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Engineers at MIT have developed a new battery design using common materials – aluminum, sulfur and salt. Not only is the battery low-cost, but it’s resistant to fire and failures, and can be charged very fast, which could make it useful for powering a home or charging electric vehicles.

Lithium-ion batteries have dominated the field for the last few decades, thanks to their reliability and high energy density. However, lithium is becoming scarcer and more expensive, and the cells can be hazardous, exploding or bursting into flames if damaged or improperly used. Cheaper, safer alternatives are needed, especially as the world transitions towards renewable energy and electric vehicles.

So the MIT team set out to design a new type of battery out of readily available, inexpensive materials. After a search and some trial and error, they settled on aluminum for one electrode and sulfur for the other, topped off with an electrolyte of molten chloro-aluminate salt. Not only are all of these ingredients cheap and common, but they’re not flammable, so there’s no risk of fire or explosion.

As any driver knows, accidents can happen in the blink of an eye—so when it comes to the camera system in autonomous vehicles, processing time is critical. The time that it takes for the system to snap an image and deliver the data to the microprocessor for image processing could mean the difference between avoiding an obstacle or getting into a major accident.

In-sensor image processing, in which important features are extracted from raw data by the image sensor itself instead of the separate microprocessor, can speed up the visual processing. To date, demonstrations of in-sensor processing have been limited to emerging research materials which are, at least for now, difficult to incorporate into commercial systems.

Now, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have developed the first in-sensor processor that could be integrated into commercial silicon imaging sensor chips–known as complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) image sensors–that are used in nearly all commercial devices that need capture visual information, including smartphones.

Luxury electric vehicle maker Lucid Motors unveiled the new Lucid Air Sapphire Edition, a top-of-the-line sedan, which the company says will do zero to 60mph in under two seconds, zero to 100mph in under four seconds, and the quarter-mile in under nine seconds.

That’s tremendously impressive in a full-size, fully-electric luxury sedan and potentially makes the new sapphire blue car the most powerful production sedan on the market, beating out the previous record holder, the Tesla Model S Plaid.

The new Sapphire Edition, which was revealed Friday during Monterey Car Week, pairs a number of the features from Lucid’s lower trim models like the Dream Edition and the Grand Touring Performance Edition. First, the new version of the Air gets three motors, two at the rear and one at the front, that Lucid says brings the estimated horsepower up to 1,200.

Inward Ca²⁺ currents conducted by voltage-gated Ca²⁺ (Ca_v) channels couple action potentials and other depolarizing stimuli to many Ca²⁺-dependent intracellular processes, including neurotransmission, hormone secretion, and muscle contraction (Zamponi et al., 2015). In presynaptic nerve terminals, Ca_v2.1, Ca_v2.2, and Ca_v2.3 channels conduct P/Q-type, N-type, and R-type Ca²⁺ currents that trigger rapid neurotransmission (for review, see Olivera et al., 1994; Zamponi et al., 2015; Nanou and Catterall, 2018). However, only P/Q-type Ca²⁺ currents conducted by Ca_v2.1 channels can mediate short-term synaptic facilitation at the calyx of Held in mice (Inchauspe et al., 2004), pointing to a unique role of these Ca²⁺ channels in short-term synaptic plasticity.

In transfected nonneuronal cells, Ca²⁺ entry mediated by Ca_v2.1 channels causes calcium-dependent facilitation (CDF) and inactivation (CDI) during single depolarizations and in trains of repetitive depolarizing pulses (Lee et al., 1999, 2000; DeMaria et al., 2001; Catterall and Few, 2008; Christel and Lee, 2012; Ben-Johny and Yue, 2014). Both CDF and CDI of Ca_v2.1 channels are dependent on calmodulin (CaM; Lee et al., 1999, 2000; DeMaria et al., 2001). CaM preassociates with the C-terminal domain of the pore-forming α1 subunit of Ca_v2.1 channels (Erickson et al., 2001). Following Ca²⁺ binding, CaM initially interacts with the nearby IQ-like motif (IM) and causes CDF, whereas further binding of Ca²⁺/CaM to the more distal CaM-binding domain (CBD) induces CDI of Ca_v2.1 channels (DeMaria et al., 2001; Lee et al., 2003). Introducing the IM-AA mutation into the IQ-like motif of Ca_v2.

Just 1 kilo of hydrogen fuel can do the same as around 9.9 pounds of diesel.

French-based company Alstom broke new ground in transportation. The company announced the world’s first hydrogen train, the Coradia iLint, reached Bremervörde, Lower Saxony, Germany.

This regional train only emits steam and condensed water while operating with a low noise level. With this breakthrough, it has been aimed to contribute to the greenest rail network globally, Alstom says.

Continue reading “14 Coradia iLint to start passenger service on first 100% hydrogen operated route” »

Managing road intersections in crowded and dynamic environments, such as urban areas, can be highly challenging. The poor management of traffic at these can lead to road accidents, wastage of fuel, and environmental pollution.

Researchers at the University of Maryland have recently developed GAMEOPT, a new algorithm that could help manage unsignalized road intersections with high traffic more efficiently. The research team with members, Nilesh Suriyarachchi, Rohan Chandra, John S. Baras and Dinesh Manocha introduced their method in a recent paper to be published in the proceedings of the 25th IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (IEEE ITSC 2022). This method combines optimization techniques with ideas from game theory, a mathematical construct that represents situations in which different agents are competing with one another.

“Forty percent of all crashes, 50% of serious collisions, and 20% of fatalities occur at unsignalized intersections,” Chandra, a member of the research team, told TechXplore. “Our primary objective is to improve traffic flow and fuel efficiency in poorly regulated or unregulated traffic intersections. To achieve this objective, we propose an algorithm that combines ideas from optimization and game theory to understand how different traffic agents cooperate and negotiate with each other at traffic intersections.”

MIT researchers unveil the first open-source simulation engine capable of constructing realistic environments for deployable training and testing of autonomous vehicles. Since they’ve proven to be productive test beds for safely trying out dangerous driving scenarios, hyper-realistic virtual worlds have been heralded as the best driving schools for autonomous vehicles (AVs). Tesla, Waymo, and other self-driving companies all rely heavily on data to enable expensive and proprietary photorealistic simulators, because testing and gathering nuanced I-almost-crashed data usually isn’t the easiest or most desirable to recreate.

Trains that run on hydrogen.

Re-sharing.

(CNN) — The future of environmentally friendly travel might just be here — and it’s Germany that’s leading the charge, with the first ever rail line to be entirely run on hydrogen-powered trains, starting from Wednesday.

Continue reading “The world’s first hydrogen-powered passenger trains are here” »