Lifeboat Foundation

As electric vehicles grow in popularity, the spotlight shines more brightly on some of their remaining major issues. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin are tackling two of the bigger challenges facing electric vehicles: limited range and slow recharging.

The researchers fabricated a new type of electrode for lithium-ion batteries that could unleash greater power and faster charging. They did this by creating thicker electrodes—the positively and negatively charged parts of the battery that deliver power to a device—using magnets to create a unique alignment that sidesteps common problems associated with sizing up these critical components.

The result is an electrode that could potentially facilitate twice the range on a single charge for an electric vehicle, compared with a battery using an existing commercial electrode.

A new report from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) Human Technology Institute outlines a model law for facial recognition technology to protect against harmful use of this technology, but also foster innovation for public benefit.

Australian law was not drafted with widespread use of facial recognition in mind. Led by UTS Industry Professors Edward Santow and Nicholas Davis, the report recommends reform to modernize Australian law, especially to address threats to privacy and other human rights.

Facial recognition and other remote biometric technologies have grown exponentially in recent years, raising concerns about the privacy, mass surveillance and unfairness experienced, especially by people of color and women, when the technology makes mistakes.

In the future, many computers will most likely be based on electronic circuits made of superconductors. These are materials through which an electrical current can flow without energy losses, could be very promising for the development of high-performance supercomputers and quantum computers.

Researchers at University of California Santa Barbara, Raytheon BBN Technologies, University of Cagliari, Microsoft Research, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology have recently developed a magneto-optic modulator—a device that control the properties of a light beam through a magnetic field. This device, introduced in a paper published in Nature Electronics, could contribute to the implementation of large-scale electronics and computers based on superconductors.

“We are working on a new technology that can speed up high-performance supercomputers and quantum computers based on superconductor technology,” Paolo Pintus, the researcher who led the study, told TechXplore. “Superconductors work properly only at low temperatures, generally just above absolute zero (−273.15° Celsius). Because of this, circuits made of these materials must be kept inside a dedicated refrigerator.”

Source: Wikimedia Commons.

The Hayabusa 2 spacecraft dropped a capsule containing the samples — materials dating back to the beginnings of our solar system — into Earth’s atmosphere before continuing its journey to another asteroid.

TODAY NASA will make history but conducting the first ever asteroid redirection test!

Get your SLS gear TODAY at https://www.thelaunchpad.store.

Continue reading “DART Countdown to Impact” »

Enigmatic fast radio bursts come from some of the most extreme environments. A newly discovered one could come from a pairing of a powerful pulsar and a giant star.

Regent’s electric seaglider successfully completed its first series of flights and demonstrated her ability to fully fulfill its “float-foil-fly” mission.

A video of Regent’s unique Seaglider prototype in flight testing has just been released. The machine offers breakthrough speed and range in coastal locations as the first to combine the efficiency benefits of ground effect with hydro-foiling in a single design.

Continue reading “Watch world’s first flying electric boat concept complete its test flight” »

Scientists discover that 1 in 5 metal compounds display anti-fungal properties-they are non-toxic too.

Metal compounds could be the answer to the growing problem of drug-resistant fungal infections, according to new research published in the American Chemical Society on Sept .23.

The compounds could help develop much-needed antifungal drugs-particularly for immunocompromised patients susceptible to fungal infections.

This is both good and bad news.

A team of international researchers has revealed that viruses take cues from their surroundings to perform different actions. This implies that they have the ability to sense their and their host’s environment and decide whether or not it is suitable to spread infection, attack the host cells, multiply in number, or suspend activity at any given time.

Continue reading “Viruses may monitor their hosts’ environment to spread more effectively” »