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It’s no secret that, while the humble GPU was originally conceived for the express purpose of chucking polygons around a screen in the most efficient way, it turns out the parallel processing prowess of modern graphics chips makes for an incredibly powerful tool in the scientific community. And an incredibly efficient one, too. Indeed A Large Ion Collider Experiment (ALICE) has been using GPUs in its calculations since 2010 and its work has now encouraged their increased use in various LHC experiments.

The potential bad news is that it does mean there’s yet another group desperate for the limited amount of GPU silicon coming out of the fabs of TSMC and Samsung. Though at least this lot will be using it for a loftier purpose than mining fake money coins.

Conventional batteries are a lot like camels. They’re great for storage and transportation, but they’re not exactly speedy.

For technologies that require a fast discharge of energy, such as heart defibrillators, alternative materials are often used; foremost among them, antiferroelectrics.

There is only a handful of known antiferroelectric materials, and most of them contain lead, so they aren’t safe enough for everyday applications. Now, a Cornell-led collaboration has discovered a new approach for making a lead-free antiferroelectric that performs as well as its toxic relatives.

Researchers have created intricately patterned materials that mimic antimicrobial, adhesive and drag reducing properties found in natural surfaces.

The team from Imperial College London found inspiration in the wavy and spiky surfaces found in insects, including on cicada and dragonfly wings, which ward off .

They hope the new could be used to create self-disinfecting surfaces and offer an alternative to chemically functionalized surfaces and cleaners, which can promote the growth of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Elon Musk’s company launched a Falcon 9 rocket bearing the 49 satellites from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday (Feb. 3), but a geomagnetic storm that struck a day later sent the satellites plummeting back toward Earth, where they will burn up in the atmosphere.

“Unfortunately, the satellites deployed on Thursday were significantly impacted by a geomagnetic storm on Friday,” SpaceX said in a statement. “Preliminary analysis show[s] the increased drag at the low altitudes prevented the satellites from leaving safe mode to begin orbit-raising maneuvers, and up to 40 of the satellites will reenter or already have reentered the Earth’s atmosphere.”


The satellites were hit by the storm just one day after launch.[/s].

And it’s the only one of its kind we’ve seen.

An international group of astronomers discovered a previously unknown mechanism behind the massive aurorae on the poles of Saturn, a press statement reveals.

The researchers found that, unlike any other planet observed to date, Saturn generates aurorae by swirling winds within its own atmosphere, and not only from the magnetosphere surrounding the planet — as is the case on Earth.

The new discovery shows that Saturn has a truly unique aurora, and it is the only one known to truly live up to the name Aurora Borealis\.