Scientists are unraveling how our organs talk to the brain—and how the brain talks back.
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Studies of interoception challenge distinctions between disorders of the brain and body—and may hold clues to the basis of consciousness.
Tesla is making construction progress on its upcoming lithium refinery in Texas, as shown in photos taken by one drone pilot this week.
Longtime Tesla construction observer Joe Tegtmeyer shared photos of Tesla’s forthcoming lithium plant near Corpus Christi, Texas, on Monday. The photos, as posted on X, show the foundations of what will eventually be Production Line 1, with other superstructure work and the beginnings of construction on Production Line 2, as Tegtmeyer explains.
Construction on the lithium plant was well underway by August, though Tegtmeyer’s latest photos show that the site has come a long way since then. He also points out that a new electrical substation has appeared at the site, while the installation of Rotating Kiln and Cooler Set 1 equipment has mostly been completed.
Automakers were once struggling to keep pace with demand for some new EVs, but now the opposite appears to be true.
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Imagine your laptop running twice as fast without any hardware upgrades; only the application of smarter software algorithms. That’s the promise of new research that could change how today’s devices function.
The team behind the research, from the University of California, Riverside (UCR), says that the work has huge potential, not just for boosting hardware performance but also increasing efficiency and significantly reducing energy use.
Referred to as simultaneous and heterogeneous multithreading (SHMT), the innovative process takes advantage of the fact modern phones, computers, and other gadgets usually rely on more than one processor to do their thinking.
EPFL researchers have discovered that nanoscale devices harnessing the hydroelectric effect can harvest electricity from the evaporation of fluids with higher ion concentrations than purified water, revealing a vast untapped energy potential.
Evaporation is a natural process so ubiquitous that most of us take it for granted. In fact, roughly half of the solar energy that reaches the earth drives evaporative processes. Since 2017, researchers have been working to harness the energy potential of evaporation via the hydrovol~aic (HV) effect, which allows electricity to be harvested when fluid is passed over the charged surface of a nanoscale device. Evaporation establishes a continuous flow within nanochannels inside these devices, which act as passive pumping mechanisms. This effect is also seen in the microcapillaries of plants, where water transport occurs thanks to a combination of capillary pressure and natural evaporation.
Although hydrovoltaic devices currently exist, there is very little functional understanding of the conditions and physical phenomena that govern HV energy production at the nanoscale. It’s an information gap that Giulia Tagliabue, head of the Laboratory of Nanoscience for Energy Technology (LNET) in the School of Engineering, and PhD student Tarique Anwar wanted to fill. They leveraged a combination of experiments and multiphysics modelling to characterize fluid flows, ion flows, and electrostatic effects due to solid-liquid interactions, with the goal of optimizing HV devices.
Adding a fourth light to traffic signals—in addition to red, green, and yellow—would shorten wait times at street corners for pedestrians, as well as improve traffic flow for both autonomous vehicles and human drivers. And the more autonomous vehicles there are in the traffic network, the shorter the wait times for everyone.
Tesla has started to push a new Full Self-Driving Beta v12 software update. It’s still not going wide, there’s no new release note, but CEO Elon Musk says it’s a “big release”
When talking about Tesla’s Full Self-Driving program, it’s hard not to talk about delays.
Tesla fans would argue that the company is trying to solve a major problem in self-driving and we should cut it some slack when it comes. The counter argument is that Tesla started selling Full Self-Driving since 2016 and by doing it, it created pressure on itself to deliver on its promise.
