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MIT engineers have discovered a new way of generating electricity using tiny carbon particles that can create a current simply by interacting with liquid surrounding them.

The liquid, an , draws electrons out of the particles, generating a current that could be used to drive or to power micro-or nanoscale robots, the researchers say.

“This mechanism is new, and this way of generating is completely new,” says Michael Strano, the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. “This technology is intriguing because all you have to do is flow a solvent through a bed of these particles. This allows you to do electrochemistry, but with no wires.”

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Researchers have found that graphene-enhanced hard drives can store data at ten times the density of existing HDDs.

By leveraging the wonder material graphene, a group at the University of Cambridge is claiming an advance in data storage that resembles more of a leap than a step forward. The new design unlocks higher operating temperatures for hard disk drives (HDDs) and with it, unprecedented data density, which the team says represents a ten-fold increase on current technologies.

In a HDD, data is written onto fast-spinning platters by a moving magnetic head. Special layers called carbon-based overcoats (COCs) protect these platters from mechanical damage and corrosion during operation, though these can only perform within a certain temperature range and also take up a lot of space.

The Cambridge researchers were able to replace the COCs used in commercial HDDs with between one and four layers of graphene, a material that is a single layer of carbon atoms with incredible strength and flexibility, among other highly-valued properties. The thinness of the graphene enabled significant space savings but also outperformed current COCs in preventing mechanical wear, reduced corrosion by 2.5 times and also offered a two-fold reduction in friction.

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I imagine it would pool into two groups: one made up of ivory tower PhDs quibbling over their latest studies, and one made up of conspiracists who are a little too quick to conflate science with magic.

Affiliate Disclaimer: Longevity Advice is reader-supported. When you buy something using links on our site, we may earn a few bucks.

Update 6/7/2021: This post has been updated since we originally published it in August 2020. Several new longevity life extension blogs have been added and one that is no longer active has been removed.

What would the longevity community look like without life extension blogs?

Continue reading “11 Top Life Extension Blogs For Longevity Enthusiasts” | >

When a massive star dies, first there is a supernova explosion. Then, what’s left over becomes either a black hole or a neutron star.

That neutron star is the densest celestial body that astronomers can observe, with a mass about 1.4 times the size of the sun. However, there is still little known about these impressive objects. Now, a Florida State University researcher has published a piece[1] in Physical Review Letters arguing that new measurements related to the neutron skin of a lead nucleus may require scientists to rethink theories regarding the overall size of neutron stars.

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Jeff Bezos plans to travel to space next month as one of the first passengers carried by Blue Origin, the Amazon.com Inc. founder’s space company.

Mr. Bezos said in an Instagram post Monday that he will be one of the inaugural passengers on Blue Origin’s New Shepard spacecraft, during its first crewed flight scheduled for launch from West Texas on July 20. Mr. Bezos said that his brother, Mark Bezos, will also be on board.

“I want to go on this flight because it’s a thing I’ve wanted to do all my life,” Mr. Bezos said in a video posted to Instagram. “It’s an adventure. It’s a big deal for me.”

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With the rise of the lithium-based battery, demand for this soft, silvery-white metal – the lightest solid element in the periodic table – has exploded. With the race to zero carbon by 2050 gathering steam, forcing the electrification of transport, lithium will be an even more valuable asset in the next 30 years.

The supply of raw materials for batteries could even end up being a national security issue, too; China’s global leadership on high-volume EV production has put it ahead of the game, and while the majority of ground-based lithium reserves are in the “lithium triangle” of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, China controls more than half’s the world’s supply simply through investments and ownership. It has shown in the past that it’s not afraid to wield commodity supplies as a weapon.

But as with other metals like uranium, land-based lithium reserves pale in comparison to what’s out there in the sea. According to researchers at Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), there’s about 5000 times as much lithium in the oceans as there is in land deposits, and a newly developed technology could start extracting it cheaply enough to make the big time – while producing hydrogen gas, chorine gas and desalinated water as a bonus.

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A dozen states — many of them in the Northeast, including Maine, Massachusetts and Connecticut — have already reached a benchmark of at least 70 percent of adults with at least one vaccine dose, a goal President Biden has set for the nation to make by July 4. But in the South, that marker is nowhere in sight for several states.

In 15 states — including Arkansas, the Carolinas, Georgia and Louisiana — about half of adults or fewer have received a dose, according to a New York Times analysis. In two states, Alabama and Mississippi, it would take about a year to get one dose to 70 percent of the population at the current pace of distribution.

Public-health experts and officials in states with lower vaccination rates say the president’s benchmark will help reduce cases and deaths but is somewhat arbitrary — even if 70 percent of adults are vaccinated, the virus and its more contagious variants can spread among those who are not.

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