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The orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) is a region in the frontal lobe of the brain known to be involved in decision-making and information processing. The lateral part of this brain region, known as the lOFC, has been identified as a particularly salient region for the creation of so-called “cognitive maps.”

Cognitive maps are mental representations of the world that are believed to guide . While past studies have linked the lOFC to the brain’s use of these maps, it is still unclear whether it creates these maps or merely deploys them when necessary.

Researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Baltimore and the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics have recently carried out a study exploring these two hypotheses, with the hope of better understanding the functions of the lOFC. Their findings, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggest that the lateral OFC is directly involved in the writing of cognitive maps.

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Fiber-optic cables stretch across oceans and wind their way underground to handle our communications systems, and scientists think that this vast network of infrastructure could be put to another use: observing Earth’s surface from below.

Specifically, the 1.2 million kilometers (more than 745,000 miles) of existing fiber-optic cable could be combined with satellites and other remote sensing instruments to monitor the entire globe in real time.

Storms and earthquakes could be tracked in this way, the team behind the idea suggests, as well as ships and whales passing through the seas. The network might even have the potential to be used to spot broken pipelines.

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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 134th 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 , we, as surgeons, expect that we return these back to their normal lives,” said lead study author Gregory C. Wilson, MD, an assistant professor of 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.”

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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 to remove rust that inhibits battery performance.

The research is published in Nature Communications.

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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.

Despite the potential advantages of direct recycling, however, considerable obstacles remain to be overcome before it can become a practical reality. The efficiency of direct recycling processes is correlated with the state of health of the battery and may not be advantageous where the state of charge is low97. There are also potential issues with the flexibility of these routes to handle metal oxides of different compositions. For maximum efficiency, direct recycling processes must be tailored to specific cathode formulations, necessitating different processes for different cathode materials97. The ten or so years spent in a vehicle—followed, perhaps, by a few more in a second-use application—therefore present a challenge in an industry where battery formulations are evolving at a rapid pace. Direct recycling may struggle to accommodate feedstocks of unknown or poorly characterized provenance, and there will be commercial reluctance to re-use material if product quality is affected.

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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.

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