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    New Material may help Cut Battery Costs for Electric cars, Cellphones

    July 7, 2017, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas and Seoul National University have designed a novel battery cathode material that offers a potentially lower-cost, more eco-friendly option to lithium-ion batteries. Their sodium-ion design, which retains the high energy density of a lithium-ion cathode, replaces the most of the lithium atoms (green) with sodium (yellow). The layered structure of the new material also incorporates manganese (purple) and oxygen (red). The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials. Credit: University of Texas at Dallas

    Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas and Seoul National University have designed a novel battery cathode material that offers a potentially lower-cost, more eco-friendly option to lithium-ion batteries. Their sodium-ion design, which retains the high energy density of a lithium-ion cathode, replaces the most of the lithium atoms (green) with sodium (yellow). The layered structure of the new material also incorporates manganese (purple) and oxygen (red). The research is published in the journal Advanced Materials. Credit: University of Texas at Dallas

    In the battle of the batteries, lithium-ion technology is the reigning champion, powering that cellphone in your pocket as well as an increasing number of electric vehicles on the road...

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    A Future without Fakes thanks to Quantum Technology

    July 7, 2017, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    This is a gold microchip. Credit: Lancaster University

    This is a gold microchip. Credit: Lancaster University

    1st demo of patented technology smartphone app aims to eliminate counterfeiting. Counterfeit products are a huge problem – from medicines to car parts, fake technology costs lives. Every year, imports of counterfeited and pirated goods around the world cost nearly US $0.5 trillion in lost revenue. Counterfeit medicines alone cost the industry over US $200 billion every year. They are also dangerous to our health – around a third contain no active ingredients, resulting in a million deaths a year. As the Internet of Things expands, there is the need to trust the identity of smart systems, such as the brake system components within connected and driverless cars.

    But researchers exhibiting at the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition be...

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    First look at Gravitational Dance that drives Stellar Formation

    July 7, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    Left: three color composite image of SDC13 where red, green and blue bands correspond to 70?m HIGAL (Molinari et al. 2010), 24?m Spitzer MIPSGAL (Carey et al. 2009) and 8?m Spitzer GLIMPSE (Churchwell et al. 2009) maps respectively. The four dark, filamentary arms are clearly visible. Right: Brand new, high resolution map of SDC13 tracing the internal dense ammonia gas revealing cores dotted along all the filaments. Credit: G. Williams et al. / University of Cardiff

    Left: three color composite image of SDC13 where red, green and blue bands correspond to 70?m HIGAL (Molinari et al. 2010), 24?m Spitzer MIPSGAL (Carey et al. 2009) and 8?m Spitzer GLIMPSE (Churchwell et al. 2009) maps respectively. The four dark, filamentary arms are clearly visible. Right: Brand new, high resolution map of SDC13 tracing the internal dense ammonia gas revealing cores dotted along all the filaments. Credit: G. Williams et al. / University of Cardiff

    Swirling motions in clouds of cold, dense gas have given, for the first time, an active insight into how gravity creates the compact cores from which stars form in the interstellar medium...

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    Re-Making Planets after Star-Death

    July 7, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    1. Data at wavelength of 0.45 mm, combined from SCUBA and SCUBA-2, in a false-colour image. The Geminga pulsar (inside the black circle) is moving towards the upper left, and the orange dashed arc and cylinder show the ‘bow-wave’ and a ‘wake’. The region shown is 1.3 light-years across; the bow-wave probably stretches further behind Geminga, but SCUBA imaged only the 0.4 light-years in the centre. Credit: Jane Greaves / JCMT / EAO. 2. Sketch of the nebula formed by a wind of electrons and positrons coming from the pulsar, and the interaction with interstellar gas. Geminga crossed the plane of the Galaxy (off to the bottom right) around 100,000 years ago. It is thought that the supernova explosion was not symmetric, causing the remnant to recoil at around 200 km per second from its birth location. Credit: Jane Greaves / University of Cardiff.

    1. Data at wavelength of 0.45 mm, combined from SCUBA and SCUBA-2, in a false-colour image. The Geminga pulsar (inside the black circle) is moving towards the upper left, and the orange dashed arc and cylinder show the ‘bow-wave’ and a ‘wake’. The region shown is 1.3 light-years across; the bow-wave probably stretches further behind Geminga, but SCUBA imaged only the 0.4 light-years in the centre. Credit: Jane Greaves / JCMT / EAO. 2. Sketch of the nebula formed by a wind of electrons and positrons coming from the pulsar, and the interaction with interstellar gas. Geminga crossed the plane of the Galaxy (off to the bottom right) around 100,000 years ago...

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