Greenhouse Mending

  Italian startup Energy Dome has proposed a dome full of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) gas to maintain electric grids when nonrenewables are not providing sufficient power (night time for solar and calms for wind).   When the grid has excess electrical power, compressors inside the dome compress the CO 2 while a refrigeration/heater system takes away the heat of compression to a heat storage unit.   The compressed CO 2 has a tremendous advantage in that it can become liquid at room temperature while storing a great deal of energy.   When electricity is needed, the refrigeration/heater system puts heat into some of the CO 2 , and the warmed CO 2 becomes a gas, expands through a turbine, and thus delivers electricity back to the grid.   Energy Dome claims that they should be able to store electricity at half the price of lithium batteries.

  Funguses (or fungi if you prefer) are both good and bad.   The good ones are tasty mushrooms or yeast that makes bread rise.   Bad funguses can damage wheat or potato crops.   Some of the worst funguses turn into a variety of poisons called aflatoxins.   Aflatoxins exist widely on many foods such as maize (corn to Americans), peanuts, sorghum, and rice.   These toxins were only discovered in the late 1950s because they only rarely cause short-term deaths.   Instead, they cause long-term development of liver disease, cancers, allergic reactions, and other symptoms. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates that 25% of global food crops are contaminated with aflatoxins and other fungal toxins, particularly in the developing world.   The fungal toxins are particularly serious in the developing world where food preservation is not always adequate —maintenance of dry conditions, canning, refrigeration, or freezing. ...