Lifeboat Foundation

New natural-source e-ink biodegrades once discarded.

Theoretical “lumps” called Q balls formed in the moments after the Big Bang.

One of the biggest cosmological mysteries is why the universe is made up of way more matter than antimatter, essentially why we exist. Now, a team of theoretical physicists says they know how to find the answer. All they need to do is detect the gravitational waves produced by bizarre quantum objects called Q balls.

Every kind of ordinary matter particle has an antimatter partner with opposing characteristics — and when matter interacts with antimatter, the two annihilate each other. That fact makes our existence a mystery, as cosmologists are pretty sure that at the dawn of the universe, equal amounts of matter and antimatter were produced; those matter and antimatter partners should have all annihilated each other, leaving the universe devoid of any matter at all. Yet matter exists, and researchers are slowly uncovering the reasons why.

Focus on strategic sectors like lithium and 5G puts U.S. and Europe on defensive.

HONG KONG — In late 2003, when much of the world was getting connected to Wi-Fi, China decided to do it differently.

With the spread of the omicron variant, not everyone can or is eager to travel for the winter break. But what if virtual touch could bring you assurance that you were not alone?

At the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, computer scientist and roboticist Heather Culbertson has been exploring various methods to simulate touch. As part of a new study, Culbertson a senior author on this study, along with researchers at Stanford, her alma mater, wanted to see if two companions (platonic or romantic), could communicate and express care and emotion remotely. People perceive a partner’s true intentions through in-person touch an estimated 57 percent of the time. When interacting with a device that simulated human touch, respondents were able to discern the touch’s intention 45 percent of the time. Thus, devices in this study appear to perform with approximately 79 percent accuracy of perceived human touch.

Our sense of touch is unique. In fact, people have a “touch language” says Culbertson, the WiSE Gabilan Assistant Professor and Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at USC. Thus, she says, creating virtual touch that people can direct towards their loved ones is quite complex—not only do we have differences in our comfort with social touch and levels of “touchiness” but we also may have a distinct way of communicating different emotions such sympathy, love or sadness. The challenge for the researchers was to create an algorithm that can be flexible enough to incorporate the many dimensions of touch.

US sanctions have not only made it harder for Chinese aviation companies to buy technology, but they have made financing more difficult too.

(Bloomberg) — Amazon.com Inc.’s efforts to curry favor with the Chinese government included quieting criticism of President Xi Jinping’s book on its Chinese outlet, according to a Reuters report. Most Read from BloombergModerna’s Third Dose Boosts Antibodies Against OmicronS&P 500 Has Biggest Three-Day Drop Since September: Markets WrapBilly Joel NYC Show Going Ahead; Quebec Closures: Virus UpdateOmicron Becomes Dominant U.S. Strain With 73% of Covid CasesManchin Outlines Tax, Policy Changes He’

Electric-vehicle and battery startups have turned to an elite group of lawyers to ward off regulatory scrutiny while raising capital. Meet them here.

As the electric car revolution ramps up, so does the need for critical minerals used in batteries, such as graphite. According to Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, there will be a global graphite deficit starting in 2022, and demand from the battery sector is expected to rise 30% annually until 2030. The US has no manufacturing plants that can supply automotive-grade graphite at scale. Meanwhile, China controls 84% of the global supply. Electrek spoke with Don Baxter, CEO of Ceylon Graphite, about how graphite is used in EVs, the supply chain issue, and how EV battery manufacturers can successfully source the vital mineral.

Electrek: How is graphite used in battery electric vehicles?

Don Baxter: Processed graphite comprises 95% of the anode (negative electrode) of lithium-ion batteries that power EVs, whereas the cathode (positive electrode) is made up of various materials such as nickel and cobalt.

An international team of experts has collected data on metal halide perovskite solar cells from more than 15,000 publications and developed a database with visualization options and analysis tools. The database is open source and provides an overview of the rapidly growing knowledge as well as the open questions in this exciting class of materials. The study was initiated by HZB scientist Dr. Eva Unger and implemented and coordinated by her postdoc Jesper Jacobsson.

Halide perovskites have huge potential for solar cells and other optoelectronic applications. Solar cells based on metal-organic perovskites achieve efficiencies of more than 25 percent, they can be produced cheaply and with minimal energy consumption, but still require improvements in terms of stability and reliability. In recent years, research on this class of materials has boomed, producing a flood of results that is almost impossible to keep track of by traditional means. Under the keyword “perovskite solar,” more than 19,000 publications had already been entered in the Web of Science (spring 2021).

Now, 95 experts from more than 30 international research institutions have designed a database to systematically record findings on perovskite semiconductors. The data are prepared according to the FAIR principles, i.e. they are findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. By reading the existing literature, the experts have collected more than 42,000 individual data sets, in which the data can be filtered and displayed according to various criteria such as material compositions or component type. Researchers from several teams at HZB were involved in this Herculean task.