, Technology, and Society research and teaching hub in the faculty of native studies at the U of A. In partnership with associate professor Jessica Kolopenuk, TallBear helped develop the Indigenous Peoples and Technoscience course which aims to refute the separation of Indigenous knowledge and science.
The course is available online through the U of A’s faculty of native studies webpage.
McMaster University student reflects on National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
Engineering McMaster — McMaster University promoted the stories of some of its campus community members for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
James LeMoine, a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering, was one of those community members. LeMoine is the recipient of the 2021 Indigenous and Black Engineering/Technology (IBET) PhD Fellowship in the Faculty of Engineering. He completed his undergraduate and master’s degree at McMaster University and is currently researching electro hydrodynamics (EHD) with the ultimate goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and the carbon footprint.
LeMoine is Anishinaabe from the Mississauga of the Credit First Nation and part of the Migizi (Eagle) clan. He explained how an event to promote post-secondary education to Indigenous high school students inspired him to learn more about how earlier generations of his family were affected by residential schools and how that trickled down to his life experience. He also provided a reading list for others who want to learn more about Indigenous Canadians’ experiences. Some titles he recommends are:
• 21 Things You Might Not Know About the Indian Act by Bob Joseph
• Living in the Tall Grass by Stacey Laforme
• The inconvenient Indian by Thomas King
• Treaty words: For as long as the river flows by Aimée Craft
Mini-conference outlines reconciliation opportunities for engineers
Canadian Consulting Engineer — RJC Engineers, an engineering firm with locations across Canada, helped mark Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation by co-hosting a virtual mini-conference that drew more than 500 registrants from across Canada.
The mini-conference outlined some of the ways consulting engineers can contribute to Indigenous communities and inclusion. It was titled ‘Building a Foundation for Reconciliation: The Role of Architecture, Engineering and Construction in Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas’. It was organized by the Conservation through Reconciliation Partnership as part of its Virtual Campfire Series.
The purpose of the IISAAK OLAM Foundation is to support the establishment of Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas (IPCAs) and to educate Canadians in general about their value and relevance. Eli Enns is the co-founder and CEO of the foundation.
“I see great opportunity for reconciliation through engagement with professions like engineering,” said Enns.
“We need to integrate natural and human infrastructure in a more balanced way. If we work with Mother Nature, through examples like micro-hydroelectric generation, we can be more resilient.”
Two-eyed seeing is a concept that combines Indigenous and Western ways of knowing that comes from Mi’kmaw Elder Albert Marshall. The need to enhance traditional engineering design approaches with greater empathy for users was emphasized by Eric Wilson, the design engineer with RJC and civil engineering PhD candidate at the University of Victoria.
“IPCAs offer the opportunity to benefit from Two-Eyed Seeing,” said Wilson.
“At the heart of engineering, we’re designing infrastructure to make people’s lives better, which is empathetic; but issues can arise when a project, such as a social housing complex, is being paid for by someone other than the end user.”
Drone transports lungs for transplant in world first
BNN/Bloomberg – A set of lungs were transported by a drone through Toronto in what is being hailed as a first.
The lungs were in the air for just six minutes as they were transported from Toronto Western Hospital to Toronto General Hospital. They were suspended from the drone in a lightweight, carbon fibre container. Those lungs were successfully transplanted into an engineer who is a drone enthusiast.
“To see it come over the tall buildings was a very exciting moment,” said Dr. Shaf Keshavjee, who performed the surgery.
“I certainly did breathe a sigh of relief, when it landed and I was able to…see that everything was OK.”
Keshavjee – as well as bioengineering firm Unither Bioelectronique in Bromont, Que. –expect many more organs will be delivered like this in the future in North America. Faster deliveries mean fragile and temperature-sensitive organs are less likely to deteriorate so that transplants have better odds of lasting, which helps when there is a shortage of organ donors.
For 18 months, the team of Mikael Cardinal prepared for this flight. He is Unither Bioelectronique’s vice-president of program management for organ delivery system. He has a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Université de Sherbrooke, including a major in aeronautics, as well as a master’s degree from the Université de Sherbrooke.
The team designed a container to withstand changes in elevation, barometric pressure, vibrations and other jarring events. It held practice flights that were loaded with dummy packages simulating lungs. It did drop tests for the final drone and container, which were outfitted with a parachute and advanced GPS system. It had to receive clearance to fly the drone in the busy area.
The first organ flown by a drone was a kidney transplanted in 2019 at University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore.
Climate change scientists win Nobel Prize for physics
Washington Post — Laying down a foundation of knowledge about the Earth’s climate and how humanity influences it so that global warming can be reliably predicted has won two scientists — Syukuro Manabe of the United States and Klaus Hasselmann of Germany – a Nobel Prize in physics.
The prize was shared by Giorgio Parisi, a theoretical physicist at the Sapienza University of Rome, for describing fluctuating physical systems and disorder on scales from atoms to planets.
All three have developed accurate predictions for phenomena as chaotic as weather and climate and were honoured for “ground-breaking contributions to our understanding of complex physical systems,” said Göran K. Hansson, secretary general of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
“The notion of global warming is resting on solid science.”
It is very unusual for a meteorologist to be awarded a physics prize. Manabe is a meteorologist at Princeton University who has been described by his colleagues as the “father of climate modeling,” able to simulate aspects of global warming before anyone else. He has modeled the Earth’s climate since the 1960s, demonstrating how increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will lead to increased temperatures at the surface of the Earth.
The Nobel committee explained how a model used by Manabe and hundreds of hours of computing hours led to a critical finding that confirms the key role carbon dioxide plays in heating the planet. That finding is essential for proving that human industry, which releases carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, drives climate change.
The model was of a 25-mile-high column of air used to examine the interplay between solar radiation on the planet’s surface and the vertical movement of air due to convection. Computing tested what happened with different levels of gases. The finding was that “if you double the carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere, the surface temperature would increase by two degrees Celsius,” Yale University physicist John Wettlaufer said.
Almost all of work has been confirmed by 50 years of climate research. In addition to influential carbon dioxide model, Manabe has also contributed to predicting how an influx of fresh water into the sea from melting polar ice would alter ocean circulation, slowing the global conveyor belt that influences continental temperatures and coastal sea levels and showed that warming can shape tropical storms.
Hasselmann, another winner, linked weather with climate about a decade after Manabe developed his model. Hasselmann showed how weather, which works on a time scale of days, influences ocean climate over years.
LEGO researches attitudes about gendered play
CTV News– LEGO released the results of a study about the views held by girls, boys and their parents about the gendering of play and creativity, saying parents may be limiting their daughters.
The study included online, opt-in surveys of 6,844 children aged 6-14 and parents across China, Czech Republic, Japan, Poland, Russia, U.K. and the U.S. The research was done by the Geena Davis Institute.
It found that 74 per cent of boys believe some activities are just for girls and some are just for boys, compared to only 62 per cent of girls who believe the same.
More boys (71 per cent) said they worried about being made fun of if they played with a toy considered to be for girls compared to girls (42 per cent) worrying about how they’d be perceived for playing with a toy associated with boys.
Parents were asked about their implicit bias in the surveys. Parents were asked to think of a scientist or athlete and explain if that person they imagined was a man or a woman. Eighty-five per cent of parents said a man.
They were asked the same about an engineer. The percentage was higher with 89 per cent thinking of a man.
Parents were also asked about activities for their children. A minimal percentage – 20 per cent or less – said they would encourage boys to dance, dress-up or cook/bake compared to girls. Meanwhile, a small percentage – under 30 per cent – would encourage girls to play video games and video games or encourage them to code compared to boys.
When it came to LEGO, nearly 60 per cent of parents directly stated they encourage their sons to play with LEGO compared to just 48 per cent who encouraged their daughters. Through questions designed to reveal implicit bias, a greater gap was discovered. Those questions found 76 per cent of parents encouraging LEGO for a boy versus 24 per cent for a girl.
LEGO recently announced it will move away from gendering their toys in their marketing as it seeks “to champion inclusive play.”
World Heritage site studied for engineering feats of early Indigenous people
New York Post – A new study sheds light on the “sophisticated” engineering work by early Indigenous people at the World Heritage Site at Poverty Point in northern Louisiana.
Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis revealed new details about a 72-foot-tall dirt mound surrounded by concentric half-circle ridges (like ripples on the surface of water) made of 2 million cubic yards of soil. These massive earthen structures were built to last more than 3,400 years — a huge undertaking that would have been completed in months without modern tools, work animals or even wheeled carts for hauling material.
Researchers believe the area was an important religious gathering place for Indigenous people. It was abandoned 2,000 years ago most likely because of regular floods in the Mississippi River Valley, said Tristram Kidder, the lead author of the study, which was published in Southeastern Archaeology.
The structure is especially significant because the people living in that area at that time are believed to be hunter-gatherers who would have had to work in concert to complete the work at an impressive and consistent speed. Archaeologists found no evidence of there being a break between phases of work, which would be indicated by regular weathering of the structure due to rain and climate.
The dirt-based structures at Poverty Point “have held together … with no failure or major erosion,” said Kidder.
“They really were incredible engineers with very sophisticated technical knowledge,”
Kidder credits the Indigenous builders’ thorough understanding of geology and earth sciences for the ability of the structure to withstand years of heavy rain, powerful hurricanes and flooding in the area where they were built.
“Similar to the Roman concrete or rammed earth in China, (they) discovered sophisticated ways of mixing different types of materials to make them virtually indestructible, despite not being compacted,” Kidder explained.
He added, “There’s some magic there that our modern engineers have not been able to figure out yet.”
Geology contributes to understanding origin of Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere
Scientific American — One of geology’s greatest unsolved mysteries has been confronted by studying colorful mats of primitive microbes living in a sinkhole at the bottom of Lake Huron.
Initially, Judith Klatt, a biogeochemist at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, thought that, through her research, she would learn something about Earth’s early ecosystems.
Instead, she has contributed to our understanding of how, exactly, Earth become the only planet known to have an oxygen-rich atmosphere.
Geologic clues suggest microbes may have started releasing oxygen via photosynthesis as early as three billion years ago or even before. But it took about half a billion years for that oxygen to build up in the atmosphere and then a billion more for it to reach modern levels and set the stage for complex life.
Scientists have long been puzzled by those delays. Klatt and her colleagues identified a possible explanation based on her sinkhole work — early Earth’s days were simply too short.
Then, soon after the solar system formed, a Mars-sized object crashed into Earth and sent up a spray of debris that became the moon. Drag from it gradually slowed the planet’s rotation, increasing the length of a day from about six hours to 24 hours today.
That slowdown has been known by scientists for decades, but few linked it to oxygen levels.
Then, University of Michigan oceanographer Brian Arbic heard a talk about Klatt’s work with a Lake Huron sinkhole. Arbic, a co-author on the new paper published in Nature Geoscience, wondered whether changing day length could have affected photosynthesis over geologic time.
Because it is fed by oxygen-poor, sulfur-rich groundwater, the sinkhole approximates conditions on early Earth. Communities of microscopic bacteria blanket the lake bottom in purple and white mats. Klatt and her colleagues examined how photosynthesizing, oxygen-producing cyanobacteria lie hidden under sulfur-eating competitors at night—and how the two literally swap positions at dawn and dusk.
The researchers found that the time they take to trade places creates a lag between when the sun rises and when photosynthesis ramps up, limiting how much oxygen the mats can generate on short days. Klatt showed in the lab that the mats produced no oxygen on artificially-created short days, but oxygen production increased when the “day” got longer.
Greenland promotes mining of environmentally responsible mineral
Reuters – A mineral known as anorthosite that is found on the moon as well as countries on Earth, including Canada, is drawing the attention of mining companies, investors and even NASA to Greenland.
Anorthosite is a rock that was created in the early days in the formation of our planet. Mining companies and investors are hoping to sell it as an ingredient to make fibreglass as well as a relatively sustainable source of aluminium. Anorthosite can be used as an alternative to bauxite to produce aluminium, one of the minerals seen as central to reducing greenhouse gas emissions because it can be used to make vehicles lighter and is fully recyclable.
Meanwhile, NASA is interested in the mining of anorthosite as it tests equipment that would involve mining on the moon and even establishing communities there. NASA has been using crushed anorthosite powder from a smaller Greenland mine already in production, operated by Canadian-based Hudson Resources.
“The deposits in Greenland and elsewhere are not exactly like the moon, but they’re pretty darn close,” said John Gruener, a space scientist at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre.
“If we’re really going to live off the land at the south pole of the moon, which everybody is interested in now, we will have to learn how to deal with anorthosite, the dominant rock that’s there,” he said. “Having another supply of anorthosite from Greenland is great.”
Greenland’s government, elected in April, has an ambition to grow its tiny economy so it can realise its long-term goal of independence from Denmark, but it intends to honour the environmental platform on which it campaigned. Greenland is promoting anorthosite as an environmentally responsible mineral while banning future oil and gas exploration and wanting to reinstate a ban on uranium mining.