Nanowerk August 17, 2022 Floating ‘artificial leaves’ that generate clean fuels from sunlight and water could eventually operate on a large scale at sea. Current techniques for depositing photoelectrochemical (PEC) artificial leaves limit their scalability, whereas fragile and heavy bulk materials can affect their transport and deployment. Researchers in the UK fabricated lightweight artificial leaves using lead halide perovskite photocathodes deposited onto indium tin oxide-coated polyethylene terephthalate achieving an activity of 4,266 µmol H2 g−1 h−1 using a platinum catalyst, whereas photocathodes with a molecular Co catalyst for CO2 reduction attained a high CO:H2 selectivity of 7.2 under lower (0.1 sun) irradiation. The corresponding lightweight […]
New faster charging hydrogen fuel cell developed
Science Daily August 12, 2022 Metal hydrides (MH) have large hydrogen storage capacity, low operating pressure, and high safety. However, their slow hydrogen absorption kinetics significantly decreases storage performance. Researchers in Australia designed and optimized a semi-cylindrical coil for hydrogen storage and embedded it as an internal heat exchanger with air as the heat transfer fluid (HTF). They analyzed and compared it with normal helical coil geometry, based on various pitch sizes, investigated the operating parameters of MH storage and HTF to obtain optimal values. Results from this study demonstrated that MH storage performance is significantly improved by using a […]
A New Virus Has Been Detected in China. Should You Be Worried About Langya Henipavirus?
Science Alert August 12, 2022 A new virus, Langya henipavirus (LayV) related to Hendra and Nipah viruses, is suspected to have caused infections in 35 people in China, who had contact with animals, over roughly a two-year period. Symptoms reported appeared to be mostly mild – fever, fatigue, cough, loss of appetite, muscle aches, nausea, and headache. A few had potentially more serious complications, including pneumonia, and abnormalities in liver and kidney function. A significant proportion of wild shrews were harboring the virus. According to the scientists LayV does not meet the criteria to cause disease outbreak in humans. This […]
Researchers invent self-charging, ultra-thin device that generates electricity from air moisture
Science Daily August 17, 2022 The current moisture-driven energy generation (MEG) materials and devices only establish moisture-driven energy interaction during water sorption in specific configurations, and conversion is eventually ceased by saturated water uptake. Researchers in Singapore have developed an asymmetric hygroscopic structure (AHS) that simultaneously achieves energy harvesting and storage from moisture absorption. The AHS was constructed by the asymmetric deposition of a hygroscopic ionic hydrogel over a layer of functionalized carbon. Water absorbed from the air creates wet-dry asymmetry across the AHS and hence an in-plane electric field. The asymmetry could be perpetually maintained even after saturated water […]
Scientists Achieved Self-Sustaining Nuclear Fusion… But Now They Can’t Replicate It
Science Alert August 16, 2022 For more than half a century, researchers around the world have been engaged in attempts to achieve fusion ignition as a proof of principle of various fusion concepts. Following the Lawson criterion, an ignited plasma is one where the fusion heating power is high enough to overcome all the physical processes that cool the fusion plasma, creating a positive thermodynamic feedback loop with rapidly increasing temperature. In inertially confined fusion, ignition is a state where the fusion plasma can begin “burn propagation” into surrounding cold fuel, enabling the possibility of high energy gain. While “scientific […]
Scientists publish guide for memristor hardware design
Nanowerk August 15, 2022 In this review article an international team of researchers (Germany, Switzerland) addressed resistive switching devices operating according to the bipolar valence change mechanism (VCM). VCM cells consist of three parts: an electronically active electrode (AE), a mixed ionic-electronic conducting (MIEC) layer consisting of a nanometer-scale metal oxide, and an ohmic counter electrode (OE). They provided detailed insights into the status of understanding of these devices as a fundament for their use in the different fields of application. The review covered the microscopic physics of memristive states and the switching kinetics of VCM devices. Electroforming, a process […]
A simple way of sculpting matter into complex shapes
Science Daily August 12, 2022 Researchers in the UK modeled propagation of far-red-detuned optical vortex beams through a Bose-Einstein condensate using nonlinear Schrödinger and Gross-Pitaevskii equations. They showed the formation of coupled light-atomic solitons that rotate azimuthally before moving off tangentially, carrying angular momentum. The number, and velocity, of solitons, depends on the orbital angular momentum of the optical field. Using a Bessel-Gauss beam increases radial confinement so that solitons can rotate with fixed azimuthal velocity. According to the researchers the model provides a highly controllable method of channeling a BEC and atomic transport…read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Thinking like a cyber-attacker to protect user data
MIT News August 11, 2022 A team of researchers in the US (MIT, University of Illinois, Texas Advanced Computing Center) found that a component of computer processors that connects different parts of the chip can be exploited by malicious agents who seek to steal secret information from programs running on the computer. They reverse-engineered the on-chip interconnect and developed two non-invasive mitigation mechanisms to interconnect side-channel attacks and offer insights to guide the design of future defenses. By reverse engineering the mesh interconnect revealed, for the first time, the precise conditions under which it is susceptible to contention. They showed […]
Tiny crystal vases
Nanowerk August 13, 2022 Skeletal or concave polyhedral crystals appear in a variety of synthetic processes and natural environments. However, their morphology, size, and orientation are difficult to control because of their highly kinetic growth character. Researchers in Japan have developed a new method to produce micrometer-scale single crystals in the form of hollow vessels. Upon drop-casting of a heated ethanol solution onto a quartz substrate, the molecules spontaneously assembled into standing vessel-shaped single crystals uniaxially and synchronously over the wide area of the substrate, with small size polydispersity. The crystal edge was active even after consumption of the molecules […]
Why thinking hard makes you tired
Science Daily August 11, 2022 Beyond subjective report, cognitive fatigue has been conceived as an inflated cost of cognitive control, objectified by more impulsive decisions. Researchers in France have proposed a neuro-metabolic account: the cost would relate to the necessity of recycling potentially toxic substances accumulated during cognitive control exertion. They validated this account using magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) to monitor brain metabolites throughout an approximate workday, during which two groups of participants performed either high-demand or low-demand cognitive control tasks, interleaved with economic decisions. Choice-related fatigue markers were only present in the high-demand group, with a reduction of pupil […]