Lifeboat Foundation

In a great example of a low-cost research solution that could deliver big results, University of Michigan scientists have created a window for lithium-based batteries in order to film them as they charge and discharge.

The future of lithium-ion batteries is limited, says University of Michigan researcher Neil Dasgupta, because the chemistry cannot be pushed much further than it already has. Next-generation lithium cells will likely use lithium air and lithium sulfur chemistries. One of the big hurdles to be overcome in making these batteries practical is dendrites — tiny branch-like structures of lithium that form on the electrodes.

Continue reading “A peek into the future of lithium batteries” »

Traditional lithium-ion batteries may be on the way out, as scientists continue to overcome the obstacles holding back the longer-lasting lithium-oxygen batteries. The main issue is lack of efficiency and the build-up of lithium peroxide, which reduces the electrodes’ effectiveness. But now a team at Yale has used a molecule found in blood as a catalyst that not only improved the lithium-oxygen function, but may help reduce biowaste.

Lithium-oxygen, or lithium-air batteries, have the potential to hold a charge for much longer than traditional lithium-ion batteries and extend the life of devices like phones to several weeks before they’d need to be recharged. But before those dreams can become a reality, the problems of efficiency and lithium peroxide build-up need to be solved.

Previous studies have tried to fight lithium peroxide by keeping the oxygen in the cell as a solid, and by modifying the electrode to produce lithium superoxide instead. In this case, the Yale researchers were looking for a new catalyst that allowed lithium oxide in the cell to decompose back into lithium ions and gaseous oxygen, and they found one in an unexpected place: animal blood.

Japanese scientists have successfully grown healthy eggs from mouse skin cells – all within the perimeters of a lab dish. Led by Professor Katsuhiko Hayashi of Kyushu University, this achievement marks the first time the entire process has taken place outside a mouse and raises a tantalizing question for the reproductive science community: What if you could do the same with human cells?

The NBA, the first major sports league to really embrace virtual reality, is getting even more serious about the technology for the upcoming 2016–2017 season. Today NBA Digital and its partner NextVR announced that they’ll broadcast at least one game every week during the season in VR, complete with dedicated announcers, multiple camera angles, and VR-optimized graphics.

Fans will need to have a full-season NBA League Pass subscription — either purchased directly or through a cable provider — to watch games in virtual reality. VR games can be viewed using Samsung’s Gear VR and the NextVR app. The NBA says that other VR headsets will be supported later in the season. During game breaks, fans will be able to see in-venue entertainment and behind-the-scenes arena footage.

“This programming marks the first regular schedule of live games delivered in VR by a professional sports league,” the NBA said in today’s press release. And yeah, that’s a fairly big deal. We’re beginning to see regular, consistent VR content (like professional basketball) that millions of people actually care about. And the NBA deserves credit for being bold in helping to form that path.

Continue reading “The NBA will broadcast a game in VR every week this season” »

Electronics that can be embedded in clothing are a growing trend. However, power sources remain a problem. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, scientists have now introduced thin, flexible, lithium ion batteries with self-healing properties that can be safely worn on the body. Even after completely breaking apart, the battery can grow back together without significant impact on its electrochemical properties.

Existing lithium ion batteries for wearable electronics can be bent and rolled up without any problems, but can break when they are twisted too far or accidentally stepped on — which can happen often when being worn. This damage not only causes the battery to fail, it can also cause a safety problem: Flammable, toxic, or corrosive gases or liquids may leak out.

A team led by Yonggang Wang and Huisheng Peng has now developed a new family of lithium ion batteries that can overcome such accidents thanks to their amazing self-healing powers. In order for a complicated object like a battery to be made self-healing, all of its individual components must also be self-healing. The scientists from Fudan University (Shanghai, China), the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (South Korea), and the Samsung R&D Institute China, have now been able to accomplish this.

Hydrogen is often described as the fuel of the future, particularly when applied to hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles. One of the main obstacles facing this technology — a potential solution to future sustainable transport — has been the lack of a lightweight, safe on-board hydrogen storage material.

A major new discovery by scientists at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Cardiff in the UK, and the King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) in Saudi Arabia, has shown that hydrocarbon wax rapidly releases large amounts of hydrogen when activated with catalysts and microwaves.

This discovery of a potential safe storage method, reported in the Nature journal Scientific Reports, could pave the way for widespread adoption of hydrogen-fuelled cars.

A new design for solar cells that uses inexpensive, commonly available materials could rival and even outperform conventional cells made of silicon.

Writing in the Oct. 21 edition of Science, researchers from Stanford and Oxford describe using tin and other abundant elements to create novel forms of perovskite — a photovoltaic crystalline material that’s thinner, more flexible and easier to manufacture than silicon crystals.

“Perovskite semiconductors have shown great promise for making high-efficiency solar cells at low cost,” said study co-author Michael McGehee, a professor of materials science and engineering at Stanford. “We have designed a robust, all-perovskite device that converts sunlight into electricity with an efficiency of 20.3 percent, a rate comparable to silicon solar cells on the market today.”

How, then, could we tell a gravastar from a black hole? It would be almost impossible to “see” a gravastar, because of the same effect that makes a black hole “black”: any light would be so deflected by the gravitational field that it would never reach us. However, where photons would fail, gravitational waves can succeed! It has long since been known that when black holes are perturbed, they “vibrate” emitting gravitational waves. Indeed, they behave as “bells”, that is with a signal that progressively fades away, or “ringsdown”. The tone and fading of these waves depends on the only two properties of the black hole: its mass and spin. Gravastars also emit gravitational waves when they are perturbed, but, interestingly, the tones and fading of these waves are different from those of black holes. This is a fact that was alreadyknown soon after gravastars were proposed.

After the first direct detection of gravitational waves that was announced last February by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration and made news all over the world, Luciano Rezzolla (Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany) and Cecilia Chirenti (Federal University of ABC in Santo André, Brazil) set out to test whether the observed signal could have been a gravastar or not.

When considering the strongest of the signals detected so far, i.e. GW150914, the LIGO team has shown convincingly that the signal was consistent with the a collision of two black holes that formed a bigger black hole. The last part of the signal, which is indeed the ringdown, is the fingerprint that could identify the result of the collision. “The frequencies in the ringdown are the signature of the source of gravitational waves, like different bells ring with different sound”, explains Professor Chirenti.

Continue reading “‘Dark-Energy Star’ or ‘Black Hole’ --Scientists Question Source of LIGO Detection of Gravitational Waves” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=v-qVBko0r0U

Mars colonization — getting there is only a small part of the equation. The bigger problem is how to survive. Synthetic biology may be able to help.