New Coating could have Big Implications for Lithium Batteries

Argonne scientists have developed a new coating (shown in blue) for battery cathodes that can improve the electronic and ionic conductivity of a battery while improving its safety and cycling performance. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)

Coating provides extra layer of protection for battery cathodes. Scientists have developed a new cathode coating by using an oxidative chemical vapor deposition technique. It can keep a battery’s cathode electrically and ionically conductive and ensures that the battery stays safe after many cycles. “The coating we’ve discovered really hits five or six birds with one stone.” Khalil Amine, Argonne distinguished fellow and battery scientist.

In the research, Amine and his fellow researchers took particles of Argonne’s pioneering nickel-mangan...

Read More

Small, Hardy Planets most likely to Survive Death of their Stars

White dwarf illustration.
Credit: © Dreamframer / Adobe Stock

Small, hardy planets packed with dense elements have the best chance of avoiding being crushed and swallowed up when their host star dies, new research from the University of Warwick has found.

Astrophysicists from the Astronomy and Astrophysics Group have modelled the chances of different planets being destroyed by tidal forces when their host stars become white dwarfs and have determined the most significant factors that decide whether they avoid destruction.

Their ‘survival guide’ for exoplanets could help guide astronomers locate potential exoplanets around white dwarf stars, as a new generation of even more powerful telescopes is being developed to search for them...

Read More

Flu virus’ best friend: Low Humidity


Low humidity increases influenza disease through caspase-1/11 activation. WT Mx1 mice or caspase-1/11 KO Mx1 mice were preconditioned at 10% and 50% RH for 5 d and challenged with aerosolized hvPR8 at 2 × 105pfu/mL for 15 min (n = 6 mice per group). (A and B) Weight loss was monitored for 14 d. Data are representative of four experiments and means ± SEM *P < 0.05; one-way ANOVA; Student’s t test.

Yale researchers have pinpointed a key reason why people are more likely to get sick and even die from flu during winter months: low humidity. While experts know that cold temperatures and low humidity promote transmission of the flu virus, less is understood about the effect of decreased humidity on the immune system’s defenses against flu infection.

The Yale research team, led by Ak...

Read More

Quantum world-first: Researchers reveal accuracy of Two-Qubit calculations in Silicon

Professor Andrew Dzurak and team
Wister Huang, a final-year PhD student in Electrical Engineering; Professor Andrew Dzurak; and Dr Henry Yang, a senior research fellow.

The research, carried out by Professor Andrew Dzurak’s team in UNSW Engineering, was published in the journal Nature. The experiments were performed by Wister Huang, a final-year PhD student in Electrical Engineering, and Dr Henry Yang, a senior research fellow at UNSW.

“All quantum computations can be made up of one-qubit operations and two-qubit operations – they’re the central building blocks of quantum computing,” says Professor Dzurak.

“Once you’ve got those, you can perform any computation you want – but the accuracy of both operations needs to be very high.”

In 2015 Dzurak’s team was the first to build a quantum logic gate in silicon,...

Read More