Category: TRENDS IN HI-TECH SCIENCE

One barrier to drivers’ acceptance of electric vehicles (EVs) is the unwillingness to stand around for 20 minutes while the car charges at a public station. Most EVs can run for at least two days on a typical overnight charge at home, but the fear of being stuck at a charger in a random parking...

Engineers at ETH Zurich, the Swiss research university, have made a rooftop reactor that draws carbon dioxide and water vapor from air, then uses solar energy to turn the ingredients into hydrocarbon fuel.  The system is made up of three sections.  The first section sucks in air, extracts water and carbon dioxide from it, then...

Physicians treat rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a chronic condition caused by inflammation, by injecting patients with drugs that can, over time, cause side effects from severe infections to liver damage to increased risk of some cancers. At Washington University’s medical school, scientists took a new tack. They used Nobel-winning CRISPR technology (“New CRISPR Gene Editor Edits...

The European Commission, the European Investment Bank, and the private Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, part of Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy Ventures investment firm, have signed a deal to invest as much as €820 million, or about $1 billion, into long-shot ideas that, at best, will take a long time to pay off. Under the agreement, Gates...

At the University of Virginia, researchers have discovered 14 genes that cause obesity and three that can prevent it. As many as four in ten Americans are obese, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, putting them at risk for ailments ranging from strokes and heart attacks to diabetes and bad joints....

Critics of electric cars (EVs) have pointed out that they’re only as clean as the sources of the electricity that charge their batteries. Researchers at Berlin’s Radiant Energy Group consulting firm have parsed data to discover exactly where EVs in Europe are the dirtiest. Answer: Poland and the Republic of Kosovo produce most of their...

Space engineers are thinking a lot about Mars these days. Visionaries see our neighboring planet as a place to do everything from mining essential minerals to storing DNA samples and a record of human history. Now engineers are testing habitat designs that can keep people alive and healthy once they get there. NASA is sifting...

Upstart battery maker SES has broken ground on a Singapore plant to produce solid-state lithium-metal batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), the first effort to produce the technology at market scale. Solid-state batteries are likely to be the “battery breakthrough” that EVs critics and enthusiasts alike hope for: they can be lighter than today’s lithium-ion power...

In a study involving 12 patients, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital showed that electrical stimulation controlled by artificial intelligence can normalize brain activities in persons with mental illness. The patients have epilepsy and underwent brain surgery to implant electrodes throughout the brain. When pulsed, the electrodes can help to control seizures. These patients also suffered...

Battery chemistry, considered settled science for most of a century, has got new energy in recent years, now that everything from pocket flashlights to electric vehicles is demanding cheap, lightweight, long-lasting portable power. However, our battery-powered world is confronting an undeniable problem: spent batteries contain a liquid or paste-like electrolyte composed of sulfuric acid, hydrochloric...