The findings, based on a single electrochemical process, could help cut emissions from the hardest-to-decarbonize industries, such as steel and cement. In the race to draw down greenhouse gas emissions around the world, scientists at MIT are looking to carbon-capture technologies to decarbonize the most stubborn industrial emitters. Steel, cement, and chemical manufacturing are especially difficult industries to decarbonize, as carbon and fossil fuels are inherent ingredients in their production. Technologies that can capture carbon emissions and convert them into…
Using NASA’s Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, which launched in 2004, scientists have discovered a black hole in a distant galaxy repeatedly nibbling on a Sun-like star. The object heralds a new era of Swift science made possible by a novel method for analyzing data from the satellite’s X-ray Telescope (XRT). “Swift’s hardware, software, and the skills of its international team have enabled it to adapt to new areas of astrophysics over its lifetime,” said Phil Evans, an astrophysicist at the University…
Microbial or fungal biofilms on spacecraft can clog hoses and filters, or make astronauts sick. Space Station tests show that a surface treatment can help. After exposure in space aboard the International Space Station, a new kind of surface treatment significantly reduced the growth of biofilms, scientists report. Biofilms are mats of microbial or fungal growth that can clog hoses or filters in water processing systems, or potentially cause illness in people. In the experiment, researchers investigated a variety of surfaces…
An emerging system which combines rapid imaging with artificial intelligence could help scientists build a comprehensive picture of present and historic environmental change – by swiftly and accurately analysing pollen. Pollen grains from different plant species are unique and identifiable based on their shape. Analysing which pollen grains are captured in samples such as sediment cores from lakes helps scientists understand which plants were thriving at any given point in history, potentially dating back thousands to millions of years. Up…
Physicists Win Prestigious IBM Award. Quantum challenge completed: A team of five, headed by quantum physicist Professor Ronny Thomale of the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat based at two universities in Würzburg and Dresden, secured second place in the international IBM Quantum Open Science Prize. The Würzburg research group managed to solve this year’s competition challenge on quantum magnetism. They devised an algorithm enabling IBM’s 16-qubit quantum chip to be trained to outperform conventional computing capabilities. This achievement could pave the…
University of Tübingen team studies plant growth in the northern polar region some 50 million years ago – paleoclimate with parallels to current global warming. Around 50 million years ago there were extensive, lush deciduous forests in the polar regions of the Arctic, where today there is sparse vegetation. The forests existed due to the conditions in the Eocene – a combination of a greenhouse climate and almost twice the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as there is…
Engineers create home test that uses saliva to detect periodontal disease. Engineers at the University of Cincinnati have developed a new device that can warn consumers about early risks of tooth decay from diseases such as gingivitis and periodontitis. Gingivitis, the earliest form of gum disease, is caused by bacteria. But not just any bacteria. The problem for researchers was getting a device to single out the particular type responsible for the disease, said Andrew Steckl, an Ohio Eminent Scholar…
… detects early signs of rejection. Wireless technology senses warning signs three weeks earlier than current methods. A body can reject a transplanted organ at any time — even decades later Signs of rejection must be caught early to intervene, preserve the organ Current monitoring methods are intermittent, imperfect and sometimes invasive New implant offers continuous monitoring by tracking the organ’s temperature When temperatures change, an alert is sent to a smartphone or tablet in real time Northwestern University researchers…
New physics-based self-learning machines could replace the current artificial neural networks and save energy. Artifical intelligence not only affords impressive performance, but also creates significant demand for energy. The more demanding the tasks for which it is trained, the more energy it consumes. Víctor López-Pastor and Florian Marquardt, two scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Erlangen, Germany, present a method by which artificial intelligence could be trained much more efficiently. Their approach relies on…
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), astronomers have detected the magnetic field of a galaxy so far away that its light has taken more than 11 billion years to reach us: we see it as it was when the Universe was just 2.5 billion years old. The result provides astronomers with vital clues about how the magnetic fields of galaxies like our own Milky Way came to be. Lots of astronomical bodies in the Universe have magnetic fields, whether…
Redox-flow battery eliminates costly and inefficient membrane. Jimmy Jiang envisions a future where every house is powered by renewable energy stored in batteries. In his chemistry lab, Jiang and his students at the University of Cincinnati have created a new battery that could have profound implications for the large-scale energy storage needed by wind and solar farms. Innovations such as UC’s will have profound effects on green energy, Jiang said. Batteries store renewable energy for when it’s needed, not just…
The system could be used for battery-free underwater communication across kilometer-scale distances, to aid monitoring of climate and coastal change. MIT researchers have demonstrated the first system for ultra-low-power underwater networking and communication, which can transmit signals across kilometer-scale distances. This technique, which the researchers began developing several years ago, uses about one-millionth the power that existing underwater communication methods use. By expanding their battery-free system’s communication range, the researchers have made the technology more feasible for applications such as…
Precisive real-time prediction of the movement of nearby vehicles or the future trajectory of pedestrians is essential for safe autonomous driving. A research team led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) recently developed a novel AI system that improves predictive accuracy amid dense traffic and increases computational efficiency by over 85%, offering great potential for enhancing the safety of autonomous vehicles. Professor Wang Jianping, in the Department of Computer Science (CS) at CityU, who led the study, explained the…
KIMS-POSTECH joint research team develops a unified microstructure segmentation approach. The research team led by Dr. Se-Jong Kim and Dr. Juwon Na of the Materials Data Management Center in the Materials Digital Platform Division together with the research team led by Professor Seungchul Lee of POSTECH has developed a technology that can automatically identify and quantify materials microstructure from microscopic images through human-in-the-loop machine learning. KIMS is a government-funded research institute under the Ministry of Science and ICT. Microscopic imaging…
Project 8 marks a major milestone in its quest to measure neutrino mass. The humble neutrino, an elusive subatomic particle that passes effortlessly through normal matter, plays an outsized role among the particles that comprise our universe. To fully explain how our universe came to be, we need to know its mass. But, like so many of us, it avoids being weighed. Now, an international team of researchers from the United States and Germany leading an ambitious quest called Project…
New research examines role of grasses for controlling climate change. In recent years, the escalating impact of global warming has prompted efforts to reverse troubling trends, often by planting trees to capture and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it. New research from a team led by Young Zhou, from the Quinney College of Natural Resources and the Ecology Center, shows that, in addition to trees, humble grasses also play an essential role in capturing carbon — more important than…
Feedback
