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Feb 11, 2022
NTIA, NASA, NSF letter to FCC regarding Starlink Gen 2
Posted by Gemechu Taye in category: internet
Feb 11, 2022
MIT engineers invent surgical “duct tape”
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: sustainability
MIT’s biodegradable surgical tape is designed to seal tears in the gastrointestinal tract, potentially preventing sepsis-causing leaks.
Feb 11, 2022
New plant-derived composite is tough as bone and hard as aluminum
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: nanotechnology, sustainability
The strongest part of a tree lies not in its trunk or its sprawling roots, but in the walls of its microscopic cells.
A single wood cell wall is constructed from fibers of cellulose—nature’s most abundant polymer, and the main structural component of all plants and algae. Within each fiber are reinforcing cellulose nanocrystals, or CNCs, which are chains of organic polymers arranged in nearly perfect crystal patterns. At the nanoscale, CNCs are stronger and stiffer than Kevlar. If the crystals could be worked into materials in significant fractions, CNCs could be a route to stronger, more sustainable, naturally derived plastics.
Now, an MIT team has engineered a composite made mostly from cellulose nanocrystals mixed with a bit of synthetic polymer. The organic crystals take up about 60 to 90 percent of the material—the highest fraction of CNCs achieved in a composite to date.
Feb 11, 2022
Hypoint opens UK hydrogen cell development unit to power eVTOL and other aircraft
Posted by Shubham Ghosh Roy in categories: chemistry, drones, life extension
Silicon Valley hydrogen fuel cell innovator Hypoint has inaugurated a new UK unit intended to speed development of its air-cooled aviation power technology, and ready it to supply zero-carbon power to next-generation aircraft like electric takeoff and landing vehicles (eVTOL) as they prepare to launch services.
HyPoint’s tech uses compressed air for both cooling and oxygen supplies delivered to its fuel systems, which are lighter, less polluting, have longer lifespans, and enable seven times more flight capacity than lithium-ion and other chemical batteries. Those attributes are luring developers of existing, new drone, and eVTOL craft to give emerging hydrogen cell products serious consideration as drivers of their vehicles – especially as the world seeks to reduce its carbon output. In 2018, aviation sector’s share of global CO2 emissions was 2.5%.
Feb 11, 2022
New flexible supercapacitor could boost the lifespan of wearables
Posted by Liliana Alfair in categories: energy, internet, nanotechnology, wearables
A team of researchers from the University of Surrey’s Advanced Technology Institute (ATI) and the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPel), Brazil, has developed a new type of supercapacitor that can be integrated into footwear or clothing, an advance with applications in wearables and IoT (Internet of Things) devices.
A supercapacitor is an electricity storage device, similar to a battery, but it stores and releases electricity much faster.
The researchers have devised a novel method for the development of flexible supercapacitors based on carbon nanomaterials. The new method, which is cheaper and less time-consuming to fabricate, involves transferring aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays from a silicon wafer to a polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) matrix. This is then coated in a material called polyaniline (PANI), which stores energy through a mechanism known as pseudocapacitance, offering outstanding energy storage properties with exceptional mechanical integrity.
Feb 11, 2022
Animal Rights Org Bares Teeth in Faceoff With Elon Musk Over Brain Research
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: biotech/medical, Elon Musk, neuroscience
The activist Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine claims that macaque monkeys endured “extreme suffering” in a lab funded by Musk’s startup Neuralink.
Feb 11, 2022
How Left and Right Hippocampal CA1 Regions in the Mouse Brain Talk With Each Other
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: futurism, neuroscience
Researchers have uncovered neural circuitry that allows the CA1 region of th… See more.
Summary: Researchers have uncovered neural circuitry that allows the CA1 region of the hippocampus to communicate with its counterpart in the opposite hemisphere despite there being no connection between them.
Source: RIKEN
Feb 11, 2022
Automated reasoning’s scientific frontiers
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: augmented reality, robotics/AI
Byron Cook, the head of Amazon’s automated-reasoning (AR) group, think his field is entering a “golden era”, driven by a virtuous cycle of improving tools and b… See more.
Distributing proof search, reasoning about distributed systems, and automating regulatory compliance are just three fruitful research areas.