Matthew Phelan
Inverse
New York, United States
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Past articles by Matthew:
25 Years Later, 'The X-Files' Is Still TV’s Most Relevant Political Drama
Approximately 12 million shut-ins, loners and nerds were treated to something special on the second Friday of September, one quarter century ago: the first airing of 'The X-Files' on Fox. The show inspired many imitators, but no major network television drama in the years since grasped its command of American democr... → Read More
Making Solar Panels Can Be a Dirty Business
Transforming raw quartz, silver, and other substances into high-tech photovoltaic cells can be a hazardous process. The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition hopes that, by spotlighting the best actors like SunPower, SolarWorld, and Trina, they can improve the ecosystem as a whole. → Read More
Do Solar Panels Work? MIT Puts Dollar Amount on Pollution's Economic Impact
In Delhi, India, “there’s never a day without pollution,” according to MIT researcher Ian Marius Peters, and by his calculations it’s costing local solar energy users at least $20 million annually. Peters' team has compared air quality and solar energy data from 17 cities across the planet for their new paper. → Read More
Shapeshifting Material Transforms Under Light and Heat
Chemical and biological engineers at the University of Colorado have fabricated a plastic that can transform repeatedly from one complex, predefined shape to another based on changes in temperature or exposure to certain wavelengths of light. The material is made from liquid crystal elastomers common to video displays. → Read More
IBM's Barista Drone Patent Brings Biometric Sensors and Auctions to Coffee
IBM has patented a drone with cameras and biometric sensors designed to determine when a customer would like a caffeinated beverage, and then deliver. The filing, approved on August 7, 2018, also proposes auctioning off dwindling coffee reserves to the highest bidder, among other questionable innovations. → Read More
4D-Printed Ceramics Will Change Computing, Spaceflight, and Probably Mugs, Forever
Complex ceramic materials are essential to the modern world, from the capacitors in our electronics to the clear ceramic composites that prevent airplane windshields from getting icy or fogged up. So, a team at Hong Kong's CityU has developed a 4D-printing technique employing a more versatile ceramic precursor “ink.” → Read More
"Most Wear-Resistant Metal Alloy in the World" Developed in New Mexico
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories have crafted a 90-percent platinum, 10-percent gold metal alloy that approaches the wear-resistance of diamonds and sapphire -- which along with Carbonado (black diamond) constitute some of nature's most wear-resistant materials. → Read More
The Lakers' New Practice Facility is Solar-Powered, Photos and Video Show
In terms of reducing atmospheric carbon, the new Lakers training facility promises to be the the equivalent of 6,745 acres of forest cover, thanks to a new solar roofing project. The solar panels will reportedly generate an estimated 245,000 kilowatt-hours annually, or about 16 percent of the center’s energy needs. → Read More
Phone Battery Life Can Now Be Extended by Installing This Simple New App
With Android Nougat, the mobile OS got closer to something you might use on a laptop with the option to run more than one program on-screen. It can be a demanding workload for a phone, however, so a group at the University of Waterloo has devised a strategy to conserve battery life without losing the new functionality. → Read More
Sea Diving Robots Made a Mysterious Climate Change Discovery in Antarctica
Submersible drones are helping climatologists assess climate impact in the icy seas surrounding Antarctica. Until the development of these diving robots, studying the Southern Ocean usually required waiting until the warmer summer months when it's safer to travel and the water more readily assimilates carbon. → Read More
How Can We Save the Amazon and Restore Depleted Fisheries? End Tax Havens
Billions funneled through tax shelters, including Belize, Panama and the Cayman Islands, wended their way toward environmentally damaging cattle and soy projects in the Amazon as well as toward legally questionable fishing vessels, according to a new study in Nature Ecology & Evolution. → Read More
How Artificial Intelligence and 360-Cameras Are Helping to Save Coral Reefs
A team of researchers from the University of Queensland and elsewhere, deployed underwater scooters with 360-degree cameras photographing 1487 square miles of coral reef near Indonesia. Using A.I. cataloguing, the group plans to identify regions where coral could still thrive, with the help of conservationists. → Read More
The Strange Role of Chemtrails in the Debate About Fixing Climate Change
'Chemtrails' paranoids can breathe easy. New research out of UC Berkeley has determined that spraying the upper atmosphere with gases like carbonyl sulfide would likely be counterproductive to the task of mitigating climate change. The group published their results Wednesday in the journal Nature. → Read More
Cryptography May Hold the Key to Preventing a Surveillance Dystopia
Google received 27,850 requests for private user data in 2016. Microsoft was subjected to 9,907. These numbers are alarming, but they also amount to nearly all that the public knows about how the U.S. government currently deploys its power to request this data under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA). → Read More
Meeting the Paris Agreement's Climate Change Goals Requires Loads More Forest
To meet the goals set by the Paris climate agreement, nations need to start producing negative carbon emissions. One commonly talked about technique, bioenergy plus carbon capture and storage, or BECCS, will be less effective in many contexts than simply preserving and growing forest cover, a new study has found. → Read More
How Preferential Internet Enables High Speed Facial Recognition for Police
AT&T is providing law enforcement and first responders across America with a secure, high-speed communications network at a cost of $6.5 billion in federal funding over the next five years. But the new tools are raising concerns about privacy and public oversight of government agencies. → Read More
Water Filtration System Was Developed Using Just Fruit and Vegetable Peels
Chemists at universities in the United States, India, and Singapore have been developing organic and low-cost water filtration methods involving cellulosic fruit and vegetable waste. Dickinson College researchers recently found that lemon peels removed 96.4 percent of lead ions from contaminated water. → Read More
Decomposing Plastics Have Been a Source of Greenhouse Gases This Whole Time
A team at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa's Center for Microbial Oceanography has found that plastics are releasing potent greenhouse gases, including methane and ethylene, into the atmosphere at an alarming rate. The worst offender was low-density polyethylene, "the most used plastic in the world," they report. → Read More
UV Radiation Study Narrows Down List of Exoplanets That Could Support Life
With over 700 million trillion planets in the observable universe, astrobiologists would really like to narrow down what exoplanets are worth looking at. To find out, a new study looked at the photochemistry triggered by ultraviolet radiation on the early Earth, comparing it to the light produced by distance stars. → Read More
Plastic Straw Ban: Is the UK's Very Successful Plastic Bag Law the Answer?
Plastic straw bans have sparked a backlash from communities that have a demonstrable medical need for access to them, people with neuromuscular conditions, the elderly and the infirm. New data on 3 years of the UK's plastic bag policy shows a new path forward. → Read More