Bacteria helping to
extract rare metals from old batteries
in boost for green tech

Scientists have formed an unusual new alliance in their fight against climate change -- They are using #bacteria to help them extract #rare #metals vital in the development of green technology.

Without the help of these microbes, we could run out of raw materials to build turbines, electric cars and solar panels, they say.

The work is being spearheaded by scientists at the University of Edinburgh and aims to
use bacteria that can extract lithium, cobalt, manganese and other minerals from old batteries and discarded electronic equipment.

These scarce and expensive metals are vital for making electric cars and other devices upon which green technology devices depend -- a point stressed by Professor Louise Horsfall, chair of sustainable biotechnology at Edinburgh.

“If we are going to end our dependence on petrochemicals and rely on electricity for our heating, transport and power, then ️we will become more and more dependent on metals,” said Horsfall.

“All those photovoltaics, drones, 3D printing machines, hydrogen fuel cells, wind turbines and motors for electric cars require metals – many of them rare – that are key to their operations.”

Politics is also an issue, scientists warn.
#China controls not only the main supplies of rare earth elements, but dominates the processing of them as well.

“To get around these problems we need to develop a #circular #economy where we #reuse these minerals wherever possible, otherwise we will run out of materials very quickly,” said Horsfall.

“There is only a finite amount of these metals on Earth and we can no longer afford to throw them away as waste as we do now.

We need new #recycling technologies if we want to do something about global warming.”

And the key to this recycling was the microbe, said Horsfall.
“#Bacteria are wonderful, little crazy things that can carry out some weird and wonderful processes. Some bacteria can synthesise nanoparticles of metals, for example.

We believe they do this as a detoxification process. Basically they latch on metal atoms and then they spit them out as nanoparticles so that they are not poisoned by them.”

Using such strains of bacteria, Horsfall and her team have now taken waste from electronic batteries and cars, dissolved it and then used bacteria to latch on to specific metals in the waste and deposit these as solid chemicals.

“First we did it with #manganese. Later we did it with #nickel and #lithium. And then we used a different strain of bacteria and we were able to extract #cobalt and nickel.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/25/bacteria-helping-to-extract-rare-metals-from-old-batteries-in-boost-for-green-tech?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Election denialism front and center at Republican national convention

“Don’t fuck us,” #Lara #Logan, the former CBS News anchor turned to me and said.
“If you use the word #conspiracy theorist in your story, I’m going to haunt you when I #die.”

It was the third day of the Republican national #convention and Logan was standing in the atrium of a hotel that was once the old Pabst Brewery in Milwaukee.
She was there to moderate a presentation by #Jim #Hoft,
the founder of the far-right website #Gateway #Pundit, and his twin brother, Joe, who is also a contributor to the site.

The site, which has become a launchpad for #misinformation,
has been in hot water recently.
The site declared #bankruptcy in April in order to delay civil suits from two #Georgia election workers and a former #Dominion Voting Systems employee who say the site defamed them.
The site denies publishing #libelous claims against the women.

The event billed as a “blockbuster interview” on the site’s “legal challenges and new beginnings” underscored how doubts about the outcome of the 2020 election continue to grip Republicans
(a PRRI poll from January found that 63% of Republicans believe the 2020 election was #stolen).

Inside and outside of the convention hall, it was clear in speeches and interviews with attendees throughout the week that doubts about the 2020 election remain,
and the possibility of another “stolen” vote looms.

The most direct reference to a stolen election in 2020 came in a pre-recorded video from Donald Trump
that aired on the jumbotron each night.
It was only one of two videos that repeated
(the other was a goofy video of Trump doing a wiggle-type dance to the song #YMCA).

“The most important thing we have to do is protect the vote.
You have to keep your eyes open because these people want to cheat
and they do cheat, and, frankly, it’s the only thing they do well,” Trump said in the video.

Republican speakers steered clear of the 2020 election results directly,
and instead repeatedly emphasized the threat of #non-#citizen voting,
which is exceedingly #rare and yet nonetheless has become a central part of the party’s #messaging around elections.

Just as Trump pointed to mail-in ballots to seed #doubt about the 2020 election,
experts believe that the emphasis on non-citizen voting is an effort to seed doubt about the election results in 2024.

At the Gateway Pundit event, there was little new information.
Jim Hoft walked the 20 or so attendees
– the event was also livestreamed on X
– through video footage that purported to show Georgia election workers running ballots through tabulator machines several times.

“We think this is important because in my world anyway where I grew up, you kind of count ballots two or three times,” Jim Hoft said.
He insisted that nothing the site had published had been disproven.

The claim that ballots were scanned multiple times in Georgia has been
#debunked repeatedly
and the women have both been cleared of any wrongdoing.

If there’s an issue scanning a single ballot within a batch
– a jam or a smudge on a ballot
– it’s common practice for election workers to delete the incomplete batch to #rescan the entire group until they have the correct total.

The state also conducted a hand recount of every single vote cast in the presidential race in Georgia that #confirmed Joe Biden’s win there.

At the convention, there was little doubt that the next election could be #rigged.
The struggle of the Biden campaign and Trump’s strong standing in the polls only increased the belief that any Democratic victory would be illegitimate.
Speaking at an Axios event on the sidelines of the convention, Donald Trump #Jr said that if Trump lost it would be because of “#cheating”.
“We’re going to have to make sure we have people watching [the election] very closely,” he said at the event.
“I don’t think that Joe Biden over-performed only in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, Milwaukee
– I just don’t #believe that’s real,” he said.

As part of their messaging around non-citizen voting, Republicans recently passed legislation in the US House that would
require anyone who registers to vote to show proof of citizenship.
Speakers at the convention picked up the mantle by suggesting that Democrats had opened the borders to allow non-citizens to vote.

#Kari #Lake, who is running for a US Senate seat in Arizona,
falsely accused her opponent, Representative Ruben Gallego,
of voting to “let the millions of people who poured into our country illegally cast a ballot in this upcoming election”.

Imagining a second Biden term, Senator Rick Scott of Florida said: “It was easy for Democrats to rig the elections – they simply allowed all the non-citizens to vote.”

“[Democrats] want illegals to vote now that they opened the border,” Steve Scalise, a top Republican in the US House, said in his speech.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/19/election-denialism-republican-convention?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other