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Feb 24, 2022

A step closer to biodegradable household batteries

Posted by in categories: chemistry, nanotechnology, sustainability

Fully organic rechargeable household batteries are an ideal alternative to traditional metal-based batteries, in particular for reducing pollution to landfill and the environment.

Now researchers at Flinders University, with Australian and Chinese collaborators, are developing an all-organic polymer battery that can deliver a cell voltage of 2.8V—a big leap in improving the energy storage capability of organic batteries.

“While starting with small household batteries, we already know organic redox-active materials are typical electroactive alternatives due to their inherently safe, lightweight and structure-tunable features and, most importantly, their sustainable and environmentally friendly,” says senior lecturer in chemistry Dr. Zhongfan Jia, a research leader at Flinders University’s Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology.

Feb 23, 2022

Russia Launches Military Operation Inside Ukraine

Posted by in category: military

Strikes on Ukrainian positions have been reported following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order of a military operation.

Feb 23, 2022

After sighting of ‘cube,’ lunar rover discovers mysterious glass spheres on Moon

Posted by in category: space

Chinese rover Yutu-2 has discovered mysterious glass spheres on the far side of the moon. The paper detailing the discovery has been published in Science Bulletin.

“Collectively, the peculiar morphology, geometry, and local context of the glass globules are consistent with being anorthositic impact glasses,” the researchers write in their paper.

Also read | Astronomers resolve mystery of ‘cube’ spotted on Moon’s dark side.

Feb 23, 2022

Elon Musk’s Lawyer Accuses Government of “Leaking” Information About Him

Posted by in categories: Elon Musk, government, sustainability, transportation

Elon Musk’s back at it again, folks — and this time, his attorney is accusing the federal government of leaking.

Following up on his claim that the Securities and Exchange Commission was trying to harass him into silence, Musk’s attorney accused the commission of “leaking certain information” in an ongoing retaliation campaign against the Tesla and SpaceX CEO.

This alleged campaign supposedly began back in 2018, when the SEC investigated Musk for tweeting about selling Tesla stock at $420 a share and taking the company private, eventually charging him with misleading investors. Though that case was settled in 2018 after Musk and Tesla paid $20 million each in fines, new reporting about the commission subpoenaing the CEO in recent months has reignited the debacle.

Feb 23, 2022

Tiny Space Probes Using “Laser Sails” Could Speed to Outer Planets and Beyond

Posted by in categories: information science, robotics/AI, space

Imagine a field of wheat that extends to the horizon, being grown for flour that will be made into bread to feed cities’ worth of people. Imagine that all authority for tilling, planting, fertilizing, monitoring and harvesting this field has been delegated to artificial intelligence: algorithms that control drip-irrigation systems, self-driving tractors and combine harvesters, clever enough to respond to the weather and the exact needs of the crop. Then imagine a hacker messes things up.

Feb 23, 2022

Risks of using AI to grow our food are substantial and must not be ignored, warn researchers

Posted by in categories: existential risks, information science, robotics/AI, sustainability, transportation

Imagine a field of wheat that extends to the horizon, being grown for flour that will be made into bread to feed cities’ worth of people. Imagine that all authority for tilling, planting, fertilizing, monitoring and harvesting this field has been delegated to artificial intelligence: algorithms that control drip-irrigation systems, self-driving tractors and combine harvesters, clever enough to respond to the weather and the exact needs of the crop. Then imagine a hacker messes things up.

A new risk analysis, published today in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence, warns that the future use of artificial intelligence in agriculture comes with substantial potential risks for farms, farmers and that are poorly understood and under-appreciated.

“The idea of intelligent machines running farms is not science fiction. Large companies are already pioneering the next generation of autonomous ag-bots and decision support systems that will replace humans in the field,” said Dr. Asaf Tzachor in the University of Cambridge’s Center for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), first author of the paper.

Feb 23, 2022

Mind-bending new quantum experiments are blurring past, present and future

Posted by in categories: futurism, quantum physics

A professor of physics explains how mind-bending quantum experiments are blurring the line between past, present and future. Further, he argues, these experiments, which factor in ‘the relevance of the future to the present’, may demand a radical rethinking of quantum experimentation itself.

Feb 23, 2022

‘Frozen in place’ fossils reveal dinosaur-killing asteroid struck in spring

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, existential risks

Clues to the season of impact lingered in delicate fish fossils.


Around 66 million years ago, springtime in the Northern Hemisphere brought disaster and mass death to Earth in the form of a giant asteroid impact that triggered a global extinction.

Feb 23, 2022

This is the reason Demis Hassabis started DeepMind

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

A year after it took biologists by surprise, AlphaFold has changed how researchers work and set DeepMind on a new course.

Feb 23, 2022

New project creates digital clones of human brains to help treat neurological disorders

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, mathematics, neuroscience

More recently, digital twins have been the focus of a European Union-funded project that seeks to clone a patient’s entire brain. Dubbed Neurotwin, the research project aims to create virtual models that can be used to predict the effects of stimulation for the treatment of neurological disorders—including epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease. When it comes to epilepsy, non-invasive stimulations (where electrical currents are painlessly delivered to the brain) have proven effective in tackling seizures. Given how drugs don’t help a third of epilepsy patients, the technology is coveted yet needs refinement. This is where virtual clones come in.

“The digital avatar is essentially a mathematical model running on a computer,” Giulio Ruffini, coordinator of the Neurotwin project, told WIRED. Including a network of embedded “neural mass models,” the technology hopes to create a map of the neural connections in the brain—a concept termed as the ‘connectome’. “In the case of epilepsy, some areas of the connectome could become overexcited,” the outlet mentioned. “In the case of, say, stroke, the connectome might be altered.” Once the digital clone has been created by the team, with about half an hour-worth of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data and ten minutes of electroencephalography (EEG) readings to capture electrical activities and realistically simulate the brain’s main tissues (including the scalp, skull, cerebrospinal fluid, and grey and white matter), it can then be used to optimise stimulation of the real patient’s brain.

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