Baltic Dry Index. 3566 +63 Brent Crude 69.86
Spot Gold 1777
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 16/08/21 World 207,995,388
Deaths 4,374,947
The World Turned Upside Down
"The World Turned Upside Down" is an English ballad. It was first published on a broadside in the middle of the 1640s as a protest against the policies of Parliament relating to the celebration of Christmas.[1]
Parliament believed the holiday should be a solemn occasion, and outlawed traditional English Christmas celebrations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Turned_Upside_Down
The big news this week is the abject collapse of the west’s puppet regime in Afghanistan, and what it might mean for the future.
Happily, that is being covered by mainstream media pretty much non stop at present, so I will leave it to the experts of MSM and President Biden and Prime Minister Johnson to explain.
Strangely, Canada’s Prime Minister thought this disaster and in the midst of a Covid-19 resurgence, was the perfect time to hold a unnecessary General Election. It will be interesting for the rest of the world to see if this becomes a Canadian super spreader event.
Unhappily, a massive amount of modern US weaponry just fell into unfriendly hands, with much of it likely headed for inspection and reverse engineering where appropriate, but that’s a problem for well down the road.
Equally unhappily, it’s not readily apparent what this disaster means for global markets and the stock casinos, if anything, at least short term, but this western powers defeat has the possibility to morph into a black swan event in the casinos.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 falls nearly 2%; China economic data disappoints
SINGAPORE — Asia-Pacific stocks slipped in Monday trade as investors reacted to the release of Chinese economic data for July.
Retail sales in China rose 8.5% in July as compared with a year ago, according to official data released Monday. That was far lower than the 11.5% rise forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll.
Meanwhile, industrial production grew 6.4% in July, also falling short of expectations for a 7.8% year-on-year increase for the month, according to the Reuters poll.
Mainland Chinese stocks were mixed by the afternoon, with the Shanghai composite rising 0.37% while the Shenzhen component shed 0.296%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index declined 0.74%.
In Japan, the Nikkei 225 dropped 1.79% in afternoon trade, with shares of Fast Retailing and SoftBank Group falling more than 2% each. The Topix index shed 1.69%.
Japan’s GDP rose 0.3% in the second quarter as compared with the previous three months, when it contracted 0.9%, according to official preliminary estimates released Monday. The April-June data print beat market forecasts for a 0.2% increase, according to Reuters.
Shares in Australia also dipped, with the S&P/ASX 200 0.43% lower.
Elsewhere in Southeast Asia, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI Index in Malaysia slipped 0.53%, following local media reports that the country’s prime minister is set to resign on Monday.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan declined 0.5%.
South Korea’s markets are closed on Monday for a holiday.
Oil prices slipped in the afternoon of Asia trading hours, with international benchmark Brent crude futures 1.06% lower at $69.84 per barrel. U.S. crude futures shed 1.11% to $67.68 per barrel.
More
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/16/asia-markets-china-economy-japan-gdp-currencies-oil.html
With the situation still fluid in Afghanistan, with westerners and their helpers still frantically trying to flee, and the markets still trying to digest what it all might mean, we will take the opportunity today to cover last week’s scaremongering IPCC global warming report.
Last week the UN’s dodgy scientists at the IPCC issued yet another global climate change iffy scare report.
Below, closer to reality.
Opinion: With a closer look, certainty about the ‘existential’ climate threat melts away
August 11, 2021
Last year, CNN announced: “Oceans are warming at the same rate as if five Hiroshima bombs were dropped in every second.” True. However: “The earth absorbs sunlight (and radiates an equal amount of heat energy) equivalent to two thousand Hiroshima bombs per second.” That sentence is from “Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters,” by physicist Steven E. Koonin, formerly of Caltech, now at New York University after serving as the senior scientist in President Barack Obama’s Energy Department and working on alternative energy for BP. His points are exclusively from the relevant scientific literature.
Because unusual weather events are routinely reported as consequences of climate change, Koonin warns: “Climate is not weather. Rather, it’s the average of weather over decades.” Of course the climate is changing (it never has not been in Earth’s 4.5 billion years), the carbon footprints of the planet’s 8 billion people affect the climate, and the effects should be mitigated by incentives for behavioral changes and by physical adaptations.
Human activities account for almost all of the increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, but science has limited ability to disentangle human and natural influences on climate changes in, for example, the Little Ice Age (about 1450-1850) or the global cooling of 1940-1980. Although Koonin cites U.N. reports when saying “human influences currently amount to only 1 percent of the energy that flows through the climate system,” media “reports” say hurricanes are increasing in numbers and intensity. Koonin says “humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes during the past century.” Improved weather radar detects even weak tornadoes, hence the increase in reported ones. But, says Koonin, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show the number of significant ones has changed negligibly, and the strongest kind have become less frequent.
Sea levels, currently rising a few millimeters a year, have been rising for 20,000 years. Koonin cites recent research that the rate of rise ascribable to melting glaciers has “declined slightly since 1900 and is the same now as it was 50 years ago.” The melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets contributes no more to rising sea levels in recent decades than it did 70 years ago.
----A scandalous 2019 Foreign Affairs article by the director-general of the World Health Organization asserted: “Climate Change Is Already Killing Us.” Says Koonin, “Astoundingly, the article conflates deaths due to ambient and household air pollution (which cause … about one-eighth of total deaths from all causes) with deaths due to human-induced climate change.” The WHO says indoor air pollution in poor countries, mostly the result of cooking with wood and animal and crop waste, is the world’s most serious environmental problem. This is, however, the result not of climate change but of poverty, which will become more intractable if climate-change policies make energy more expensive by making fossil fuels less accessible.
More
The dirty secret of carbon accounting could soon be exposed
If the world is serious about reducing emissions, it will have to get better at accurately accounting for it first
Aug 11, 2021
There’s a dirty secret of carbon accounting, and it could soon be exposed. That’s because the assumptions most companies base their calculations on could be wrong.
Let’s take a step back. Corporate financial accounting tells you how much a company earned, how much it spent and how much it owes. You can generally trust those numbers because most large companies employ skilled, expensive auditors to ensure that the figures are as accurate as possible. When companies mess up, they can expect harsh punishment from regulators, ranging from large fines to prison time. That means they have to be able to justify every figure on every line.
Carbon accounting is nowhere near as rigorous. Unlike financial accounting, almost all carbon accounting is voluntary and based on voluntary standards. Accurate or not, the company will likely come in for praise just for trying. No matter how egregiously a carbon accountant messes up, they’re unlikely to see the inside of a jail.
While companies can be fairly accurate about the emissions they directly produce (called Scope 1), that accuracy drops rapidly when they have to account for emissions from their supply chain or users of their products (called Scope 3). Even in the best case, therefore, carbon accounting is based on a huge number of assumptions.
You’ve probably guessed where I’m going with this. Voluntary reporting combined with a long list of assumptions presents a huge risk of getting things wrong. Let’s take one example. The U.S. has stronger regulations on emissions reporting than most large emitters. And, yet, study after study has shown that oil and gas companies underreport their methane emissions. Methane is the second-largest contributor to warming the planet, after carbon dioxide.
More
California Panel Backs Solar Mandate for New Buildings
A state agency voted to require many new commercial structures, along with high-rise residential projects, to have solar power and battery storage.
Aug. 11, 2021
LOS ANGELES — California regulators voted Wednesday to require builders to include solar power and battery storage in many new commercial structures as well as high-rise residential projects. It is the latest initiative in the state’s vigorous efforts to hasten a transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources.
The five-member California Energy Commission approved the proposal unanimously. It will now be taken up by the state’s Building Standards Commission, which is expected to include it in an overall revision of the building code in December.
The energy plan, which would go into effect on Jan. 1, 2023, also calls for new homes to be wired in ways that ease and even encourage conversion of natural-gas heating and appliances to electric sources.
“The future we’re trying to build together is a future beyond fossil fuels,” David Hochschild, the chair of the Energy Commission, said ahead of the agency’s vote. “Big changes require everyone to play a role. We all have a role in building this future.”
The commercial buildings that would be affected by the plan include hotels, offices, medical offices and clinics, retail and grocery stores, restaurants, schools, and civic spaces like theaters, auditoriums and convention centers.
The provisions would supplement requirements that took effect last year mandating that new single-family homes and multifamily dwellings up to three stories high include solar power.
More
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/11/business/energy-environment/california-solar-mandates.html
But, just how green are US solar panels? Not very green, it turns out.
Behind the Rise of U.S. Solar Power, a Mountain of Chinese Coal
Reliance on coal-fired electricity to produce solar panels raises concerns in the West
July 31, 2021 8:32 am ET
Solar panel installations are surging in the U.S. and Europe as Western countries seek to cut their reliance on fossil fuels.
But the West faces a conundrum as it installs panels on small rooftops and in sprawling desert arrays: Most of them are produced with energy from carbon-dioxide-belching, coal-burning plants in China.
Concerns are mounting in the U.S. and Europe that the solar industry’s reliance on Chinese coal will create a big increase in emissions in the coming years as manufacturers rapidly scale up production of solar panels to meet demand. That would make the solar industry one of the world’s most prolific polluters, analysts say, undermining some of the emissions reductions achieved from widespread adoption.
For years, China’s low-cost, coal-fired electricity has given the country’s solar-panel manufacturers a competitive advantage, allowing them to dominate global markets.
Chinese factories supply more than three-quarters of the world’s polysilicon, an essential component in most solar panels, according to industry analyst Johannes Bernreuter. Polysilicon factories refine silicon metal using a process that consumes large amounts of electricity, making access to cheap power a cost advantage. Chinese authorities have built an array of coal-burning power plants in sparsely populated areas such as Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia to support polysilicon manufacturers and other energy-hungry industries.
More
Mining industry’s ‘green metals’ are a fallacy, experts say
Niall McGee August 1, 2021
The mining industry is promoting a growing number of metals as green. The label is popping up everywhere: on the landing pages of company websites, in speeches from mining executives at conferences, and in pitch meetings with investors.
“Every nickel project is now green, every copper project is green,” said Doug Pollitt, analyst with Pollitt & Co. “The resource sector is making the most out of this.”
The green moniker, which implies the metals and mining methods are environmentally friendly, is generating fierce debate. Some call it appropriate, given the growing end use of minerals such as lithium, cobalt and graphite in alternative energy. Others, factoring in the full life cycle of metals from the ground to the customer, deem the framing deceptive and misleading.
“A lot of marketing fluff,” is what Mr. Pollitt calls it.
More
Finally, the USDA August grains update. Too close to call in 2021? Some production and some demand down. How much and what happens next in the weather of north America and Europe, the Ukraine and Russia, will determine grain prices for the rest of 2021.
ANALYSTS DISCUSS USDA'S SURPRISING CROP REPORT
Aug. 13, 2021
USDA's August crop
production report produced a few surprises, including a 5 bu. per acre cut to
the national corn yield. The report sent corn futures up more than 20¢ after
the report was published.
Based on conditions as of Aug. 1, USDA says the
national corn yield is expected to average 174.6 bu. per acre with total
production to reach 14.8 billion bushels. While the production number is 4%
above 2020, it missed the average trade guess and come in lower than the 15.16
billion bushels USDA forecasted in July based on a 179.5 bu. per acre yield.
The lowest trade guess for yield prior to the report was 175.7 bu. per acre.
"We do get these surprises often in
August," says Ben Brown, extension economist with University of Missouri.
"And we certainly got that this year."
USDA's revised corn estimate is also five bu. per
acre lower than what's considered trendline yield.
The overall cut to the national yield wasn't due to
production issues in the eastern Corn Belt. In fact, USDA increased its yield
forecast for the eastern Corn Belt and projected a possible record crop in some
areas. The revisions largely came from dry areas in the Northern Plains and
West. .
"The eastern part, from Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, is sitting on record yields," says Ben Brown, Extension economist, University of Missouri. "You look at Illinois, at 214 bu. per acre, and you know, the corn looks good. I drove through the eastern Corn Belt this past weekend. That probably influenced my bias a little bit. They're sitting on a record crop, at least according to these numbers today. We'll counter that with the upper Plains where things are a little worse than what we had anticipated. You look at North Dakota, for instance, down more than 20%, year over year.
----Story in Soybeans
As expected, USDA made little adjustment to its
national soybean yield and production forecast in the August report, but did
make a larger cut than some expected. USDA says the national yield is still
expected to average close to 50 bu. per acre, which is slightly lower than the
50.8 forecasted in July. Production is estimated to reach 4.34 billion bushels,
down slightly from 4.40 billion bushels in July.
"Soybeans, the yield number came down it was it
was lower than expected at 50 bushels per acre, not an extraordinary
surprise," says Joe Vaclavik of Standard Grain.
The larger story in other crops came in the wheat
market, says Vaclavik, as traders expected more of a downward revision in
spring wheat due to drought.
"In the northern plains, North Dakota places like that, we actually did not see that in this report," Vaclavik says. "What we did see was a cut to the HRW crop and a huge cut to the projection for Russian wheat production. They went from 85 million down to 72.5 million, which is below,what we've seen from even the private groups in the Black Sea region, which is interesting. So, there was some friendly stuff there in the week."
More.
https://www.agrimarketing.com/s/137429
Yorktown
According to American legend, the British army band under Lord Cornwallis played this tune when they surrendered after the Siege of Yorktown (1781).[2] Customarily, the British army would have played an American or French tune in tribute to the victors, but General Washington refused them the honours of war and insisted that they play "a British or German march."[3] Although American history textbooks continue to propagate the legend,[4] the story may have been apocryphal as it first appears in the historical record a century after the surrender.[5]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Turned_Upside_Down
Global Inflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
Spectre of inflation stalks debate on $3.5tn US spending bill
Some lawmakers balk at high cost of Biden plan at time of rising prices
August 14 2021
The $3.5tn price tag on the Biden administration’s budget plan has ignited fresh debate in Washington about the potential inflationary effects of increased public spending at a time when US consumer prices are rising rapidly.
The US Senate on Wednesday passed a budget resolution that will form the basis of a sweeping bill that would make big investments in education, housing and climate-related initiatives, expand Medicare and enhance a child tax credit programme, among other outlays.
The legislative blueprint includes a mechanism to offset the spending with higher taxes on US companies and wealthy Americans. It was passed on the heels of a bipartisan $1tn infrastructure bill and was quickly followed by the latest inflation report, which showed prices were steady in July at a 13-year high, despite a more moderate monthly increase and a significant drop-off in gains for some of the most pandemic-sensitive sectors.
Rising inflation fears could imperil Joe
Biden’s spending ambitions as the two bills head to the House of
Representatives later this month. The House, which Democrats control by a slim
margin, will return from summer recess early to first consider the budget
resolution, and then weigh up the infrastructure package. Both pieces of
legislation must pass both chambers of Congress.
“Inflation has become part of the congressional debate for the first time in
the at least 25 years I’ve been following this,” said Jason Furman, a senior
fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who previously
served as an economic adviser to presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.
While the infrastructure bill passed the Senate with bipartisan support — 19 Republicans, including Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, voted for the legislation — Democrats have elected to go it alone with the budget process, using a convention called reconciliation to get around the 60-vote filibuster threshold in the Senate.
The budget resolution passed the upper chamber on Wednesday in a party-line vote, with all 50 Democrats voting for the measure and 49 Republicans voting against.
“Inflation will continue to factor prominently into the fiscal debate, which is set to heat up as Democrats flesh out their spending plans ahead of the 2022 midterms,” said Robert Kahn, director of global strategy and global macro at Eurasia Group, a consultancy.
More
https://www.ft.com/content/2a750a90-96e7-4c8d-9db1-b28409c13b3f
Market bull Ed Yardeni says ‘buy a little bit of everything,’ sees a productivity burst ahead
Ed Yardeni believes the U.S. economy is on the cusp of “nirvana.”
Despite uncertainty surrounding inflation and Covid-19 variants, the longtime bull believes the pandemic is significantly accelerating corporate America’s adoption of cutting-edge technology designed to expand productivity.
According to Yardeni, the move is ushering in a modern roaring ’20s on Wall Street.
“Buy a little bit of everything,” the president of Yardeni Research told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Friday. “Earnings are still going to continue to move to record highs.”
Yet, he acknowledges the current price tag may be hard to swallow.
‘Nothing is cheap’
“Look, everything has been picked over. Nothing is cheap ,” he said. “It’s hard to tell people right here that now’s the time to jump in. But bonds certainly don’t look attractive at these kinds of yields where they could possibly go higher as I expect.”
Yardeni, who ran investment strategy for Prudential and Deutsche Bank and worked for the New York Federal Reserve, sees encouraging signals that typically boost stocks.
“Labor force growth has slowed dramatically, and there’s a tremendous pressure on companies to use technology to offset that,” Yardeni said. “That means increasing productivity. So, I’ve got this very bullish story, I think, for activity that is growing 2% right now. I think it’s heading to 4% in the next few years.”
As a result, Yardeni sees wages rising faster than prices and margins staying high — a recipe for strong corporate profits.
But in the meantime, he’s keeping a close eye on headline risks.
“The delta variant is obviously making the nightly news, and it’s disturbing for sure,” Yardeni said.
His other sticking point: rising prices.
“Inflation has yet to demonstrate as actually transitory, he added. “Right now, there’s no evidence that it’s peaked. So there are still concerns along those lines.”
More
Below, why a “green energy” economy may not be possible anyway, and if it is, it won’t be quick and it will be very inflationary, setting off a new long-term commodity Supercycle. Probably the largest seen so far.
The “New Energy Economy”: An Exercise in Magical Thinking
https://media4.manhattan-institute.org/sites/default/files/R-0319-MM.pdf
Mines, Minerals, and "Green" Energy: A Reality Check
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/mines-minerals-and-green-energy-reality-check
"An Environmental Disaster": An EV Battery Metals Crunch Is On The Horizon As The Industry Races To Recycle
by Tyler Durden Monday, Aug 02, 2021 - 08:40 PM
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
Up first, news from Israel of what might become a cause for concern if a third booster injection is needed, or worse an annual booster is eventually required.
Allergic reaction following third COVID jab sends 52-year-old to hospital
The Health Ministry said on Saturday that a 52-year-old woman was hospitalized Friday night after suffering an apparent allergic reaction to the third Pfizer vaccine.
By MAAYAN JAFFE-HOFFMAN AUGUST 14, 2021 22:17
A 52-year-old woman was hospitalized Friday night at Ziv Medical Center in Safed after what appears to be an allergic reaction to receiving the third dose of the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, the Health Ministry reported.
She is hospitalized in the intensive care unit in serious but stable condition.
The patient is being examined to confirm the cause of her medical condition, and the Health Ministry is examining the details of the case.
According to the ministry, allergic reactions to vaccines, although rare, are familiar. Those who develop an allergic reaction to taking the Pfizer vaccine - or any other vaccine - are advised to consult their doctor before receiving any subsequent doses.
In general, there have been few side effects from the Pfizer coronavirus vaccine, including few allergic reactions.
A report published last week by Clalit Health Services showed that 88% of people who received the third shot of the coronavirus vaccine said they felt “similar” or “better” compared to how they felt in the days following receiving the second vaccine.
The health fund released a first report on the side effects of the third shot,
based on data it captured from some 4,500 people over 60 out of the 240,000 of
their members who received it at the time.
More
Australia's New South Wales put into strict lockdown as COVID-19 cases spike
Aug. 14, 2021 / 2:16 PM
Aug. 14 (UPI) -- The Australian state of New South Wales was placed in a strict, weeklong lockdown Saturday after local health officials recorded the highest number of new COVID-19 cases seen in a single day.
The state's biggest city, Sydney, already had been under lockdown for two months, but those rules were extended to cover all of New South Wales until Aug. 22 under an order issued by Premier Gladys Berejiklian.
"This means the whole state is in strict lockdown," she wrote in a tweet hours after announcing that a daily record of 466 daily cases had been recorded overnight.
"Today is the most concerning day of the pandemic that we've seen in New South Wales," Berejiklian told reporters during an update Saturday morning. "We had 130,000 tests overnight and very concerningly we've had 466 cases of community transmission.
"This is the largest jump we have seen in a night, and it's fair to say that we are on a path of being extremely concerned about the situation that we're in in New South Wales," she said.
The lockdown extension affects more than 8 million people in Australia's most populous state. Under its rules, residents must stay at home unless they have a "reasonable excuse" to leave and cannot have visitors in their homes from outside of their households, including relatives.
All hospitality venues such as bars and restaurants must be closed to the public except for take-out orders while only essential retail stores will be allowed to remain open.
More
COVID-stricken Oregon deploys National Guard to hospitals
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Oregon’s governor said Friday she will send up to 1,500 National Guard troops to hospitals around the state to assist healthcare workers who are being pushed to the brink by a surge of COVID-19 cases driven by the Delta variant.
Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, said the first group of 500 Guard members will be deployed next Friday to serve as material and equipment runners in the most stricken hospitals and to help with COVID-19 testing, among other things. Troops will be sent to 20 hospitals around Oregon.
There are 733 people hospitalized with the virus in Oregon as of Friday, including 185 people in intensive care units — more than 60 people more than just a day before and nearly double what the number was two weeks ago.
“I cannot emphasize enough the seriousness of this crisis for all Oregonians, especially those needing emergency and intensive care,” Brown said, reiterating that message. “When our hospitals are full with COVID-19 patients, there may not be room for someone needing care after a car crash, a heart attack, or other emergency situation.”
The Delta variant now makes up 96% of all samples tested, up from just 15% six weeks ago, according to Oregon Health Authority data.
---- Oregon, once viewed as a pandemic success story, has seen that progress slip away in recent weeks as the highly contagious Delta variant gains a foothold in counties with lower vaccination rates. The state kept an indoor mask mandate and social distancing rules in place until June 30, shut down restaurants, bars, gyms and other businesses repeatedly since March 2020 and had strict indoor capacity limits for businesses long after other states had returned to near-normal.
More.
https://apnews.com/article/health-oregon-coronavirus-pandemic-6321b5fa7513f9cb4ea11a8dbdf625f5
Next, some vaccine links kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada. The links come from a most informative update from Stanford Hospital in California.
World Health Organization - Landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines. https://www.who.int/publications/m/item/draft-landscape-of-covid-19-candidate-vaccines
NY Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
Stanford Website. https://racetoacure.stanford.edu/clinical-trials/132
Regulatory Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker. https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some other useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
Centers for Disease Control Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
The Spectator Covid-19 data tracker (UK)
https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national
Technology Update.
With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section. Updates as they get reported.
One-dimensional red phosphorus glows in unexpected ways
Strong optical properties in a 1D van der Waal material
Date: August 12, 2021
Source: Aalto University
Summary: Researchers have now found that fibrous red phosphorus, when electrons are confined in its one-dimensional sub-units, can show large optical responses -- that is, the material shows strong photoluminescence under light irradiation. The study shows that strong optical properties exist in a 1D van der Waal material.
When electrons are confined into very small spaces, they can exhibit unusual electrical, optical and magnetic behaviour. From confining electrons in two-dimensional atomic sheet graphene -- a feat that won the Nobel Prize in physics in 2010 -- to restricting electrons even further to achieve one-dimensionality, this broad line of research is transforming the landscape of fundamental research and technological advances in physics, chemistry, energy harvesting, information and beyond.
In a study published in Nature Communications, an international team led by Aalto University researchers has now found that fibrous red phosphorus, when electrons are confined in its one-dimensional sub-units, can show large optical responses -- that is, the material shows strong photoluminescence under light irradiation. Red phosphorus, like graphene, belongs to a unique group of materials called one-dimensional van der Waals (1D vdW) materials. A 1D vdW material is a radically new type of material that was discovered only in 2017. Until now, research on 1vdW materials has focused on electrical properties.
----The strong photoluminescence of fibrous red phosphorus is unexpected. In fact, we initially expected that the photoluminescence of fibrous red phosphorus would be only weak. Based on theoretical calculations, this effect shouldn't actually be strong so we're now doing more experiments to clarify the origin of its after-glow,' says Du.
'I believe that one-dimensional van der Waals materials like fibrous red phosphorus show real promise for displays and other applications, which rely on materials that demonstrate exactly the behaviours we've seen in this study. The spectrum of its anisotropic optical response also seems to be very wide if we compare it with responses from conventional materials,' says Professor Zhipei Sun, who leads the group behind the study.
Lyrics
The World Turned Upside Down (To the Tune of,
When the King enioys his own again.)
Listen to me and you shall hear, news hath not been this thousand year:
Since Herod, Caesar,
and many more, you never heard the like before.
Holy-dayes
are despis'd, new fashions are devis'd.
Old Christmas
is kickt out of Town.
Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside
down.
The wise men did rejoyce to see our Savior Christs Nativity:
The Angels did good tidings bring, the Sheepheards did rejoyce and sing.
Let all honest men, take example by them.
Why should we from good Laws be bound?
Yet let's be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn'd upside
down.
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