🐤 Taking flight

🏦 Markets: There seems to be some optimism among investors that policymakers will succeed in keeping the collateral damage to a minimum in dealing with the banking crisis … but that doesn’t mean Americans are ready to blindly trust banks again.

Reports indicate an increasing amount of money is being deposited into money market funds instead of traditional banks in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank’s failure earlier this month and the other close calls that followed.

Most of those deposits went into funds that maintain conservative investments in Treasury bills and other low-risk securities.

Last year was marred by widespread problems within the airline industry — from flight cancelations to lost luggage to employee strikes. But 2023 seems to be off to a much different start, aided in large part by notable improvements at U.S. airports.

An example of the trend

Even though commercial flights  have long been the fastest and most convenient way for many people to travel long distances, that doesn’t mean the process has been enjoyable. A number of airports have become synonymous with counterintuitive designs that made things difficult and frustrating from the moment of arrival.

And things were often much worse for people with disabilities or limited mobility.

One of those dreaded airports — LaGuardia in Queens, New York — is now becoming a symbol of hope for beleaguered travelers at other airports. Here’s how:

• Faster luggage screening machines in Terminals B and C.
• A larger and more welcoming Delta Sky Club.
• Better atmosphere, including a distinctive water feature.

LaGuardia has been attracting the attention of industry insiders, frequent flyers, and other airports. In fact, the upgrades at Terminal B recently earned accolades as the best new terminal in the nation.

Others are catching on

If you visit airports often, chances are you’ll start to see an increasing number of improvements … some big and some small.

Kansas City International Airport has better Wi-Fi, an impressive outdoor fountain, and cool artwork in its renovated terminal. There’s much better tech features far and wide at Orlando International Airport’s Terminal C.

On a broader scale, airports are increasingly adding facilities like lactation areas, inclusive restrooms, and modern amenities.

Not every airport is on board and there’s plenty of work left to do, but visiting an airport this year might not be as much of a chore as it has been in the past.

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Scientists are always keeping an eye on the star at the center of our solar system in order to monitor for anomalies. That’s why an announcement on Friday prompted some people around the world to fret about the potential ramifications.

The second recent discovery

According to astronomers at NASA and the Solar Dynamics Observatory, a “coronal hole” roughly the size of 20 Earths was spotted near the sun’s equator. Although that’s massive, it’s not as big as a previous hole that covered an area of the sun’s surface about 30 times bigger than our home planet.

As it turns out, however, the position of the hole matters more than its size … at least from our perspective. Most of them occur near the sun’s poles, which means that the powerful solar winds that result are spewed out into the depths of space.

Since the latest one is closer to the equator, experts say we’ll almost certainly see some evidence of the winds that can travel nearly 2 million miles per hour.

Preparing for impact

While solar winds can cause interruptions of satellites and certain other technologies, scientists say they’re not too worried about such problems in this case. Instead, the most likely evidence that we’ve been hit with a blast from the sun is the presence of auroras in the skies over multiple regions of the planet.

University of Reading space physics professor Mathew Owens explained: “This one being at the equator means we’re pretty much guaranteed to see some fast wind at Earth a couple of days after it rotates past central meridian.”

These holes tend to open up during periods of increased solar activity, which occur once a decade or so. The best opportunity to witness the effects of these winds will be Friday or Saturday.

😎 Taking off: A new form of taxi shuttle is set to transport passengers between Chicago’s Vertiport and O’Hare International Airport by 2025. United Airlines and Archer Aviation have joined forces to introduce the electric verthicle takeoff and landing, or eVTOL, aircraft cut down on pollution and drive time. The 10-minute flight can take an hour or more on ground due to construction in the area.

🏀 This is final: March Madness has been filled with more upsets than usual. All 1-seed schools were eliminated ahead of the Elite Eight and now we’re headed toward the Final Four in the men’s tourney. San Diego State will take on Florida Atlantic on Saturday evening, followed by a match-up between the University of Miami and University of Connecticut to determine which teams will play in Monday’s championship game.

💸 Bank shot: Silicon Valley Bank was at the center of an ongoing banking industry crisis when it failed earlier this month. This week, First Citizens Bank announced its plan to buy the troubled institution, obtaining all of SVB’s deposits and loans in the process. All 17 of the collapsed bank’s branch locations are slated to reopen, but they’ll be branded First Citizens now.

💧 Major leak: Twitter’s run of negative press continues this week with the announcement that critical parts of the social media platform’s source code had been leaked. The company went to court in an effort to determine who was responsible for leaking the information, which serves as the basis for how the network operates. Internet hosting platform GitHub confirmed that it had taken down all identified posts containing the code.

Although EVs are rapidly gaining ground on traditional gas-powered automobiles in the name of environmentalism, there’s a glaring problem surrounding the batteries that power these vehicles.

From mining for rare minerals to the energy required to produce them to concerns about how they’re discarded after they die, there’s a lot of concern about the impact that these batteries have on the Earth.

Focusing on recycling

It’s hardly an exact science at this point, but with millions of new EVs hitting the road over the next few years, industry insiders and climate change activists know that being able to recycle the components of expired batteries will be a pivotal piece of the puzzle.

The nascent battery recycling sector isn’t expected to be fully up and running in America until the beginning of the next decade. In China, where a majority of batteries are produced and consumed, however, the process is off to a more ambitious start.

An Oklahoma City company called Spiers New Technology is leading the charge domestically by pioneering processes by which dead or damaged batteries can be ethically and responsibly handled. In less than a decade, it’s gone from two employees to a staff of more than 400.

Exploring other options

Recycling and reusing the materials in EV batteries is important, but as Dirk Spiers says of the company he founded in 2014, it is really the last resort for batteries that have no more usefulness left in them.

Through a proprietary diagnostic system nicknamed “Alfred,” batteries that arrive at the company can be given new life in a number of other ways, including:

• Repair: Fixing an issue that gets the battery back into operational condition
• Remanufacture: Building the battery to its original specifications
• Refurbishing: Improving the battery to meet current industry standards