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New recyclable plastic can break its molecular bonds and start over

Plastics are useful and ubiquitous – but that’s not always a good combination. The vast majority of plastic waste can’t be recycled, meaning it ends up in landfills at best or the ocean at worst. To help curb the problem, researchers at Berkeley Lab have now designed a new type of plastic that can apparently be reduced right back to its molecular parts, before being remade over and over.

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DARPA preparing to test fly two hypersonic weapons

The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is eyeing flight tests later this year for two hypersonic weapons, and it is teaming up with the US Army on developing such a ground-launched capability. However, at the same time, army leaders are drafting plans to consolidate duelling lines of effort within their hypersonic weapons’ portfolio.

During a 1 May Defense Writers’ Group breakfast with reporters, DARPA Director Dr Steven Walker fielded questions about ongoing projects inside the Pentagon’s research arm including the development of two hypersonic weapons with the US Air Force (USAF) — the Tactical Boost Glide (TBG) and the Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC).

“[They are] two very different concepts but when you’re talking hypersonic [weapons], it is good to have what I consider intended redundancy because it’s a hard technology, making materials and propulsion systems that last in 3,000° Fahrenheit temperatures is not easy,” Walker said.

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Open Source

We’re committed to accelerating scientific progress for the benefit of society. One way we do this is through releasing open source materials, to contribute to the AI community’s culture of collaboration and shared progress.

Along with publishing papers to accompany research conducted at DeepMind, we release open source environments, data sets, and code to enable the broader research community to engage with our work and build upon it. For example, you can build on our implementations of the Deep Q-Network or Differential Neural Computer, or experiment in the same environments we use for our research, such as DeepMind Lab or StarCraft II.

Our open source contributions can be viewed on our site and on GitHub.

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Graphene sponge helps lithium sulphur batteries reach new potential

To meet the demands of an electric future, new battery technologies will be essential. One option is lithium sulphur batteries, which offer a theoretical energy density more than five times that of lithium ion batteries. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, recently unveiled a promising breakthrough for this type of battery, using a catholyte with the help of a graphene sponge.

The researchers’ novel idea is a porous, sponge-like aerogel made of reduced graphene oxide that acts as a free-standing electrode in the and allows for better and higher utilisation of sulphur.

A traditional consists of four parts. First, there are two supporting electrodes coated with an active substance, which are known as an anode and a cathode. In between them is an electrolyte, generally a liquid, allowing ions to be transferred back and forth. The fourth component is a separator, which acts as a physical barrier, preventing contact between the two electrodes whilst still allowing the transfer of ions.

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