Fast kinetics of magnesium monochloride cations in interlayer-expanded titanium disulfide for magnesium rechargeable batteries. Nature Communications, August 2017 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00431- 9

Nanostructured cathode, understanding of new electrolyte lead to greater efficiency. Magnesium batteries offer promise for safely powering modern life – unlike traditional lithium ion batteries, they are not flammable or subject to exploding – but their ability to store energy has been limited. Researchers reported Aug. 24 in the journal Nature Communications the discovery of a new design for the battery cathode, drastically increasing the storage capacity and upending conventional wisdom that the magnesium-chloride bond must be broken before inserting magnesium into the host.

The work was first ...

Best ever Image of a Star’s Surface, Atmosphere

First map of motion of material on a star other than the sun. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope, VLT Interferometer astronomers have constructed the most detailed image ever of a star – the red supergiant star Antares. They have also made the first map of the velocities of material in the atmosphere of a star other than the sun, revealing unexpected turbulence in Antares’s huge extended atmosphere.

To the unaided eye the famous, bright star Antares shines with a strong red tint in the heart of the constellation of Scorpius (The Scorpion). It is a huge and comparatively cool red supergiant star in the late stages of its life, on the way to becoming a supernova...

The black hole named Cygnus X-1 formed when a large star caved in. This black hole pulls matter from the blue star beside it.
Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

Physicists have described how observations of gravitational waves limit the possible explanations for the formation of black holes outside of our galaxy; either they are spinning more slowly than black holes in our own galaxy or they spin rapidly but are ‘tumbled around’ with spins randomly oriented to their orbit. The paper, published in Nature, is based on data that came about following landmark observations of gravitational waves by the LIGO gravitational wave detector in 2015 and again in 2017.

In our own galaxy we have been able to electromagnetically observe black holes orbited by stars and map their behaviour – notably their rapid spin...

HDL cholesterol and risk of all-cause mortality in the general population. Based on 52 268 men and 64 240 women from the Copenhagen General Population Study and the Copenhagen City Heart Study combined. Hazard ratio (solid line) and 95% confidence interval (dashed lines) from age and study adjusted Cox regression using restricted cubic splines. The concentration of HDL cholesterol associated with lowest mortality was used as reference. The light blue area indicates the distribution of HDL cholesterol concentrations in men and women. CI, confidence interval; HDL, high-density lipoprotein.

HDL might not be as good as we think...