WCA July 2019

From the Americas emotions – could be reversed. For example, he said that Apple and Google could reward app developers who help users. Attending technology personalities included Apple Inc co-founder Steve Wozniak, early Facebook funder- turned-critic Roger McNamee, and MoveOn founders Joan Blades and Wes Boyd. Tech money is backing the Center for Humane Technology, including charitable funds started by the founders of Hewlett Packard, eBay and Craigslist. The big companies, Mr Harris said, “can change the incentives.” Alibaba Group founder and billionaire Jack Ma has defended the overtime work culture at many of China’s technology companies, calling it a “huge blessing” for young workers. Mr Ma, reported by Reuters on 12 th April, defended the industry’s “996” work schedule (referring to a 9am to 9pm workday, six days a week). Writing on the company’s WeChat account, Mr Ma is said to have remarked: “I personally think that being able to work 996 is a huge blessing. Many companies and many people don’t have the opportunity to work 996. If you don’t work 996 when you are young, when can you ever work 996?” The issue has fuelled an online debate, with workers exchanging examples of excessive overtime demands by some companies. Mr Ma, who co-founded Alibaba in 1999 and is among China’s richest people, said he and early employees regularly worked long hours: “Let me ask everyone, if you don’t put out more time and energy than others, how can you achieve the success you want?” he said. He referred to the current technology industry, where some people are without jobs, or working at companies searching for revenue or facing closure. “Compared to them, up to this day, I still feel lucky. I don’t regret [working 12 hour days], I would never change this part of me,” he added. Activists on Microsoft’s GitHub, the online code repository site, have launched a project entitled “996.ICU” where technology workers included Alibaba in a list of companies with the worst working conditions. On 18 th April, an opinion piece published in China’s People’s Daily newspaper argued that 996 violated China’s labour law, which stipulates that average work hours cannot exceed 40 hours a week. “Creating a corporate culture of encouraged overtime will not … help a business’s core competitiveness, [and] might inhibit and damage a company’s ability to innovate,” the author wrote. Night working will be needed by 2040 Climate scientists have predicted that by 2040 people in Gulf states will work at night during the summer. Al-Rai Arabic daily reported that temperatures of up to 60ºC during peak daytime hours will make the movement of people impossible. A number of climate scientists participated in the “Climate change in the Gulf States…implications, risks and preparedness” symposium, established by the Center for Gulf Studies in the Arabian Peninsula at Kuwait University. Tech employer views 996 working as a “blessing”

“The climate changes that have started to emerge in the last 80 years have emerged because of man’s abuse of natural resources in an insane and selfish manner, as if the Earth was created for this generation, and after this generation nears its end, the land will be destroyed with it,” said professor of climate change, Dr Abdullah Al-Misnad from the department of geography at Al-Qassim University. He continued: “The Earth is tired, but if man does not deal with this, the consequences will be severe for humans, animals, plants, seas and even the inanimate.”

Battery research

Boost possible with phosphorene nano-ribbons

A report in The Engineer says that fast-charging, high- capacity batteries and flexible devices that scavenge electricity from waste heat are among the technologies that could be made possible by a recent development using phosphorene. Researchers at University College London (UCL), working with an international team, have made flexible nano-ribbons of crystalline phosphorus which, they believe, could have a wide range of applications in energy storage and electronics. In a paper published in the journal Nature, the UCL researchers, with team members from the UK’s University of Bristol, USA’s Virginia Commonwealth University, and Switzerland’s École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, described how tiny ribbons of phosphorene were produced by accident. The researchers were attempting to produce two-dimensional sheets of phosphorene – the phosphorus equivalent of graphene – by mixing black phosphorus with lithium ions dissolved in liquid ammonia at –50ºC. After 24 hours they removed the ammonia and replaced it with an organic solvent. According to UCL’s Chris Howard, instead of creating sheets they found they had made ribbons: “In the meantime we noticed that papers [were appearing] in the literature about really interesting, useful and exotic properties that might be possible if only someone could make phosphorene ribbons.” The researchers set about fine-tuning the process until they were able to produce samples in which most of the contents were ribbons. The extremely flat, crystalline and “unusually flexible” ribbons form with a typical height of one atomic layer, 4-50nm wide and up to 75µm long. Mitch Watts, the paper’s first author, added: “What’s more, by changing the width, or the number of layers of the ribbon, you can actually tune the electronic properties for specific applications.” The use of phosphorene ribbons within batteries could lead to devices with extremely rapid diffusion of lithium ions, resulting in fast charging. Batteries containing phosphorene ribbons could also have almost twice the capacity of traditional lithium-ion devices, said Mr Howard.

48

Wire & Cable ASIA – July/August 2019

www.read-wca.com