Lifeboat Foundation

Dahn, a world-renowned battery scientist and NSERC/Tesla Canada Chair, presented the exciting news during his keynote presentation (titled: More than a million miles and a century of life) at the international battery seminar (IBS) held 28–31 March 2022 in Orlando, Florida.

The term “Million Mile” battery first came to life after Dahn’s 2019 open access publication in Journal of The Electrochemical Society (JES) stating “we conclude that cells of this type should be able to power an electric vehicle for over 1.6 million kilometers (1 million miles) and last at least two decades in grid storage”.

A crystal’s shape is determined by its inherent chemistry, a characteristic that ultimately determines its final form from the most basic of details. But sometimes the lack of symmetry in a crystal makes the surface energies of its facets unknowable, confounding any theoretical prediction of its shape.

Theorists at Rice University say they’ve found a way around this conundrum by assigning arbitrary latent energies to its surfaces or, in the case of two-dimensional materials, its edges.

Yes, it seems like cheating, but in the same way a magician finds a select card in a deck by narrowing the possibilities, a little algebraic sleight-of-hand goes a long way to solve the problem of predicting a crystal’s shape.

This article reports a highly integrated watch for noninvasive continual blood glucose monitoring. The watch employs a Nafion-coated flexible electrochemical sensor patch fixed on the watchband to obtain interstitial fluid (ISF) transdermally at the wrist. This reverse iontophoresis-based extraction method eliminates the pain and inconvenience that traditional fingerstick blood tests pose in diabetic patients’ lives, making continual blood glucose monitoring practical and easy. All electronic modules, including a rechargeable power source and other modules for signal processing and wireless transmission, are integrated onto a watch face-sized printed circuit board (PCB), enabling comfortable wearing of this continual glucose monitor. Real-time blood glucose levels are displayed on the LED screen of the watch and can also be checked with the smartphone user interface.

Scientists from the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research (DIFFER) have created a database of 31,618 molecules that could potentially be used in future redox-flow batteries. These batteries hold great promise for energy storage. Among other things, the researchers used artificial intelligence and supercomputers to identify the molecules’ properties. Today, they publish their findings in the journal Scientific Data.

In recent years, chemists have designed hundreds of molecules that could potentially be useful in flow batteries for energy storage. It would be wonderful, researchers from DIFFER in Eindhoven (the Netherlands) imagined, if the properties of these molecules were quickly and easily accessible in a database. The problem, however, is that for many molecules the properties are not known. Examples of molecular properties are redox potential and water solubility. Those are important since they are related to the power generation capability and energy density of redox flow batteries.

To find out the still-unknown properties of molecules, the researchers performed four steps. First, they used a desktop computer and smart algorithms to create thousands of virtual variants of two types of molecules. These molecule families, the quinones and aza aromatics, are good at reversibly accepting and donating electrons. That is important for batteries. The researchers fed the computer with backbone structures of 24 quinones and 28 aza-aromatics plus five different chemically relevant side groups. From that, the computer created 31,618 different molecules.

Physicists have discovered a new quantum state in a material with the chemical formula Mn₃SiTe_6. The new state forms due to long-theorized but never previously observed internal currents that flow in loops around the material’s honeycomb-like structure. According to its discoverers, this new state could have applications for quantum sensors and memory storage devices for quantum computers.

Mn₃SiTe₆ is a ferrimagnet, meaning that its component atoms have opposing but unequal magnetic moments. It usually behaves like an insulator, but when physicists led by Gang Cao of the University of Colorado, Boulder, US, exposed it to a magnetic field applied along a certain direction, they found that it became dramatically more conducting – almost like it had morphed from being a rubber to a metal.

This effect, known as colossal magnetoresistance (CMR), is not itself new. Indeed, physicists have known about it since the 1950s, and it is now employed in computer disk drives and many other electronic devices, where it helps electric currents shuttle across along distinct trajectories in a controlled way.

The latest data improves our understanding of how clouds in “hot Jupiter” exoplanets like this might appear up close. They are likely to be broken up, rather than a single, uniform blanket over the planet.

Photochemistry is the result of light triggering chemical reactions. This process is fundamental to life on Earth: it makes ozone, for example, which protects us from harsh ultraviolet (UV) rays.

New observations of WASP-39 b, a Jupiter-sized planet orbiting a Sun-like star found 700 light years away, confirm the presence of a never-before-seen molecule in the atmosphere – sulfur dioxide – among other details.

Continue reading “Photochemistry is confirmed on an exoplanet” »

Could psychedelics make you more creative? Shift your mind, connect you to others, and help you access a younger, more malleable version of yourself? Activist Rick Doblin, neuroscientist Gül Dölen, and musician Reggie Watts join Brian Greene for a mind-bending and multidisciplinary conversation about the promises and pitfalls of these “magic” molecules and their impact on creativity, connection, and consciousness.

This program is part of the Big Ideas series, supported by the John Templeton Foundation.

Continue reading “Psychedelics: Chemicals, Consciousness, and Creativity” »

This is an Approach to explain how life came to earth. It’s a story of chemistry, I hope this will not be to boring ;).

Observations of Exoplanet WASP-39b show fingerprints of atoms and molecules, as well as signs of active chemistry and clouds.

WASP-39 b is a planet unlike any in our solar system – a Saturn.

Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun and has the second-largest mass in the Solar System. It has a much lower density than Earth but has a much greater volume. Saturn’s name comes from the Roman god of wealth and agriculture.