Lifeboat Foundation

If you could quickly predict the reactivity of a material in different scenarios using only its atomic-level geometry, you’d hold the golden ticket to finding application-specific catalytic materials. Some methods exist for making these predictions, but they require detailed knowledge about the arrangement of the atoms and are computationally expensive to perform and thus slow to run. Now Evan Miu and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh have developed a method that requires only information about the connectivity of the atoms, is computationally cheap, and is quick to run [1]. Their method accurately predicts how metal oxides interact with hydrogen in a reaction important to energy storage and catalysis.

Miu and the team hypothesized that they could predict a material’s reactivity using a single number that describes the so-called global connectivity of the system’s atoms. A material with a high global connectivity contains atoms that are, on average, bonded to more of their neighbors than does a system with a low value of this parameter. The researchers have used a similar concept to study reactivity for metal catalysts, but not for more complex structures, such as metal oxides.

To test their idea, the researchers examined—in different metal oxides—so-called hydrogen intercalation, a type of redox reaction that alters the host material’s properties. They found that they could use each oxide’s global connectivity to determine the strength of its hydrogen reactivity. The model-determined values for the various hydrogen-binding energies agree with experimental data and took mere seconds to obtain. The tool could thus allow scientists to rapidly develop and optimize novel materials to use in energy-storage applications.

Observations of air-bubble mergers in water explain why dissolved salt slows this process and leads to foam.

Air bubbles churned up in pure water can easily merge. But bubbles merge far more slowly in seawater or in other liquids containing dissolved impurities, which is why such liquids often generate enduring foams. Now a team of engineers believes that it has identified the fundamental cause of the difference—subtle forces set up by electrolytes, mobile ions created when substances dissolve in liquids [1]. In a collision between two bubbles, these forces greatly reduce the rate at which the liquid separating the bubbles can flow away. This understanding, the researchers say, explains why foams arise so easily in salty seawater and could be useful in many industrial applications.

Solutions with high electrolyte concentrations often produce persisting foams, so researchers have suspected for decades that dissolved electrolytes somehow slow bubble mergers. The effect has remained mysterious, however, and many theories even suggest that electrolytes should speed up bubble mergers, says mechanical engineer Bo Liu of the University of Alberta in Canada.

If you’re a programmer seeking to develop cost-free code for your projects while saving time and effort, explore these AI tools that help you generate free code.

Has your phone been acting up? Here’s how to check if malware is to blame, and what to do if it is.

Researchers who created a soft robot that could navigate simple mazes without human or computer direction have now built on that work, creating a “brainless” soft robot that can navigate more complex and dynamic environments. The paper, “Physically Intelligent Autonomous Soft Robotic Maze Escaper,” was published Sept. 8 in the journal Science Advances.

“In our earlier work, we demonstrated that our soft robot was able to twist and turn its way through a very simple obstacle course,” says Jie Yin, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work and an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University. “However, it was unable to turn unless it encountered an obstacle. In practical terms this meant that the robot could sometimes get stuck, bouncing back and forth between parallel obstacles.

Continue reading “‘Brainless’ robot can navigate complex obstacles” »

In an effort to create robots capable of controlling their own life-cycles, researchers have developed squishy little devices that can melt themselves into a puddle of goo.

“We have mimicked death in a life cycle where the robot could end itself,” Seoul National University engineer Min-Ha Oh told Peter Grad at Tech Xplore.

This ‘death’ is triggered by internal ultraviolet LEDs that destabilize the chemical composition of the robot. This process takes about an hour though, so it’s likely we have a few decades before we’ll see robots being employed as the kinds of vanishing spies proposed by the researchers.

GE Aerospace has demonstrated a worm-like robot that could one day inspect and repair jet engines. The Sensiworm (Soft ElectroNics Skin-Innervated Robotic Worm) is designed to serve as “extra sets of eyes and ears” for service operators as they examine the insides of aircraft. GE says the soft robot can minimize downtime and perform less invasive inspections and, in the future, make repairs itself.

The company compares the Sensiworm’s role in aerospace engineering and repairs to how soft robotics have allowed for minimally intrusive patient surgeries. “These technologies are enabling less invasive inspection and repair of jet engines on the wing to reduce downtime,” the company wrote. GE says the worm-like machine could give operators “virtually unfettered access” to inspect engines without disassembling them.

Resembling an inchworm, the Sensiworm (remote-controlled by operators) can crawl across various engine parts, including rotating wind turbine blades. It can sense and avoid obstacles automatically, reach places where gravity may stop other tools (thanks to its suction-cup feet) and measure the thickness of thermal barrier coatings. GE says it can even sniff out gas leaks. “With their soft, compliant design, they could inspect every inch of a jet engine, transmitting live video and real-time data about the condition of parts that operators typically check,” the company wrote.

Parent of Facebook and Instagram wants artificial-intelligence system to be as capable as OpenAI’s most advanced model.

An area known as Thacker Pass on the Nevada-Oregon border is home to clay that contain tens of millions of tons of lithium.