By Walt Hickey

Alloyed

New ways of producing steel, including electric arc furnaces, hot stamping machines and so on, are presenting new metallurgical advances that have unique uses in the production of vehicles. Every pound of excess weight that is removed from a vehicle shaves off $3 in fuel costs over the lifetime of the vehicle, and in the aggregate that adds up, particularly with electric vehicles. Advanced high-strength steel is now in its third generation — the first came on the scene in the ‘90s, the second exists now and has used new alloys for higher ductility, but the third generation is finally on the factory floor, which uses heating and cooling to make stronger and more formable steel that is both cheaper than second-generation high-strength steel as well as 10 times as strong as the common steel of yore.

John Johnson Jr., Knowable Magazine

Pool

For the first several events, the swimming pool at this Olympic Games was considered to be a potentially slower one, given the fewer records set within it. That was initially blamed on the pool, which is 2.15 meters deep, shallower than the 3 meters recommended by World Aquatics. Those concerns may have been raised a bit soon, as the 21 world and Olympic records set within the pool are a bit lower than usual but still well in range of years like 2016 (25 records broken) and 2012 (23 records broken). If anything, it just looks like a down year compared to 2008, but that’s when Speedo first introduced the LZR swimsuit, which led to the smashing of 25 world and 65 Olympic records.

Lev Akabas, Sportico

Hydrogen

There are 350 million e-bikes in China, and new varieties are hitting the scene, including hydrogen-powered bikes from bike-share companies like Youon. When the rider pedals, hydrogen is fed into a fuel cell, getting them up to 14 miles per hour with a tank of hydrogen lasting 25 to 37 miles in the pedal-assist version, allowing cyclists to power their ride with star fuel. One perk over the battery-powered e-bike is that it takes seconds to refuel a bike, and the lithium batteries do carry risks of deteriorating. Local governments like them — if there’s a leak, the gas is low-pressure and dissipates quickly without causing an explosion, which can’t exactly be said of gasoline or lithium ion — and have begun buying up hundreds of them.

Zeyi Yang, MIT Technology Review

Shorts

One of the few remaining battlefronts in the Workplace Social Contract Wars is at its seasonal height: Are shorts okay for desk jobs? According to Harris Poll, the number of managers who care about having dress codes has dropped from 49 percent five years ago to 31 percent today, which is a new low. Other surveys find similar slips among workers themselves, and as it’s August, some of the more ambitious fashion envelope-pushers are dabbling in, if not cargo shorts, at least dress shorts.

Ray A. Smith, The Wall Street Journal

Nuclear

The consensus of Americans is bending back toward the atom as nuclear energy becomes more and more appealing, essentially tied with the level seen last year at 56 percent, but up considerably from the 43 percent logged in 2020. Nuclear energy is especially interesting in the green electricity space, because worldwide it’s historically been supported by right-leaning parties given the antinuclear history of various green-linked interests of left-leaning parties. The cold arithmetic of electrification has prompted a bit of a realignment; the percentage of Democrats who favor more nuclear energy is up 12 points since 2020 and Republican support is up 14 points.

Rebecca Leppert and Brian Kennedy, Pew Research Center

Women

The latest in a 16-year study of the characters in the top 100 grossing films of the year has found that the percentage of characters who were women or girls came in at 31.7 percent of all speaking characters, the lowest figure since 2016. In the universe of popular cinema, the ratio of men to women is stubbornly 2.2 to 1, and just 30 of the 100 top films of 2023 had a female lead or co-lead.

Stacy L. Smith, Katherine Pieper and Sam Wheeler, Annenberg Inclusion Initiative

Fresh

Americans are buying more fresh food and less packaged and preprocessed food, which means that all of a sudden the massive conglomerates of packaged and processed foods are keenly interested in getting some skin in the game on produce and fresh food. Supermarkets are adapting by increasing the space allocated to the produce sections and decreasing the center aisle, where the shelf-stable stuff lives. The Food Industry Association found that 44 percent of grocers plan to increase space for fresh produce, and 19 percent said they’re decreasing space in the center aisles. Even Lunchables — yes, Lunchables — is trying to get fresher, which presents challenges. Your typical Lunchables has a shelf life of 90 to 110 days. New ones that have cold cuts and fresh fruit in it have a shelf life of 10 days, which means a radical reinvention of their distribution and storage procedures.

Deena Shanker, Bloomberg

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