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A number of carbon capture startups have launched in recent years. You can add Air Co. to the list. It might be the first company to use atmospheric CO2 to produce liquor.

The Brooklyn-based distillery says that their proprietary process was inspired by photosynthesis. Like plants, Air Co.’s equipment absorbs carbon dioxide, splits the carbon and oxygen, draws in water, and utilizes the sun as a power source.

Their vodka is carbon negative, with each bottle trapping about a pound of carbon dioxide. Interestingly enough, Air Co. co-founder (and electrochemist) Stafford Sheehan says that much of the CO2 they’re capturing is being produced by nearby competitors — who distill other spirits using more traditional equipment.

Sheehan also says that their vodka is about the purest you’ll find. Ordinarily, the vodka-making process starts with fermentation. While it’s an effective way to create alcohol it also creates impurities like carbolic acid and methanols. Those compounds can be tricky to remove, and that’s a big problem when your goal is creating a spirit with a neutral flavor.

Air Co., on the other hand, creates ethanol by combining carbon dioxide molecules with water. Sheehan refers to the “metal-based catalyst” that kickstarts the process as their “secret sauce.” Distillation takes the ethanol from 10% to around 96%, at which point it’s ready to purified and diluted to 80 proof.

Air Co. vodka goes for $65 a bottle, and it’s only available at a select few establishments in New York. Wider distribution is slated for some time later in 2020.

The company’s next products could be much easier to get your hands on, but you won’t find them at a bar or liquor store. They may very well turn up at your grocery store — in the form of ethanol-based, carbon-negative cleaning products. Air Co. also has its sights set on the fragrance business.

Source: Noam Galai / Getty

Mya is a major advocate of veganism and often shares the vegan experience via her Instagram. She encourages followers to give the lifestyle a try with different juicing and raw vegan challenges and has even provided a vegan starter guide. Today, she shared her fruit of choice and it wasn’t an ordinary fruit. The “My Love Is Like Whoa” singer munched on a fruit called soursop or guanbana, which is found in south and Central America as well as Caribbean countries and schooled her followers on its health benefits.

“The green, heart-shaped fruit of the Graviola (or annona muricata) tree can weigh up to 15 pounds & grows in tropical regions of North, Central & South America,” she captioned her IGTV video. “Boosts the immune system & eye health, but also an antioxidant, stress reliever with anti-inflammatory properties, helps with hypertension & diabetes, and helps prevent & fight cancer.”

Source: imageBROKER/Harry Laub / Getty

Soursop,  which can be made into a custard, candy, ice cream, tea and juice, has a sweet taste described as a combination of strawberry and pineapple and has a creamy texture. According to research, the fruit has a property that has the “demonstrable ability to decrease growth of cancer that could be further comprehensively exploited.” However, scientists warn against publicizing this because its efficacy treating cancer has not been studied in humans.

Whether it can be used as a preventive measure against cancer or not, there are still many benefits to eating this fleshy fruit, as Mya pinpointed.  Take a look at her video below.

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Happy #Solfood #Sunday Shout out to @fruitsnrootz The green, heart-shaped fruit of the Graviola (or annona muricata) tree can weigh up to 15 pounds & grows in tropical regions of North, Central & South America. Boosts the immune system & eye health, but also an antioxidant, stress reliever with anti-inflammatory properties, helps with hypertension & diabetes, and helps prevent & fight cancer.

A post shared by MYA (@myaplanet9) on Nov 17, 2019 at 10:12am PST

JAY-Z hosted the inaugural Shawn Carter Foundation Gala Weekend this weekend and who’s who in music, entertainment, and sports were all there to support.

The likes of Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, DJ Khaled, Meek Mill, Normani, Swizz Beatz, Fabolous, Robin Roberts, Tyler Perry, Yo Gotti and more were all in attendance for the multiple events held throughout the weekend.

The weekend at the  Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Fla. started with a high-stakes poker tournament on Friday, and a black-tie gala event on Saturday that was hosted by Good Morning America‘s Robin Roberts. Alicia Keys also hit the stage for a live performance, helping the evening raise a total of $6 million.

All proceeds for the weekend will benefit the Shawn Carter Foundation’s scholarship fund, college prep workshops and bus tours, study abroad opportunities, and community goodwill programs for youth and families in need.

Check out the gallery below

The post Jay-Z Hosts Inaugural Shawn Carter Foundation Gala…And It Was Star-Studded! appeared first on Essence.

There are plenty of reasons writers love Microsoft Word, however, as the times have changed there are some new services for writing that have pushed the erstwhile word processing program to change and evolve.

One of those programs is Google Docs. Like with all things that Google does, Google Docs is designed to be streamlined and easy to use – in other words what you may sacrifice with the feature count when switching from Word to Google Docs, Google service supposedly more than makes up for it with efficiency. That said, it is important to explore if Google Docs really does have the ability to replace Microsoft Word, or if Word’s dominance is still as true today as it was so many years ago.

When it comes to improving writing, there are a lot of features in Google Docs that mirror Microsoft Word. For example, there is a spelling and grammar check function along with the same formatting options as well. You can also collaborate, which is one way that you can use Google Docs to improve your writing in a way that is much more convenient than Microsoft Word. The bottom line is Google Docs is quite a formidable competitor to Microsoft Word, so let’s look at the features that make it such a great program and how it stacks up to Word.

Use Google Docs to Collaborate

The best thing about Google Docs is the collaboration capability. For organizations and teams that are not located in the same geographic area, Google Docs makes collaborating on assignments extremely easy. Instead of having to send versions to Dropbox and wait for revisions while having to download a document, everything is edited in real time. So, if you are sitting in Des Moines and your partner for a project is in Nashua, you both can work on the document and make changes at the same time. The best part is that there are not several different versions flying around – the document you are working on is the main doc.

Here’s the thing, if you are using Word for collaboration, you are probably paying either ten bucks a month or paying a year subscription. Google Docs is free and what is better about it, collaborating via Google Docs is so much easier. You will work on the same document as the rest of your team, and the document will always be the latest version. There is only one document floating around, and that makes life much simpler. 

Downloading with Google Docs

There is good news and bad news when talking about downloading with Google Docs. The good news is you can easily download doc, docx, rtf, and PDF files from your Google Doc. However, this is where Microsoft Word is really handy, because now when these docs are offline you need to edit them and what do you need to edit them? A word processing program like Word. Now, the reality is if you are downloading to collaborate, this defeats the main purpose of Google Docs. Why would you download something if you can make changes in real time? The only reason would be if you need to make changes to the document but don’t have internet access – that also seems like a really odd scenario. 

The reality is if you are downloading a Google Doc, most likely it is a finished product. This means whether it is any of those files, the collaboration and editing has finished. This makes Google Docs a bit easier to use. You can also print the docs from the Google Doc file without downloading as well, so in reality downloading is such a small part of what you would do with Google Docs it does not make much of a difference.

Google Docs as Attachments

If you need to work on a Google Doc and want to send it to someone, sending it as an attachment is pretty much the last thing you would do. Here’s where Google Docs provides a great advantage – if the person is not on the doc, you can give them permission to edit right in the doc, and once you insert their e-mail address the invitation along with the link is sent out. Their Google account attaches itself and it’s that easy to adjust. This beats the save-attach-send inconvenience of Microsoft Word. Now, as far as sending a Google Doc as an attachment, the way to do it is to download the doc first, then attach and send. The reality is this is way more of an extra step than what is needed to have someone edit the doc. Within the permissions tab to send the doc, you have a choice between allowing the person to see the doc as a viewer or edit. If they need to edit, they can send you a request for permission and as soon as you approve, they have access. This makes Google Docs easier for sharing than Word.

Other Features for Google Docs Including Tracking Changes

The bottom line is there are far more features available in Microsoft Word for writers than in Google Docs. That said, if you have used Word, how often do you use these features? One thing Google Docs has that is similar to word are the Comments and Suggestions. You can do a lot with this via collaboration, but unlike Word where you can track changes, you will not be able to do that with the same ease in Google Docs. That said, there is an area on Google Docs where you can see a log of the changes, but it is not nearly as convenient as what Word offers.

Verdict

If you are looking for a simple word processing program that allows for easy collaboration with some basic features, then Google Docs will work very effectively for you. If the goal is to have a feature-rich word processing program and collaboration is a secondary concern, then trust Word with your writing. 

The post Can Google Docs Replace the Need for Microsoft Word? appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.