Category: TRENDS IN HI-TECH SCIENCE

Power goes out, car goes on. That’s the idea behind vehicle-to-home (V2H) and vehicle-to-grid (V2G), the prospect of using the power in your electric vehicle’s battery pack to run your lights, refrigerator, and charge your phone if there’s a power outage in your neighborhood. While a home battery, such as Tesla’s Powerwall, supplies electricity for...

In the age of smartphones, personal portable devices give everyone the ability to diagnose an illness, as we’ve reported in articles such as “Doctor in Your Hand” (23 Sep 2015) and “Cough, Cough…Your Doctor is on the Phone” (19 Jul 2017). That trend has been evolving. Now, after COVID, it’s exploding. “All of a sudden,...

Scientists at the Salk Institute delayed aging in mice by genetically engineering their cells to produce more of four molecules known as “Yamanaka factors,” which control how accurately DNA is copied and also foster the creation of stem cells. Trying the technique with mice, the researchers found it had a rejuvenating effect on kidneys, skin,...

Nations have laid plans to negotiate a legally binding global treaty to reduce plastic pollution. Cows aren’t at the table for the discussions but they may play a part in making the treaty work. One of the four chambers in a cow’s stomach is the rumen, which incubates the bacteria that break down the coarse...

Illnesses that reside in the brain often are caused by cells that are weak or dormant. Treating the conditions with drugs, light, sound, and electrodes implanted deep in the brain often are only partly successful and carry risks. At University College London, neuroscientists have developed tiny magnetic particles that could work more reliably. Metal particles...

The inspiration behind Swiss startup Energy Vault: use stacks of “brick like” composite blocks to store energy—in effect, turning a pile of blocks into a battery. It’s a simple idea: use solar- and wind-generated electricity the grid doesn’t need at the moment to raise stacks of composite blocks to a height. Leave them there until...

Like the world’s vehicles, the chemical industry runs on petroleum: crude oil is the feedstock from which factories make everything from paints to plastics. Now, just as oil’s price is rising and its public approval rating falls, researchers at Northwestern University and the private Illinois company LanzaTech have found an alternative: feeding industrial wastes to...

Auto makers are dealing with an increasing number of lawsuits growing out of malfunctioning technology: dashboard screens that flicker or go black, faulty backup cameras, sound systems that die or suddenly blast at high volumes. In 2019, Ford paid $17 million to settle a suit brought by owners who complained about flaws in the vehicles’...

By tweaking the structure of a common polystyrene plastic, scientists at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory have managed to turn it into a reusable adhesive so strong that a dab of a square centimeter—less than half an inch—holds 300 pounds, or about 136 kg, suspended in air. The plastic is called polystyrene-b-poly(ethylene-co-butylene)-b-polystyrene, or SEBS, and...

Would-be electric vehicle (EV) owners waiting for battery-powered cars and trucks that run longer on a single charge won’t have to wait much longer. California-based Amprius has sold and shipped its first batch of lithium-ion batteries that, it says, stores 73 percent more energy per unit of weight than the batteries in Tesla’s Model 3...