March madness: Renewables break the 100 mark in Portugal-Electricity Consumption

Portugal is a formidable newsmaker this month in renewables. The average renewable generation for March exceeded 103% of consumption.

Spelled out further, for the month of March, renewable supplied 103.6 % of the country's electricity demand on the mainland. This marked the first time in at least four decades that Portugal produced over 100% of its electricity from renewable, said Reuters.

The data are from REN, Redes Energéticas Nacionais, the nation's transmission system operator.

Numerous sites including IFLScience examined the results and said hydroelectric power (55%) and wind (42%) provided most of the monthly energy consumption of renewables.

NPR noted "the windy hills north of Lisbon, once filled with grain windmills," were being populated with wind turbines. Reuters noted that "Portugal, with its long Atlantic coast line, was one of the early pioneers in the mass use of wind power."

Portugal generated enough renewable energy to power the whole country in March—on the mainland. Camila Domonoske, NPR reporter, said, "Portugal also includes several islands, which have separate energy systems."

Nonetheless, said Michael Coren in Quartz, "plenty of caveats remain." Applause is due to Portugal for the March numbers but the question remains if the feat can be sustained in the longer run.

He said, "The proposition that a full year's worth of peaks and valleys can be managed with renewables alone has yet to be tested."

The grid ran on 100% renewables for relatively short periods: two 70 hour spans; imports and conventional generation were still needed to balance the grid because solar and wind can vary significantly. "It wasn't a clean run, so to speak," saidIFLScience: "On some days, fossil fuels were required to meet the demand for Portugal's electricity grid, but overall, clean energy won out."

Interestingly, IFLScience reported that extremely heavy rainfall hit Portugal in March, which indubitably filled its hydroelectric reservoirs up to optimum levels.

Reuters said, "March saw four times the monthly averagerainfall, ending a long period of severe drought in the country, according to the Portuguese Sea and Atmosphere Institute. The downpour refilled most of the dammed reservoirs to levels of over 80 percent."

"The real test of Portugal's renewable electricity sector, then, said IFLScience, "will be when the cold revisits the Iberian Peninsula toward the end of the year. If renewables still outpace fossil fuels, then we know we're far more likely to be onto a winner."

Moving forward, Portugal is focused on a renewables future. With all the outside nudges toward caveats, the mainland appears to be focused on good things to come. From Reuters: "'Last month's achievement is an example of what will happen more frequently in the near future. It is expected that by 2040 the production of renewable electricity will be able to guarantee, in a cost-effective way, the total annual electricity consumption of mainland Portugal,' the report said."

Knowledge gaps in getting accurate blood pressure reading- For Cardiovascular Health

Crossing your legs or even talking can have a significant impact on your blood pressure reading according to the American Heart Association, which identifies seven common errors that can lead to inaccurate blood pressure readings.

May is National High Blood Pressure Education Month and the American Heart Association, the nation's largest volunteer health organization, is bringing to light these measurement mistakes – all of which can lead to an artificially high reading:

               1.         Having a full bladder – This can add 10-15 points to your reading. You should always empty your bladder before measuring blood pressure.

2. Slouching, unsupported back/feet – Poor support when sitting can increase your reading by 6-10points. Make sure you're in a chair with your back supported and feet flat on the floor or a footstool.
3. Unsupported arm – If your arm is hanging by your side or you have to hold it up during a reading, you may see numbers up to 10 points higher than they should be. Position your arm on a chair or counter, so that the measurement cuff is level with your heart.
4. Wrapping the cuff over clothing – This common error can add 5-50 points to your reading. Instead, be sure the cuff is placed on a bare arm.
5. When the cuff is too small – Your pressure may read 2-10 points higher. Ensure a proper fit. Your healthcare provider can help you with this.
6. Sitting with crossed legs – While polite, it could increase a blood pressure reading 2-8 points. It's best to uncross your legs as well as ensure your feet are supported.
7. Talking – Answering questions, talking on the phone, etc. can add 10 points. Stay still and silent to ensure an accurate measurement.

The effects of each mistake aren't additive. However, "These simple things can make a difference in whether or not a person is classified as having high blood pressure that requires treatment," said Michael Hochman, M.D., MPH, Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and a member of the American Heart Association's Blood Pressure Task Force. "Knowing how to measure blood pressure accurately at home, and recognizing mistakes in the physician's office, can help you manage your pressure and avoid unnecessary medication changes."

In clinics, proper measurement may be the exception to practice rather than the norm. At a high blood pressure symposium in Pittsburgh this January, healthcare professionals and clinicians were tested on accurately measuring blood pressure. Of 30 participants, only three passed. "This suggests we must better educate our clinicians and healthcare professionals regarding the proper techniques to accurately measure blood pressure. 

More accurate blood pressure measurements will empower our clinical teams to aggressively reduce hypertension prevalence and improve overall cardiovascular health in our country," said Sean Stocker, Ph.D., who chaired the symposium. Stocker is director of Basic and Translational Research at the University of Pittsburgh Hypertension Center and president-elect of the American Heart Association Great Rivers affiliate.

"We need toraise awareness among clinicians about the overall benefit of getting an accurate measurement. If we make a concerted effort to get good measurements, that can lead to correct diagnoses, faster treatment and improving blood pressure control rates," Hochman said.

Across thecountry, local experts are tackling their community's blood pressure problems by encouraging healthcare providers, clinics and health systems to enroll in a national program called Target: BP. The program was created through collaboration between the American Heart Association and American Medical Association.

Target: BP includes a blood pressure improvement program that starts with helping healthcare providers identify and correct errors in blood pressure measurement. The program also provides guidance for creating a clear treatment plan and partnering with patients to enable ongoing self-management – including teaching them to measure their blood pressure accurately at home.

"Getting anaccurate measurement is the first stage in ensuring patients receives the most appropriate care and prevention for heart disease and stroke," Hochman said. "High blood pressure is a leading cause of cardiovascular disease in the country. If we can get this one health factor under control, there would be a huge impact on reducing strokes and heart disease."

Larry Harvey and JP Barlow on Burning Man and tech culture

Larry Harvey, founder of the counterculture festival Burning Man, passed away this weekend. He was 70.

Harvey created a movement and contributed to the flowering both of counter-culture and, ultimately, of tech culture.

Both he and John Perry Barlow, who also passed in February this year after a long period of ill health, were huge advocates of free speech. Barlow wrote lyrics for the Grateful Dead, and then became a digital rights activist in later life.

In 2013 I caught up with both of them and recorded a joint 24-minute interview, just a short walk from the venue for the Le Web London conference.

Amid the street noise and the traffic, they discussed some of the intellectual underpinnings of startup entrepreneurship and its parallels with Burning Man, in what might have been their first-ever joint interview.

We went over early computer culture, and how there was a “revolutionary zeal in the notion of intellectual empowerment” in Psychedelia, which found common cause in tech culture.

We present for you once again, this iconic interview, in memory of these great men.

Blue Origin’s New Shepard skims space in successful 8th test launch-Skywalker

BlueOrigin conducted the 8th launch of its New Shepard sub-orbital rocket and crew capsule today out in Texas, and things couldn’t have gone better for the growing space tourism company. The rocket ascended into a cloudless sky, reaching a max velocity of about 2,200 MPH, and delivered its capsule to the edge of space, where its occupant, “Mannequin Skywalker,” will have had a lovely view of the Earth.

New Shepard isn’t meant to deliver things into orbit, of course; Blue Origin has a different purpose and technology from the likes of SpaceX, focusing on giving people a quick, safe lift into space followed by a period of weightlessness and a pleasant descent.

That’s what was demonstrated today, and you can watch the whole thing live in the video below — the pre-launch coverage starts about half an hour in, and liftoff is at the 1h10m mark.

Everything went smoothly from liftoff to touchdown. I love watching the altitude graph filling in slowly at first, then blasting upward as the rocket gradually accelerates. After main-engine cutoff, which occurs just after crossing the Karmann Line, which indicates you’ve entered space, and anyone inside would experience weightlessness for about a minute and a half as the capsule slows down. Apogee for this flight was 347,000 feet, or about 106,000 meters.

While Mannequin Skywalker was enjoying microgravity, the booster was returning to Earth at high speed — over 2,600 MPH. The drag brake deploys around 100,000 feet up, reducing speed to a more manageable 370 MPH before the booster re-ignites at 2,500 feet and brings itself down to a hover landing.

This is one of the most obvious differences to a viewer between New Shepard’s booster and the Falcon 9s; New Shepard has more control over its thrust, allowing for a highly controlled landing where it could even float for a bit if necessary. The larger Falcon 9 has to land using much more powerful thrust, meaning if they aren’t careful, they might just take off again. It’s kind of like the difference between having to let up on the gas to ease into a parking spot, and having to pull the e-brake at precisely the right moment.

Meanwhile the capsule, with its higher apogee and greater drag, has been falling down this whole time, waiting for the right time to deploy its parachutes. It didn’t happen until below the 7,000-foot mark, making me sweat a bit. It wouldn’t be a good look to have your crew capsule impact at 240 MPH.

The commentator describes the capsule touchdown a minute or two later as a “beautiful soft landing,” though honestly it looks like it would give anyone inside something of a jolt. Let’s hope the seats are comfortable in that thing.

Suicide risk for youth sharply higher in the months after self-harm(A psychiatric disorder)

A study led by Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) revealed that young Americans had a sharply higher risk of suicide in the months after surviving a deliberate self-harm attempt. The authors say the findings, published online today in Pediatrics, underscore the need to direct clinical interventions toward youth who survive such attempts during this critical period.

"Our latest study shows that time is of the essence in preventing a nonfatal self-harm event from leading to a fatality," said Mark Olfson, MD, MPH, professor of psychiatry at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and lead author of the study. "Although young adults compared to adolescents had a higher risk of suicide over the year after self-harm, adolescents had a particularly high risk during the first few weeks."

Nonfatal self-harm—meaning self-poisoning or self-injury (e.g., cutting) with or without suicidal intent—is common among young people. Although around one-third of young people who die of suicide have nonfatal self-harm events in the last three months of life, little is known about which young people with self-harm are at the highest short-term risk of suicide.

The researchers analyzed Medicaid data from 45 states to determine the 1-year suicide risk in 32,395 adolescents and young adults (age 12 to 24 years) who had been clinically diagnosed with deliberate self-harm. The data were linked to the U.S. National Death Index to confirm dates and cause of death. The researchers looked at many risk factors, such as demographic characteristics, recent treatment for a psychiatric disorder, and method of self-harm. They compared among young people with self-harm their risks of repeated nonfatal self-harm and suicide and they compared their risk of suicide in relation to the general population of young people who had similar age and demographic characteristics.

Approximately 17 percent had a repeated nonfatal self-harm episode in the first year, and 0.15% percent died of suicide. Adolescents were 46 times more likely than the controls to die of suicide in the 12 months after a nonfatal self-harm attempt. The risk of suicide was especially high after self-harm events using violent methods such as firearms or hanging. Although only about 4% of young people with non-fatal self-harm used violent methods, they accounted for approximately 40 percent of the suicide deaths. In a previous study, Olfson found that adults also had an elevated risk of suicide in the year after a self-harm episode, especially after self-harm involving violent methods.

"For many people, young and old, the same problems that led them to harm themselves in the first place—such as depression, substance use, and anxiety disorders—may continue to put them at risk of suicide," said Olfson.

Following nonfatal self-harm, males were four times more likely to complete suicide than females, and Native Americans were five times more likely than white non-Hispanic individuals. "We suspect that lower use of mental health services among males and Native Americans may partially explain the higher suicide rates in these groups," said Olfson.

The results suggest that clinical priority should be given to ensuring the safety of young people following self-harm. This may include treating underlying psychiatric disorders, restricting access to lethal means of self-harm, strengthening supportive relationships, and close monitoring for emerging suicidal symptoms.

Jeffrey Lieberman, Chair of Columbia Psychiatry and former President of the American Psychiatric Association added that "this report is a wake-up call to a public mental health problem that has been neglected for too long. It's time to act on these results to provide services that can prevent self-inflicted harm to mentally distressed youth".

The study is titled "Suicide following deliberate self-harm in adolescents and young adults."

Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan joins the speakers at TechCrunch’s first blockchain event- Crypto Valley

Boom, boom, boom! We’re announcing another big name for our upcoming blockchain event in Zug, Switzerland, on July 6 after Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan joined the line-up.

The event — TC: Sessions Blockchain — will be TechCrunch’s first show dedicated to blockchain, it takes place in the world’s “Crypto Valley” and we’ll be joined by a host of top names. Some of those include Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, Roham Gharegozlou, the founder of smash-hit blockchain game CryptoKitties, Brian Behlendorf, executive director of the Hyperledger Project, and OmiseGo CEO Jun Hasegawa.

Don’t miss it! Tickets are priced at 495 Swiss Francs — or around $500 — and they’re available from the event website here.

Fresh from announcing Buterin’s participation, we’re excited to host Srinivasan, who is another massively-respected thinker and visionary in the blockchain space.

Srinivasan became the first-ever CEO at Coinbase, the U.S. crypto giant that is now reportedly valued as high as $8 billion, in April after it bought Earn.com, where he had been CEO, in a deal priced at over $100 million.

Beyond the day job, Srinivasan is a board member at influential VC firm Andreessen Horowitz — which is planning its first dedicated crypto fund — and he holds a BS, MS, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University. He previously founded genetic testing company Counsyl, and occasionally teaches at Stanford.

TechCrunch will sit down for a one-on-one interview with Srinivasan, a long-time blockchain advocate in Silicon Valley, to discuss a multitude of topics, some of which may include his plans for Coinbase, the blockchain talent war, blockchain adoption among Silicon Valley’s tech community, how he turned Earn.com around from a debt-plagued business into a Coinbase acquisition and more.

One thing we do know is he is charged with bringing more innovation to Coinbase, a company that only trades four cryptocurrencies — so he is keeping a keen eye on what is happening on the blockchain space.

“There’s a lot of amazing stuff happening,” he said in a recent interview with TechCrunch. “Atomic swaps, sharding, plasma, proof of stake, etc, and a big part of my job will be to take all of that stuff, and rank it based on whether we can use it to create new products for our users.”

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, pictured below at TechCrunch Disrupt London in 2014, called Srinavasan “one of the most respected technologists in the crypto field and… one of the technology industry’s few true originalists.”

Blockchain is the most disruptive new technology in technology today, and we’re excited to host our first show that is solely dedicated to the blockchain. The event takes place in the Swiss city of Zug — widely known as “Crypto Valley” due to its sizable number of crypto companies and a progressive approach to regulation — and it will bring together top figures from the blockchain space, developer community and business and startup worlds.

Other prominent speakers confirmed for the July 6 event include:

·                         Roham Gharegozlou, the founder of smash-hit blockchain game CryptoKitties

·                         Brian Behlendorf, executive director of the Hyperledger Project

·                         Leanne Kemp, founder and CEO of Everledger

·                         Jun Hasegawa, CEO and founder of Omise and OmiseGo

·                         Mona El Isa, CEO and co-founder of Melonport

·                         Colin Hanna, associate at Balderton Capital

·                         Galia Benartzi, co-founder and head of Business Development at Bancor

·                         Gert Sylvest, co-founder of Tradeshift and GM of Tradeshift Frontiers

You can get your hands on tickets now — they’re priced at 495 Swiss Francs, or around $500 — from the event website here.

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If you’re interested in sponsoring the event, please contact us via this link.

Note: The author owns a small amount of cryptocurrency. Enough to gain an understanding, not enough to change a life.

Tech firms like Google, Amazon push power companies toward solar and wind, a blow to coal- A Giant Solar Array

Every time you save a photo to the cloud, buy something on Amazon, open a Google doc or stream a movie, you're probably pulling electricity from a wind turbine in Texas or a solar farm in Virginia.

In fact, your clicks and taps may have helped build them.

Since 2008, renewable energy has gone from 9% to 18% of the U.S. energy mix, according to the Business Council for Sustainable Energy. A big part of that shift stems from tech companies' rapid buildout of cloud storage centers and a move to burnish their public image by vowing they'll run these centers on sources like wind and solar.

Rather than lose these deep-pocketed customers, the nation's power companies are changing policies and crafting deals that meet increased demands for renewable energy, in some cases shifting away from traditional electricity supplies like coal and natural gas. Even in coal mining states like West Virginia.

"We have the ability to shape the market," said Michael Terrell, head of Google Energy Policy. "If you build it, we will come."

Last year, the top four corporate users of renewable energy in the world were Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Google announced this month that as of 2017, all its facilities and data centers were running on 100% renewable electricity.

Coal declining

A practice of insisting power companies offer wind- and solar-sourced power supplies is spreading to other sectors—Walmart, GM and Budweiser all have goals to run more of their global business off renewable energy.

This is bad news for the struggling coal industry. Coal producers have seen their share of U.S. power generation decrease since 2008, even as the Trump Administration has promised to roll back what it considers hostile environmental regulations.

The coal industry has said it now knows that at least the government is not going to discourage production, and it's only got to deal with the marketplace.

The problem is that a growing portion of the marketplace is demanding green energy.

"There's no federal or state law out there today that says you must do this, but there are boards of directors that say 'We want to set a carbon footprint goal for our companies,'" said Appalachian Power President and COO Chris Beam.

In December, the Charleston, W.Va-based utility contracted with Bluff Point Wind Energy Center in Indiana to buy 120 megawatts of wind-generated electricity, green power it can now offer to companies that are making it a core requirement on where they'll site their businesses, Beam said.

Today Appalachian Power generates 61% of its electricity by burning coal and 5% from wind and solar. By 2031, Beam says he hopes to get that mix to 51% coal and 25% wind and solar.

There's also a trickle-down effect. Big tech companies are pushing their suppliers to go green. Apple, which said last month that 100% of the electricity it uses for its facilities and data centers comes from renewables, saysnearly two dozen of its suppliers—such as manufacturers of batteries, keyboards and lenses— have also made a commitment to 100% renewable energy.

"The smart ones are seeing it as a competitive advantage," said Lisa Jackson, Apple's vice president of environment, policy and social initiatives and former head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama Administration.

"They know they have an edge in competing for Apple's business."

Amazon, Microsoft in Virginia

The biggest energy companies are changing their policies to court big tech energy buyers, who can often promise 20-year contracts.

Three years ago, Amazon wanted to build a new data center in northern Virginia. Because of its commitment to 100% renewable energy, it required that center to be run on electricity generated by wind or solar.

Richmond, Va.-based Dominion Energy, the local utility, didn't have any way for Amazon to source all its electricity from solar. So it created a special power purchase agreement that allowed the Seattle company to contract for 100% renewable electricity, something that wasn't previously possible in Virginia.

"We thought about it, we understood their reasoning, we convinced ourselves that it was in our best interests to do it and we ended up signing," said Greg Morgan, director of customer rates and regulations for Dominion.

Last month Microsoft announced it is contracting to buy electricity from a giant solar array in Virginia in what will be the largest ever corporate purchase of solar energy in the United States and will double the state's solar capacity.

Other buyers are following. When it goes online in 2019, the solar array in Spotsylvania county, southwest of Washington D.C, will produce 500 megawatts of electricity, with Microsoft buying 315 megawatts. Customers are already lined up for the megawatts it won't be using, said Microsoft. The deal will bring Microsoft's total purchase of renewable energy globally up to 1.2 gigawatts.

A public shaming

The tech push towards renewable began in earnest in 2011, when Greenpeace released a report calling out data centers for being huge users of electricity created by non-renewable sources. It came at an opportune time. Going green fit tech's corporate ethos. The companies were also flush with cash, making it easier for them to make choices that at least in the beginning were more expensive.

"Over the last few years, the tech companies have knowingly and willingly paid a premium for green power and they've been willing to do so because it advanced their self-stated goals," said Dominion's Morgan.

Data centers that store racks of iCloud and Google Photos servers use just 1.8% of the United States' overall energy, according to Arman Shehabi, author of a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 2016 report on data center energy usage. But demand to source these from green energy has changed the mix.

Close to 50% of corporate investment in offsite renewable energy in the United States has been from tech companies, the highest of all market segments, said John Hoekstra, vice president at Schneider Electric, a Paris-based energy management and automation company.

Walmart, Budweiser

But other big corporate buyers of electricity have set similar goals. Walmart was one of the first Fortune 500 companies to make a commitment to going 100% renewable, in 2005, said Sam Kimmins at The Climate Group and head of RE100, which sets standards for companies makinggreen energy commitments. Walmart recently said it gets 28% of its global electric needs from renewable energy and wants to hit 50% by 2025.

Last year Budweiser announced that it would be 100% powered by renewable energy by 2025. General Motors plans to get there by 2050.

It's become such a movement that last year, U.S. corporations bought more renewable power than utilities did, said Timothy Fox, vice president at ClearView Energy Partners, an energy consulting company.

Today, corporate America is happy to throw its weight around, said Bryn Baker, the World Wildlife Fund's deputy director of renewable energy. "Companies are coming in and saying, 'If you want us to be here, you have to give us access to clean energy.'"