Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog – Page 3

Researchers from the Chair of Optics and Photonics of Condensed Matter led by Prof. Dr. Carsten Deibel at the Chemnitz University of Technology and other partner institutions are currently working on solar cells made from novel organic semiconductors that can be produced using established printing processes. The scientists are collaborating interdisciplinarily to fundamentally understand these photovoltaic cells in order to further improve them.

“Organic solar cells can be produced very easily and cheaply using printing processes,” says Deibel. In contrast to established made of , however, the current flow in is very slow.

“Due to the production of the solar cells from a kind of ink, the organic, light-absorbing layers are very disordered. Therefore, the current flow is very slow,” explains Deibel. A consequence of the slow transport of light-generated electrons and holes is the so-called transport resistance, which reduces the fill factor of the solar cells and thus the power.

Read more | >

Like a bumblebee flitting from flower to flower, a new insect-inspired flying robot created by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, can hover, change trajectory and even hit small targets. Less than 1 centimeter in diameter, the device weighs only 21 milligrams, making it the world’s smallest wireless robot capable of controlled flight.

“Bees exhibit remarkable aeronautical abilities, such as navigation, hovering and pollination, that artificial flying robots of similar scale fail to do,” said Liwei Lin, Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UC Berkeley. “This flying robot can be wirelessly controlled to approach and hit a designated target, mimicking the mechanism of pollination as a bee collects nectar and flies away.”

Lin is the senior author of a new paper describing the robot that was published on Friday, March 28 in the journal Science Advances.

Read more | >

A research team has identified a previously unknown degradation mechanism that occurs during the use of lithium-ion batteries. Their findings are published in Advanced Energy Materials.

The team includes researcher Seungyun Jeon and Dr. Gukhyun Lim, led by Professor Jihyun Hong from the Department of Battery Engineering at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology), in collaboration with Professor Jongsoon Kim’s group at Sungkyunkwan University.

Lithium-ion batteries, which are essential for , typically use nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) ternary cathodes. To reduce costs, recent industry trends have favored increasing the nickel content while minimizing the use of expensive cobalt. However, higher nickel content tends to shorten the overall cycle life of the battery.

Read more | >

The last time a new class of antibiotics reached the market was nearly three decades ago—but that could soon change, thanks to a discovery by researchers at McMaster University.

A team led by researcher Gerry Wright has identified a strong candidate to challenge even some of the most drug-resistant bacteria on the planet: a called lariocidin. The findings were published in the journal Nature on March 26, 2025.

The discovery of the all-new class of antibiotics responds to a critical need for new antimicrobial medicines, as bacteria and other microorganisms evolve new ways to withstand existing drugs. This phenomenon is called antimicrobial resistance—or AMR—and it’s one of the top global public health threats, according to the World Health Organization.

Read more | >

CD163 might not be the most exciting name in the world, but behind it lies one of the body’s most important defense receptors, which steps in when red blood cells break down and release harmful hemoglobin. Now, researchers at Aarhus University are the first in the world to have mapped how CD163 functions. The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

When infections such as malaria take hold in the body, can be severely affected and risk breaking down. When that happens, hemoglobin is released into the bloodstream, potentially causing oxidative damage.

The damage occurs because cells are exposed to reactive oxygen molecules, which form in the bloodstream when oxygen comes into contact with free hemoglobin. If the body is exposed to excessive , it can cause blood vessel damage, , inflammation, and in vital organs.

Read more | >

Most job candidates know to dress nicely for Zoom interviews and to arrange a professional-looking background for the camera. But a new Yale study suggests they also ought to test the quality of their microphones.

A tinny voice caused by a cheap mic, researchers say, could sink their chances.

Through a series of experiments, the study demonstrates that tinny speech—a thin, metallic sound—during video conferences can have surprisingly deep social consequences, leading listeners to lower their judgments of a speaker’s intelligence, credibility, and romantic desirability. It can also hurt an individual’s chances of landing a job.

Read more | >

University of Melbourne hydrology professor Dongryeol Ryu and his collaborator Ki-Weon Seo were on a train to visit Ryu’s family when they found something startling. Stopped at a station for technical issues, Seo had pulled out his computer to pass the time with some work when a result popped up in their data that Ryu could hardly believe: It suggested a “remarkable” amount of Earth’s water stored on land had been depleted.

“At first we thought, ‘That’s an error in the model,’” Ryu said.

After a year of checking, they determined it wasn’t.

Read more | >

Researchers from the Institute of Solid State Physics, the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with Southwest Jiaotong University, have combined high-pressure electrical transport experiments, high-pressure Raman spectroscopy, and first-principles calculations to reveal the structural phase transition behavior of hafnium oxide (HfO2) under high pressure and its evolution mechanism in electrical properties.

The paper is published in the journal Physical Review B.

“This study resolves the previous controversies regarding the phase transitions of HfO2 in the low-pressure region,” said Pan Xiaomei, a member of the team.

Read more | >

Until now, creating quantum superpositions of ultra-cold atoms has been a real headache, too slow to be realistic in the laboratory. Researchers at the University of Liège have now developed an innovative new approach combining geometry and “quantum control,” which drastically speeds up the process, paving the way for practical applications in quantum technologies.

The paper is published in the journal Physical Review A.

Imagine being in a supermarket with a cart filled to the brim. The challenge: get to the checkout before the others, without dropping your products on the corners. The solution? Choose a route with as few corners as possible to go faster without slowing down. That’s exactly what Simon Dengis, a doctoral student at the University of Liège, has managed to do, but in the world of quantum physics.

Read more | >

The effects of quantum mechanics—the laws of physics that apply at exceedingly small scales—are extremely sensitive to disturbances. This is why quantum computers must be held at temperatures colder than outer space, and only very, very small objects, such as atoms and molecules, generally display quantum properties.

By quantum standards, are quite hostile environments: they’re warm and chaotic, and even their fundamental components—such as cells—are considered very large.

But a group of theoretical and experimental researchers has discovered a distinctly quantum effect in biology that survives these difficult conditions and may also present a way for the brain to protect itself from like Alzheimer’s.

Read more | >