Li-ion batteries power almost everything these days, but their star is waning as more promising chemistries are developed. Scientists at the Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien) in Austria have invented a new battery type that uses abundant materials. The Oxygen-ion battery is cheap to produce and can last forever.
Liquid trees using nanotechnology have all the benefits of trees and take up significantly less space.
Another week, another exoskeleton on Kickstarter.
A Shanghai-based startup called Hypershell is trying its luck with an AI-powered exoskeleton that promises to take a big load off the next time you’re on a hike or run — and they say it’s even small enough to fit inside a backpack.
But the jury is still out on whether it’s anything more than a sci-fi-looking fashion accessory. To anyone thinking of backing, all the usual caveats about crowdfunding apply — it might not work at all, nevermind well, and it’s not uncommon to receive nothing at all.
My mum was due to celebrate a century of life and looking forward to getting her card from the Queen. She’d been living in an aged-care facility which had been through multiple lockdowns due to Covid. Our family started preparations for her birthday party; “hold the date” cards were sent.
On Mum’s behalf, we applied to receive the birthday card from the Queen. But early one night, after another lockdown, my dad rang. “I don’t think she’ll make it to the weekend,” he said. “Come quickly.”
As it happens, she hung on for another 18 days. The palliative nurse explained to my family that this was a time of being, rather than doing. We tried to make Mum feel loved, comfortable and with as little pain as possible as her body prepared to die.
Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory attempted to observe dark matter in a brightly-lit hallway in the basement using the sensitivity of their neutrino detectors. Neutrino Alley, where the team works, is located beneath the Spallation Neutron Source, a powerful particle accelerator. Following up on years of theoretical calculation, the COHERENT team set out to observe dark matter, which is believed to make up to 85% of the mass of the Universe. The experiment allowed the team to extend the worldwide search for dark matter in a new way, and they are planning to receive a much larger and more sensitive detector to improve their chances of catching dark matter particles.
Few things carry the same aura of mystery as dark matter. The name itself radiates secrecy, suggesting something hidden in the shadows of the Universe.
A collaborative team of scientists called COHERENT, including Kate Scholberg, Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor of Physics, Phillip Barbeau, associate professor of Physics, and postdoctoral scholar Daniel Pershey, attempted to bring dark matter out of the shadows of the Universe and into a slightly less glamorous destination: a brightly lit, narrow hallway in a basement.
Researchers at Boston University, U.S. report that the flow of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain is linked to waking brain activity. Led by Stephanie Williams, and publishing in the open access journal PLOS Biology on March 30, the study demonstrates that manipulating blood flow in the brain with visual stimulation induces complementary fluid flow. The findings could impact treatment for conditions like Alzheimer’s disease, which have been associated with declines in cerebrospinal fluid flow.
Just as our kidneys help remove toxic waste from our bodies, cerebrospinal fluid helps remove toxins from the brain, particularly while we sleep. Reduced flow of cerebrospinal fluid is known to be related to declines in brain health, such as occur in Alzheimer’s disease. Based on evidence from sleep studies, the researchers hypothesized that brain activity while awake could also affect the flow of cerebrospinal fluid. They tested this hypothesis by simultaneously recording human brain activity via fMRI and the speed of cerebrospinal fluid flow while people were shown a checkered pattern that turned on and off.
Researchers first confirmed that the checkered pattern induced brain activity; blood oxygenation recorded by fMRI increased when the pattern was visible and decreased when it was turned off. Next, they found that the flow of cerebrospinal fluid negatively mirrored the blood signal, increasing when the checkered pattern was off. Further tests showed that changing how long the pattern was visible affected blood and fluid in a predictable way, and that the blood-cerebrospinal fluid link could not be accounted for by only breathing or heart rate rhythms.
The number of people under 50 with cancer is increasing in many countries and for many different tumour types. Why this is occurring isn’t entirely clear, but it may be due to some aspects of modern life.
By Clare Wilson
My fanmade intro for Terry Matalas’s hypothetical Star Trek: Legacy series, made in the style of the Strange New Worlds intro.
Advanced materials are urgently needed for everyday life, be it in high technology, mobility, infrastructure, green energy or medicine. However, traditional ways of discovering and exploring new materials encounter limits due to the complexity of chemical compositions, structures and targeted properties. Moreover, new materials should not only enable novel applications, but also include sustainable ways of producing, using and recycling them.
Researchers from the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung (MPIE) review the status of physics-based modelling and discuss how combining these approaches with artificial intelligence can open so far untapped spaces for the design of complex materials.
They published their perspective in the journal Nature Computational Science (“Accelerating the design of compositionally complex materials via physics-informed artificial intelligence”).
In 2018, a team of scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara proposed a method for creating Kerr-Newman black holes using lasers. However, this method has not yet been tested experimentally.
The team of scientists, led by Philip Gibbs, proposed to create Kerr-Newman black holes by colliding two high-energy laser beams. The collision would create a plasma that would be compressed and heated to extreme temperatures, creating a black hole.
