Wednesday, February 21, 2024

To find, again, The Heart of Mother Ocean...

[image credit: DimaDim_art on pixabay.com]


In 2022, when I decided to leave the Pacific Coast, and look for a small town to endure the time I would need to have work done on my boat - I didn't imagine staying for more than 6-12 months.

After having the boat destroyed in early April 2023 - the refuge I had established became a place of healing - and a place to endure until a clearer path ahead emerged.

Looking back now, over the last 14 months - I also see that this isolation was necessary - to find again that spark of joy for Mother Ocean.

The longer I abide here, the deeper the desire will grow to return to the ocean again.

It is a bit of a paradox - to find again my love for a thing, I must first abandon it.


Wednesday, January 31, 2024

My Photo Caption Submission - Makes Top-10 for Latitude38 February 2024 magazine

 

[image credit: Latitude38.com - February 2024 magazine]

My submission placed in the top-10 for the Latitude38 sailing magazine's February edition Photo Caption Contest.
(some of my finest writing)
 
 

Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Thursday, November 2, 2023

Vendor: Professional Plastics

https://www.professionalplastics.com

Fullerton, CA (Corporate HQ)
 

Professional Plastics, Inc.
1810 E. Valencia Dr.
Fullerton, CA 92831
 

Toll Free: 800-878-0755

Local: 714-446-6500
Fax: 714-447-0114

sales@proplas.com


https://www.professionalplastics.com/Small-Boats-and-Watercraft

"Overview of Small Boats & Watercraft (3732-SB) — Recreational boating is a popular leisure activity in the U.S. More than 88 million U.S. adults participated in recreational boating in 2013, using a boat for (sports) activities such as fishing and water skiing and/or to travel. The U.S. recreational boating market had an estimated retail value of almost 37 billion U.S. dollars in 2013. Sales of new recreational boats amounted to just over six billion U.S. dollars. In total, 11.99 million recreational boating vessels were registered in the U.S. in 2013. These boats are classified into several categories: sailboats, personal watercrafts, sterndrive boats, inboard boats and outboard boats. Professional Plastics offers a full-range of products used on small boats and watercraft including King StarBoard® HDPE which is commonly used for Hatches, Doors, Grab Rails & Handles, Step and Dock Boxes, Rod & Cup Holders, Countertops (other than galley), Chairs, Tray Tables, Frames and Trim. We also offer a wide range of lightweight materials, and glazing materials used for windshields, windows, mirrors and other applications. Our tubing products are used for fluid lines, and we offer spiral-cut tubing which is used for electrical wire wrapping."



G-10 products, for example (illustrative, not exhaustive):

https://www.professionalplastics.com/G-10--FR4

"Overview of G-10/FR4 — G-10 (or G-10/FR4) is a composite material composed of woven fiberglass cloth with an epoxy resin binder that is flame resistant (self-extinguishing)."

https://www.professionalplastics.com/G10FR4SHEET

Friday, October 13, 2023

2024 Singapore Yachting Festival (April 25-28)

Image by confused_me from Pixabay



I have plans to be in Japan during the month of April 2024, helping facilitate a conference.

Afterward, I'm tentatively planning to fly to Singapore for their 2024 Yachting Festival. 

https://singaporeyachtingfestival.com/
https://singaporeyachtingfestival.com/schedule/

Venue:
ONE°15 MARINA SENTOSA COVE
11 COVE DRIVE, SENTOSA COVE, 098497 SINGAPORE

Note: The 2023 event reportedly had over 9,000 attendees.

Sunday, May 28, 2023

Electrical generation from humidity

 Scientists find way to make energy from air using nearly any material
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/scientists-find-way-to-make-energy-from-air-using-nearly-any-material/ar-AA1bKlsG

"Nearly any material can be used to turn the energy in air humidity into electricity, scientists found in a discovery that could lead to continuously producing clean energy with little pollution."

"The research, published in a paper in Advanced Materials, builds on 2020 work that first showed energy could be pulled from the moisture in the air using material harvested from bacteria. The new study shows nearly any material can be used, like wood or silicon, as long as it can be smashed into small particles and remade with microscopic pores. But there are many questions about how to scale the product."

 

Generic Air-Gen Effect in Nanoporous Materials for Sustainable Energy Harvesting from Air Humidity
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/adma.202300748

"Air humidity is a vast, sustainable reservoir of energy that, unlike solar and wind, is continuously available. However, previously described technologies for harvesting energy from air humidity are either not continuous or require unique material synthesis or processing, which has stymied scalability and broad deployment. Here, a generic effect for continuous energy harvesting from air humidity is reported, which can be applied to a broad range of inorganic, organic, and biological materials. The common feature of these materials is that they are engineered with appropriate nanopores to allow air water to pass through and undergo dynamic adsorption–desorption exchange at the porous interface, resulting in surface charging. The top exposed interface experiences this dynamic interaction more than the bottom sealed interface in a thin-film device structure, yielding a spontaneous and sustained charging gradient for continuous electric output. Analyses of material properties and electric outputs lead to a “leaky capacitor” model that can describe how electricity is harvested and predict current behaviors consistent with experiments. Predictions from the model guide the fabrication of devices made from heterogeneous junctions of different materials to further expand the device category. The work opens a wide door for the broad exploration of sustainable electricity from air."

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

News: New Ultralight Material Is Tougher than Steel and Kevlar

 New Ultralight Material Is Tougher than Steel and Kevlar

"A joint research project's findings have just been published in the journal Nature Materials from engineers from MIT, Caltech, and ETH Zurich that has yielded a "nano-architectured" material"

"The material is thinner than a strand of human hair and able to prevent high-speed particles from penetrating it."

"This could potentially mean that when produced on a larger scale, the new material should be able to provide a very tough, lightweight, alternative to more conventional impact-resistant materials (lie Kevlar or steel plate)." 

 

https://interestingengineering.com/science/newly-developed-molecular-nanofibers-are-stronger-than-steel

"A group of researchers from MIT developed a new class of small molecules that spontaneously assemble into nanoribbons stronger than steel."

"The MIT group's material is modeled after a cell membrane, the outer part of which is "hydrophilic," meaning it is stable in water. The inner part, meanwhile, is "hydrophobic," meaning it avoids water."

 

Self-assembly of aramid amphiphiles into ultra-stable nanoribbons and aligned nanoribbon threads 

Nature Nanotechnology volume 16pages 447–454 (2021)