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Chronic pancreatitis, a painful, debilitating condition, often requires major surgery to remove all or part of the pancreas. Few large studies have evaluated how these patients fare five years or more after their operations. The largest study to date of patients who have had surgery for chronic pancreatitis with follow-up of six years or longer has found that about two-thirds survive after 10 years. However, more than one-fourth of these patients were still using opioids daily for pain.

The study, presented at the Southern Surgical Association 134^th annual meeting in December in Palm Beach, Florida, has been published online as an “article in press” in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons (JACS).

“After surgical intervention, we, as surgeons, expect that we return these patients back to their normal lives,” said lead study author Gregory C. Wilson, MD, an assistant professor of surgery at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. “In this study, we have long-term follow-up examining survival and cause of death in these patients well after that surgical period, and what we see is that survival continues to decline even five years out from surgery.”

Machine learning can analyse how the signals from Wi-Fi transmitters are disrupted by human bodies to reveal what position people are sitting, standing or lying in.

The inspiration for the next generation of robots comes from the animal and insect world.

Data from outage tracking website Downdetector showed more than 5,000 reports in the UK alone.

Mobile phone batteries with a lifetime up to three times longer than today’s technology could be a reality thanks to an innovation led by engineers at RMIT University.

Rather than disposing of batteries after two or three years, we could have recyclable batteries that last for up to nine years, the team says, by using high-frequency sound waves to remove rust that inhibits battery performance.

The research is published in Nature Communications.

Year 2019 face_with_colon_three

For high-cobalt cathodes such as lithium cobalt oxide (LCO) conventional pyrometallurgical (see section ‘Pyrometallurgical recovery’) or hydrometallurgical (see section ‘Hydrometallurgical recovery’) recycling processes can recover around 70% of the cathode value¹¹. However, for other cathode chemistries that are not as cobalt-rich, this figure drops notably¹¹. A 2019 648-lb Nissan Leaf battery, for example, costs US$6,500–8,500 new, but the value of the pure metals in the cathode material is less than US$400 and the cost of the equivalent amount of NMC (an alternative cathode material) is in the region of US$4,000. It is important, therefore, to appreciate that cathode material must be directly recycled (or upcycled) to recover sufficient value. As direct recycling avoids lengthy and expensive purification steps, it could be particularly advantageous for lower-value cathodes such as LiMn₂O₄ and LiFePO₄, where manufacturing of the cathode oxides is the major contributor to cathode costs, embedded energy and carbon dioxide footprint⁹⁵.

Direct recycling also has the advantage that, in principle, all battery components²⁰ can be recovered and re-used after further processing (with the exclusion of separators). Although there is substantial literature regarding the recycling of the cathode component from spent LIBs, research on recycling of the graphitic anode is limited, owing to its lower recovery value. Nevertheless, the successful re-use of mechanically separated graphite anodes from spent batteries has been demonstrated, with similar properties to that of pristine graphite⁹⁶.

Continue reading “Recycling lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles” »

A team at the US Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has developed a utility-scale solar and storage project that can provide power to both AC and DC high-voltage lines, and thus shore up grid stability – here’s how it works.

Most of the US power grid uses alternating current, or AC, which constantly switches the direction of electron flow. But solar and battery storage uses direct current, or DC, that flows in a single direction.

The US power grid includes a smaller number of high-voltage DC lines that are more efficient at delivering bulk power over long distances or to remote regions.

US semiconductor maker Wolfspeed plans to build a chip factory in Germany, which could benefit domestic EV production and the EU chip sector.