Forum for Science, Industry and Business

The thermal runaway issue has been a long-standing obstacle impeding the development of high energy density and high power delivery batteries. These batteries would generate a lot of heat in ultrafast charge/discharge process or hazardous conditions, such as overcharging and short-circuit. To dissipate the heat accumulated in the batteries, physical safety designs such as fused disconnect switches, extinguishing agents, and shutdown current collectors have been employed. However, these approaches only provide a one-time protection. There is no provision for these strategies to spontaneously restore the original working condition of batteries once the temperature is cooled down. Therefore, intelligent and active internal safety strategies need to be designed for fabricating smart batteries with dynamic electrochemical performance and self-adaptive response to temperature.

Modelling data in reverse offers hints for how the arrow of time emerges

An international team of scientists has discovered a new, exotic form of insulating material with a metallic surface that could enable more efficient electronics or even quantum computing. The researchers developed a new method for analyzing existing chemical compounds that relies on the mathematical properties like symmetry that govern the repeating patterns seen in everyday wallpaper.

Researchers developed a new computer model that shows how metallic glass behaves under stress to one day build better materials.

The properties of a solid depend on the arrangement of its atoms, which form a periodic crystal structure. At the nanoscale, arrangements that break this periodic structure can drastically alter the behavior of the material, but this is difficult to measure. Recent advances by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory are starting to unravel this mystery.

Individualized dietary recommendations based on genetic information are currently a popular trend. A team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has systematically analyzed scientific articles and reached the following conclusion: There is no clear evidence for the effect of genetic factors on the consumption of total calories, carbohydrates, and fat. According to the current state of knowledge, the expedience of gene-based dietary recommendations has yet to be proven.

Scientists at the Mainz University Medical Center and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P) have developed a new method to enable miniature drug-filled nanocarriers to dock on to immune cells, which in turn attack tumors. In the future, this may lead to targeted treatment that can largely eliminate damage to healthy tissue. The scientists have recently published their findings in the renowned scientific journal Nature Nanotechnology. Please watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFVnBBWhCro for further information on the way nanocarriers work and function.

A first-of-its-kind survey of the world's sandy shorelines with satellite data found that they have increased slightly on a global scale over the past three decades but decreased in protected marine areas, where many beaches are eroding.

RSTAR can navigate large obstacles and carry payloads necessary for search and rescue operations

Your everyday permanent markers, glue sticks and packing tape may offer a surprisingly low-tech solution to a long-standing nuisance in the manufacturing industry: Making soft and ductile, or so-called "gummy" metals easier to cut.

Ecosystem resilience and human well-being topic of ecological sciences conference

The discovery is a major step toward understanding the mechanisms of myelin production and the potential for treating certain central nervous system diseases

Deep in the ocean's twilight zone, swarms of ravenous single-celled organisms may be altering Earth's carbon cycle in ways scientists never expected, according to a new study from Florida State University researchers.

It is not easy to tell when someone is lying. This is even more difficult when potential liars speak in a language other than their native tongue. Psychologists of the University of Würzburg investigated why that is so.

Scientists optimize a procedure toward regenerative medicine for bone defects

Although machine learning technique gained amazing success in many aspects, its application in crystal structure predictions and materials design is still under developing. Recently, Prof. Jian Sun's group at the Department of Physics, Nanjing University implemented a machine-learning algorithm into the crystal structure search method. They use a machine learning algorithm to fit a model to describe the potential energy surface and use it to filter the crystal structures initially. This can effectively enhance the search efficiency of crystal structure prediction.

About half of the students finishing high school in Germany are myopic. In myopia, the eye grows too long, and the focus of the image is in front of the retina. The visual scene is out of focus when people are looking at a distance. Myopia is the prize to pay for good education - statistically, one year of education makes about a quarter diopter more myopic. Myopia is increasing worldwide, since a solid education becomes more and more important.

A wide range of airborne substances can cause respiratory problems for asthma sufferers. These include bacteria and their components, which can trigger inflammations. How they become airborne has not been fully explained up to now. A science team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Helmholtz Zentrum München (HMGU) has shown that pollen from the mugwort plant is the main vector for bacteria and that this combination renders the pollen more aggressive. This, however, is not the case in certain Alpine regions such as Davos.

Researchers are developing innovative biohybrid systems with information processing functionality

Thousands of miles of buried fiber optic cable in densely populated coastal regions of the United States may soon be inundated by rising seas, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Oregon.

Magnets have fascinated humans for several thousand years and enabled the age of digital data storage. They occur in various flavors. Ferrimagnets form the largest class of magnets and consist of two types of atoms. Similar to a compass needle, each atom exhibits a little magnetic moment, also called spin, which arises from the rotation of the atom's electrons about their own axes. In a ferrimagnet, the magnetic moments point in opposite directions for the two types of atoms (see panel A). Thus, the total magnetization is the sum of all magnetic moments of type 1 (M1), blue arrows) and type 2 (M2), green arrows). Due to the opposite direction, the magnitude of the total magnetization is M1-M2.

Jumping genes in symbionts explain how a beetle and a marine tunicate are protected by highly similar compounds

A microscopic trampoline could help engineers to overcome a major hurdle for quantum computers, researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report in a new study.