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Carbon capture method plucks CO2 straight from the air

Even as the world slowly begins to decarbonize industrial processes, achieving lower concentrations of atmospheric carbon requires technologies that remove…

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Even as the world slowly begins to decarbonize industrial processes, achieving lower concentrations of atmospheric carbon requires technologies that remove existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — rather than just prevent the creation of it.

Credit: Dravid lab / Northwestern University

Even as the world slowly begins to decarbonize industrial processes, achieving lower concentrations of atmospheric carbon requires technologies that remove existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — rather than just prevent the creation of it.

Typical carbon capture catches CO2 directly from the source of a carbon-intensive process. Ambient carbon capture, or “direct air capture” (DAC) on the other hand, can take carbon out of typical environmental conditions and serves as one weapon in the battle against climate change, particularly as reliance on fossil fuels begins to decrease and with it, the need for point-of-source carbon capture.

New research from Northwestern University shows a novel approach to capture carbon from ambient environmental conditions that looks at the relationship between water and carbon dioxide in systems to inform the “moisture-swing” technique, which captures CO2 at low humidities and releases it at high humidities. The approach incorporates innovative kinetic methodologies and a diversity of ions, enabling carbon removal from virtually anywhere.

The study was published today (Oct. 3) in the journal Environmental Science and Technology.

“We are not only expanding and optimizing the choice of ions for carbon capture, but also helping unravel the fundamental underpinnings of complex fluid-surface interactions,” said Northwestern’s Vinayak P. Dravid, a senior author on the study. “This work advances our collective understanding of DAC, and our data and analyses provide a strong impetus to the community, for theorists and experimentalists alike, to further improve carbon capture under practical conditions.”

Dravid is the Abraham Harris Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and director of global initiatives at the International Institute for Nanotechnology. Ph.D. students, John Hegarty and Benjamin Shindel, were the paper’s co-first authors.

Shindel said the idea behind the paper came from a desire to use ambient environmental conditions to facilitate the reaction.

“We liked moisture-swing carbon capture because it doesn’t have a defined energy cost,” Shindel said. “Even though there’s some amount of energy required to humidify a volume of air, ideally you could get humidity ‘for free,’ energetically, by relying on an environment that has natural dry and wet reservoirs of air close together.”

The group also expanded the number of ions used to make the reaction possible.

“Not only have we doubled the number of ions that exhibit the desired humidity-dependent carbon capture, we have also discovered the highest-performing systems yet,” John Hegarty said.

In recent years, moisture-swing capture has taken off. Traditional carbon capture methods use sorbents to capture CO2 at point-of-source locations, and then use heat or generated vacuums to release CO2 from the sorbent. It comes with a high-energy cost.

“Traditional carbon capture holds onto CO2 tightly, which means it takes significant energy to release it and reuse it,” Hegarty said.

It also doesn’t work everywhere, Shindel said. Agriculture, concrete and steel manufacturers, for example, are major contributors to emissions but take up large footprints that make it impossible to capture carbon at a single source.

Shindel added that wealthier countries should be attempting to get below zero emissions as developing countries, which rely more on the carbon economy, ramp down CO2 production.

Another senior author, chemistry professor Omar Farha, has experience exploring the role of metal-oxide framework (MOF) structures for diverse applications, including CO2 capture and sequestration.

“DAC is a complex and multifaceted problem that requires an interdisciplinary approach,” Farha said. “What I appreciate about this work is the detailed and careful measurements of complex parameters. Any proposed mechanism must explain these intricate observations.”

Researchers in the past have zeroed in on carbonate and phosphate ions to facilitate moisture-swing capture and have specific hypotheses relating to why these specific ions are effective. But Dravid’s team wanted to test a wider breadth of ions to see which were the most effective. Overall, they found ions with the highest valency — mostly phosphates — were most effective and they began going down a list of polyvalent ions, ruling out some, as well as finding new ions that worked for this application, including silicate and borate.

The team believes that future experiments, coupled with computational modeling, will help better explain why certain ions are more effective than others.

There are already companies working to commercialize direct air carbon capture, using carbon credits to incentivize companies to offset their emissions. Many are capturing carbon that would already have been captured through activities such as modified agricultural practices, whereas this approach unambiguously sequesters CO2 directly from the atmosphere, where it could then be concentrated and ultimately stored or reused.

Dravid’s team plans to integrate such CO2 capturing materials with their earlier porous sponge platform, which has been developed to remove environmental toxins including oil, phosphates and microplastics.

The research on direct air capture of carbon dioxide was supported by the Department of Energy (DOE-BES DE-SC0022332), and made use of the SHyNE Resource facilities, supported by NSF-NNCI Program (NSF ECCS-2025633).


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Stock indexes are breaking records and crossing milestones – making many investors feel wealthier

The S&P 500 topped 5,000 on Feb. 9, 2024, for the first time. The Dow Jones Industrial Average will probably hit a new big round number soon t…

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Major stock indexes were hitting or nearing records in February 2024, as they were in early 2020 when this TV chyron appeared. AP Photo/Richard Drew

The S&P 500 stock index topped 5,000 for the first time on Feb. 9, 2024, exciting some investors and garnering a flurry of media coverage. The Conversation asked Alexander Kurov, a financial markets scholar, to explain what stock indexes are and to say whether this kind of milestone is a big deal or not.

What are stock indexes?

Stock indexes measure the performance of a group of stocks. When prices rise or fall overall for the shares of those companies, so do stock indexes. The number of stocks in those baskets varies, as does the system for how this mix of shares gets updated.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, also known as the Dow, includes shares in the 30 U.S. companies with the largest market capitalization – meaning the total value of all the stock belonging to shareholders. That list currently spans companies from Apple to Walt Disney Co.

The S&P 500 tracks shares in 500 of the largest U.S. publicly traded companies.

The Nasdaq composite tracks performance of more than 2,500 stocks listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

The DJIA, launched on May 26, 1896, is the oldest of these three popular indexes, and it was one of the first established.

Two enterprising journalists, Charles H. Dow and Edward Jones, had created a different index tied to the railroad industry a dozen years earlier. Most of the 12 stocks the DJIA originally included wouldn’t ring many bells today, such as Chicago Gas and National Lead. But one company that only got booted in 2018 had stayed on the list for 120 years: General Electric.

The S&P 500 index was introduced in 1957 because many investors wanted an option that was more representative of the overall U.S. stock market. The Nasdaq composite was launched in 1971.

You can buy shares in an index fund that mirrors a particular index. This approach can diversify your investments and make them less prone to big losses.

Index funds, which have only existed since Vanguard Group founder John Bogle launched the first one in 1976, now hold trillions of dollars .

Why are there so many?

There are hundreds of stock indexes in the world, but only about 50 major ones.

Most of them, including the Nasdaq composite and the S&P 500, are value-weighted. That means stocks with larger market values account for a larger share of the index’s performance.

In addition to these broad-based indexes, there are many less prominent ones. Many of those emphasize a niche by tracking stocks of companies in specific industries like energy or finance.

Do these milestones matter?

Stock prices move constantly in response to corporate, economic and political news, as well as changes in investor psychology. Because company profits will typically grow gradually over time, the market usually fluctuates in the short term, while increasing in value over the long term.

The DJIA first reached 1,000 in November 1972, and it crossed the 10,000 mark on March 29, 1999. On Jan. 22, 2024, it surpassed 38,000 for the first time. Investors and the media will treat the new record set when it gets to another round number – 40,000 – as a milestone.

The S&P 500 index had never hit 5,000 before. But it had already been breaking records for several weeks.

Because there’s a lot of randomness in financial markets, the significance of round-number milestones is mostly psychological. There is no evidence they portend any further gains.

For example, the Nasdaq composite first hit 5,000 on March 10, 2000, at the end of the dot-com bubble.

The index then plunged by almost 80% by October 2002. It took 15 years – until March 3, 2015 – for it return to 5,000.

By mid-February 2024, the Nasdaq composite was nearing its prior record high of 16,057 set on Nov. 19, 2021.

Index milestones matter to the extent they pique investors’ attention and boost market sentiment.

Investors afflicted with a fear of missing out may then invest more in stocks, pushing stock prices to new highs. Chasing after stock trends may destabilize markets by moving prices away from their underlying values.

When a stock index passes a new milestone, investors become more aware of their growing portfolios. Feeling richer can lead them to spend more.

This is called the wealth effect. Many economists believe that the consumption boost that arises in response to a buoyant stock market can make the economy stronger.

Is there a best stock index to follow?

Not really. They all measure somewhat different things and have their own quirks.

For example, the S&P 500 tracks many different industries. However, because it is value-weighted, it’s heavily influenced by only seven stocks with very large market values.

Known as the “Magnificent Seven,” shares in Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla now account for over one-fourth of the S&P 500’s value. Nearly all are in the tech sector, and they played a big role in pushing the S&P across the 5,000 mark.

This makes the index more concentrated on a single sector than it appears.

But if you check out several stock indexes rather than just one, you’ll get a good sense of how the market is doing. If they’re all rising quickly or breaking records, that’s a clear sign that the market as a whole is gaining.

Sometimes the smartest thing is to not pay too much attention to any of them.

For example, after hitting record highs on Feb. 19, 2020, the S&P 500 plunged by 34% in just 23 trading days due to concerns about what COVID-19 would do to the economy. But the market rebounded, with stock indexes hitting new milestones and notching new highs by the end of that year.

Panicking in response to short-term market swings would have made investors more likely to sell off their investments in too big a hurry – a move they might have later regretted. This is why I believe advice from the immensely successful investor and fan of stock index funds Warren Buffett is worth heeding.

Buffett, whose stock-selecting prowess has made him one of the world’s 10 richest people, likes to say “Don’t watch the market closely.”

If you’re reading this because stock prices are falling and you’re wondering if you should be worried about that, consider something else Buffett has said: “The light can at any time go from green to red without pausing at yellow.”

And the opposite is true as well.

Alexander Kurov does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Marriage is not as effective an anti-poverty strategy as you’ve been led to believe

Marriage on its own won’t do away with child poverty, and in fact it can create even more instability for low-income families.

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Despite the popular guidance, marriage can be an economic risk for single parents with unstable partners. simarik/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Brides.com predicts that 2024 will be the “year of the proposal” as engagements tick back up after a pandemic-driven slowdown.

Meanwhile, support for marriage has found new grist in recent books, including sociologist Brad Wilcox’s “Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families and Save Civilization” and economist Melissa Kearney’s “The Two-Parent Privilege.”

Kearney’s book was hailed by economist Tyler Cowen as possibly “the most important economics and policy book of this year.” This is not because it treads new ground but because, as author Kay Hymowitz writes, it breaks the supposed “taboo about an honest accounting of family decline.”

These developments are good news for the marriage promotion movement, which for decades has claimed that marriage supports children’s well-being and combats poverty. The movement dates back at least to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Moynihan Report of 1965, which argued that family structure aggravated Black poverty.

Forty years after the Moynihan Report, George W. Bush-era programs such as the Healthy Marriage Initiative sought to enlist churches and other community groups in an effort to channel childbearing back into marriage. These initiatives continue today, with the federally subsidized Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood programs.

Still, nearly 30% of U.S. children live in single-parent homes today, compared with 10% in 1965.

We are law professors who have written extensively about family structure and poverty. We, and others, have found that there is almost no evidence that federal programs that promote marriage have made a difference in encouraging two-parent households. That’s in large part because they forgo effective solutions that directly address poverty for measures that embrace the culture wars.

Child hangs upside down on playground equipment
Having a parent who has a college degree makes kids less likely to live in poverty than having parents who are married. Mayur Kakade/Moment Collection via Getty Images

Marriage and social class

Today’s marriage promoters claim that marriage should not be just for elites. The emergence of marriage as a marker of class, they believe, is a sign of societal dysfunction.

According to census data released in 2021, 9.5% of children living with two parents – and 7.5% with married parents – lived below the poverty level, compared with 31.7% of children living with a single parent.

Kearney’s argument comes down to: 1 + 1 = 2. Two parents have more resources, including money and time to spend with children, than one. She marshals extensive research designed to show that children from married couple families are more likely to graduate from high school, complete college and earn higher incomes as adults than the children of single parents.

It is undoubtedly true that two parents – that is, two nonviolent parents with reliable incomes and cooperative behavior – have more resources for their children than one parent who has to work two jobs to pay the rent. However, this equation does not address causation. In other words, parents who have stable incomes and behaviors are more likely to stay together than parents who don’t.

Ethnographic studies indicate, for example, that the most common reasons unmarried women are no longer with the fathers of their children are the men’s violent behavior, infidelity and substance abuse.

Moreover, income volatility disproportionately affects parents who don’t go to college. So while they may have more money to invest in children together than apart, when one of these parents experiences a substantial drop in income, the other parent may have to decide whether to support the partner or the children on what is often a meager income.

The impact of having single parents also plays out differently by race and class. As sociologist and researcher Christina Cross explains, “Living apart from a biological parent does not carry the same cost for Black youths as for their white peers, and being raised in a two-parent family is not equally beneficial.”

For example, Cross found that living in a single-mother family is less likely to affect high school completion rates for Black children than for white children. Also, Black families tend to be more embedded in extended family than white families, and this additional support system may help protect children from negative outcomes associated with single-parent households.

Making men more ‘marriageable’

Kearney, to her credit, does note that economic insecurity largely explains what is happening to working-class families, and that no parent should have to tolerate violence or substance abuse. But she doubles down on the need to restore a norm of two-parent families.

Many of her policy prescriptions are sensible. She advocates for better opportunities for low-income men – to make them, in the words of sociologist William Julius Wilson, “marriageable.” Such policies would include wage subsidies to improve their job opportunities, investment in community colleges that provide skills training, and the removal of questions about criminal histories from job applications, so that candidates who have previously been incarcerated are not immediately disqualified.

A new marriage model

What marriage promotion efforts overlook, however, are the underlying changes in what marriage has become – both legally and practically.

The new marriage model rests on three premises.

The first is a moral command: Have sex if you want to, but don’t have children until you are ready. While the shotgun marriage once served as the primary response to unplanned pregnancy, such marriages today often derail education and careers and are more likely to result in divorce than other marriages. Research shows that lower-income women’s pregnancies are much more likely to be unplanned.

The second is the ability to pick a partner who will support you and assume joint responsibility for parenting. As women have attained more economic independence, they are less in need of men to raise children, particularly if their partners are insensitive or abusive. With healthy relationships, couples pick partners based on trust, commitment and equal respect. This is more difficult to do in communities with high rates of incarceration and few opportunities for stable employment.

And the third is economic and behavioral stability. Instability undermines even committed unions. Parents who wait until they find the right partner and have stable lives bring a lot more to parenting, whether they marry or not.

We believe that creating opportunities for low-income parents to reach this middle-class model is likely to be the most effective marriage promotion policy.

Economic support is key

In relationships that fall outside of these premises, 1 + 1 often becomes 1 + -1, which equals 0.

Being committed to a partner who can’t pay speeding tickets, runs up credit card bills, comes home drunk or can’t be relied on to pick up the children after school is not a recipe for success.

Economic principles suggest that businesses with more volatile income streams need a stronger capital base to withstand the downturns. Working-class couples who face economic insecurity see commitment as similarly misguided; without a capital base, a downturn for one partner can wipe out the other.

The Biden administration’s child tax credit expansion included in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 helped cut the child poverty rate – after accounting for government assistance – to a record low that year. It did more to address child poverty than marriage promotion efforts have ever done.

Researchers have described such income-support policies as the “ultimate multipurpose policy instrument.” They improve the economic circumstances of single-parent families and, in doing so, may also provide greater support for two-parent relationships.

Policymakers know how to solve child poverty – and these measures are far more effective than efforts to put two married parents in every household.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Divergences And Other Technical Warnings

While the bulls remain entirely in control of the market narrative, divergences and other technical warnings suggest becoming more cautious may be prudent….

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While the bulls remain entirely in control of the market narrative, divergences and other technical warnings suggest becoming more cautious may be prudent.

In January 2020, we discussed why we were taking profits and reducing risk in our portfolios. At the time, the market was surging, and there was no reason for concern. However, just over a month later, the markets fell sharply as the “pandemic” set in. While there was no evidence at the time that such an event would occur, the markets were so exuberant that only a trigger was needed to spark a correction.

“When you sit down with your portfolio management team, and the first comment made is ‘this is nuts,’ it’s probably time to think about your overall portfolio risk. On Friday, that was how the investment committee both started and ended – ‘this is nuts.'”January 11th, 2020.

As the S&P 500 index approaches another psychological milestone of 5000, we again see numerous warning signs emerging that suggest the risk of a correction is elevated. Does that mean a correction will ensue tomorrow? Of course not. As the old saying goes, “Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” However, just as in 2020, it took more than a month before the warnings became reality.

While discussing the risk of a correction, it was just last October that we discussed why a rally was likely. The reasons at that time were almost precisely the opposite of what we see today. There was extremely bearish investor sentiment combined with negative divergences of technical indicators, and analysts could not cut year-end price targets fast enough.

What happened next was the longest win streak in 52 years that pushed the market to new all-time highs.

The last time we saw such a rally was between November 1971 and February 1972. Of course, the “Nifty Fifty” rally preceded the 1973-74 bear market. Then, like today, a handful of stocks were driving the markets higher as interest rates were elevated along with inflation.

That 70s show

While there are many differences today versus then, there are reasons for concern.

The “New Nifty 50”

My colleague Albert Edwards at Societe Generale recently discussed the rising capitalization of the technology market.

I never thought we would get back to the point where the value of the US tech sector once again comprised an incredible one third of the US equity market. This just pips the previous all-time peak seen on 17 July 2000 at the height of the Nasdaq tech bubble.

What’s more, this high has been reached with only three of the ‘Magnificant-7’ internet stocks actually being in the tech sector (Apple, Microsoft, and Nvidia)! If you add in the market cap of Amazon, Meta, Alphabet (Google) and Tesla, then the IT and ‘internet’ stocks dominate like never before.”

US Technology Market Cap

Of course, there are undoubtedly important differences between today and the “Dot.com” era. The most obvious is that, unlike then, technology companies generate enormous revenues and profits. However, this was the same with the “Nifty-50” in the early 70s. The problem is always two-fold: 1) the sustainability of those earnings and growth rates and 2) the valuations paid for them. If something occurs that slows earnings growth, the valuation multiples will get revised lower.

While the economic backdrop has seemingly not caught up with technology companies yet, the divergence of corporate profits between the Technology sector and the rest of the market is likely unsustainable.

Technology EPS vs rest of the market

That inability to match the pace of expectations is already occurring. That divergence poses a substantial risk to investors.

US Trailing Technology EPS not keeping pace with estimates

Again, while the risk is somewhat evident, the “bullishness” of the market can last much longer than logic would predict. Valuations, as always, are a terrible market timing device; however, they tell you a lot about long-term returns from markets. Currently, the valuations paid for technology stocks are alarming and hard to justify.

However, despite valuations, those stocks can keep ramping higher in the short term (6-18 months) as the speculative flows continue.

Tech sector absorbing all market inflows.

However, over the next few months, some divergences and indicators suggest caution is advisable.

Technical Divergences Add To The Risk

Each weekend in the BullBearReport, investor sentiment is something that we track closely. The reason is that when investor sentiment is extremely bullish or bearish, such is the point where reversals have occurred. As Sam Stovall, the investment strategist for Standard & Poor’s, once stated:

“If everybody’s optimistic, who is left to buy? If everybody’s pessimistic, who’s left to sell?”

Currently, everyone is very optimistic about the market. Bank of America, one of the world’s largest asset custodians, monitors risk positioning across equities. Currently, “risk love” is in the 83rd percentile and at levels that have generally preceded short-term corrective actions.

Global Equity risk

At the same time, retail and professional investors are also exuberant, as noted on Tuesday.

“Another measure of bullish sentiment is comparing investor sentiment to the volatility index. Low levels of volatility exist when there is little concern about a market correction. Low volatility and bullish sentiment are often cozy roommates. The chart below compares the VIX/Sentiment ratio to the S&P Index. Once again, this measure suggests that markets are at risk of a short-term price correction.”

Sentiment / Vix ratio versus the market.

However, while everyone is exceedingly bullish on the market, the internal divergence of stocks sends warning signals. Andrei Sota recently showed that market breadth is weakening despite record highs. Note that prior market peaks were accompanied by peaks in the percentage of stocks above their 20, 50, and 200-day moving averages. To further hammer home this point, consider the following Tweet from Jason Goepfert of Sentimentrader:

Man, this is weird. The S&P 500 is within .35% of a 3-year high. Fewer than 40% of its stocks are above their 10-day avg, fewer than 60% above their 50-day, and fewer than 70% above their 200-day. Since 1928, that’s only happened once before: August 8, 1929.

market breadth

That negative divergence between stocks making new highs and the underlying breadth is a good reason to be more cautious with allocations currently.

As I started this commentary, “This is nuts.”

So Why Not Go To Cash

This analysis raises an obvious question.

“Well, if this is nuts, why not go to cash and wait out the correction and then buy back in.”

The best answer to that question came from Albert Edwards this week.

“I cast my mind back to 2000 where the narrative around the then IT bubble was incredibly persuasive, just as it is now. But the problem that skeptical investors have now, as they did in 1999, is that selling, or underweighting US IT, can destroy performance if one exits too early.”

Regarding speculative bull markets, as noted above, the “this is nuts” part can remain “nuts” for much longer than you think. Therefore, given that we have to generate returns for our clients or suffer career risk, we must be careful not to exit the markets too early…or too late.

Therefore, regardless of your personal views, the bull market that started in October remains intact. The speculative frenzy is still present. As such, we are reducing equity exposure modestly and rebalancing risk by following our basic procedures.

  1. Trim Winning Positions back to their original portfolio weightings. (ie. Take profits)
  2. Sell Those Positions That Aren’t Working. If they don’t rally with the market during a bounce, they will decline when it sells off again.
  3. Move Trailing Stop Losses Up to new levels.
  4. Review Your Portfolio Allocation Relative To Your Risk Tolerance. If you have an aggressive allocation to equities at this point of the market cycle, you may want to try to recall how you felt during 2008. Raise cash levels and increase fixed income accordingly to reduce relative market exposure.

Could I be wrong? Absolutely.

But a host of indicators are sending us an early warning.

What’s worse:

  1. Missing out temporarily on some additional short-term gains or
  2. Spending time getting back to even which is not the same as making money.

Opportunities are made up far easier than lost capital.” – Todd Harrison

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