Lifeboat Foundation

The proliferation of wearable devices—from smart watches to AR glasses—necessitates ever-smaller on-board energy solutions that can deliver bursts of power while remaining unobtrusive.

Scientists leverage additive-free 3D printing process to construct exceptionally customizable and high-performing graphene-based micro-supercapacitors tailored for on-chip energy storage.

Zinc-air batteries are an inexpensive, powerful battery alternative that can be used on the small scale to power electronics or on the large scale for electric vehicles or energy storage. These batteries work when oxygen from the air oxidizes zinc, but the difficulty in oxygen activation which degrades battery performance has prevented their wide commercial adoption.

Information presented in a paper published in Carbon Future (“Fullerene-metalloporphyrin co-crystal as efficient ORR electrocatalyst precursor for Zn-air batteries”) shows how the addition of fullerene-derived carbon materials as catalysts can improve performance, stability, and cost of zinc-air batteries.

This graphic illustrates a zinc-air battery can using a fullerene-metalloporphyrin co-crystal as an oxygen reduction reaction catalyst. (Image: Carbon Future, Tsinghua University Press)

They designed persistent epigenetic silencing.

Changes to chemical tags on DNA in mice dial down the activity of a gene without cuts to the genome.

Enormous star-forming region in the Milky Way could produce supercharged particles.

We hope you bought an SSD last year when prices were affordable.

The new Tesla Model 3 Performance was spotted without camouflage for the very first time in Spain. It potentially means that the market launch is near.

It’s easy to see why Chinese electric cars are scaring the hell out of U.S. automakers like Tesla.

The next-gen Chevy Bolt EV is due out next year after GM ended production of its top-selling electric model at the end of 2023. GM’s CFO Paul Jacobson says the new Bolt EV will save the company billions by becoming North America’s first Ultium-based model to use LFP batteries.

After EV enthusiasts like myself were disappointed to learn GM planned to discontinue the electric Chevy Bolt EV last year, GM’s CEO Mary Barra revealed a next-gen model was in the works.

During a media call last July, Barra revealed the Bolt EV will live on as an Ultium-based model, claiming it will streamline production.

Webb telescope observes potentially young Methane deposits on surfaces of Eris, Makemake. A team co-led by Southwest Research Institute found evidence for hydrothermal or metamorphic activity within the icy dwarf planets Eris and Makemake, located in the Kuiper Belt. Methane detected on their surfaces has the tell-tale signs of warm or even hot geochemistry in their rocky cores, which is markedly different than the signature of methane from a comet.

“We see some interesting signs of hot times in cool places,” said SwRI’s Dr. Christopher Glein, an expert in planetary geochemistry and lead author of a paper about this discovery.

The Kuiper Belt is a vast donut-shaped region of icy bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune at the edge of the solar system.