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Mar 2, 2024

Scientists use AI to stabilize nuclear fusion for the first time

Posted by in category: robotics/AI

An AI controller promises to predict what can go wrong in a nuclear fusion reaction 300 milliseconds before it actually happens.

Mar 2, 2024

China’s Li Auto just unveiled the world’s biggest EV

Posted by in categories: sustainability, transportation

Li Auto, a Chinese EV automaker, has just unveiled the 7-seater Mega.


Li Auto, a Beijing-based automaker, has just unveiled what it has called the world’s biggest electric vehicle (EV). Called the Mega, this is tailored towards large family consumers in China (the world’s most crowded car market).

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Mar 2, 2024

LiDAR hack proves self-driving safety isn’t guaranteed

Posted by in categories: cybercrime/malcode, robotics/AI, transportation

Laser attacks can fool autonomous vehicle LiDAR sensors, according to a new study by researchers at UCI and Keio University.

You must have heard or read about LiDAR, or Light Detection and Ranging.

Mar 2, 2024

Astronomers Accidentally Find A Galaxy That Hasn’t Birthed Any Stars

Posted by in category: space

A typo sent an enormous radio telescope to the wrong patch of sky — where it discovered an invisible galaxy-sized cloud of hydrogen gas.

Mar 2, 2024

Brain stimulation poised to move from last resort to frontline treatment

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

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Even so, proponents say that TMS and other noninvasive brain-stimulation methods—which include updated forms of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and transcranial direct-current stimulation—have yet to achieve their full potential, both as research tools and as clinical treatments for a range of neurological conditions. To get there, researchers want to fully understand the biological mechanisms behind these techniques, along with finding more rigorous ways to test them in the lab, all with a view toward making treatments more tailored and reliably successful. With its demonstrated benefits and lack of serious side effects, Colleen Loo, a neurostimulation pioneer at the University of New South Wales, says, “there’s no reason TMS can’t be used as a frontline treatment” for major depression.

Mar 2, 2024

The Earth’s Crust Flipped Upside Down in This Spot, Scientists Find

Posted by in category: futurism

In 2010, scientists detected unusual seismic waves under Granada, Spain, which eventually led to a surprising finding: an oceanic slab that had completely flipped upside down as it was being pushed beneath its neighbor.

As detailed in a new paper published in the journal The Seismic Record, the team found that the “Alboran slab,” which meets the Eurasian slab just east of the Straits of Gibraltar, “has been overturned.”

It’s the first time such a discovery has been made, the researchers claim. And it’s due to “hydrous magnesium silicates,” roughly 370 miles beneath the surface, indicating that water on the slab’s surface had not only been pushed under, but had also been folded over and pulled beneath the slab as well.

Mar 2, 2024

BWC Megastructures & Artificial Planets

Posted by in categories: engineering, space

BWC Megastructures are types of hypothetical mega engineering projects, like artificial planets, who scope is vast, but whose practicality is debatable. To fi…

Mar 2, 2024

Antarctica: Are we awakening a sleeping giant?

Posted by in category: futurism

13.8 columnist Marcelo Gleiser reflects on his recent voyage to Earth’s last wild continent: Antarctica.

Mar 2, 2024

Everything We Know

Posted by in category: futurism

Multiple EV manufacturers, charging networks and charging equipment suppliers in North America are now evaluating the switch from CCS1 to Tesla’s NACS charging plug.

Mar 2, 2024

Scientists use whey protein sponges to extract gold from computer parts, like motherboards — the process is 50X less expensive than the cost of gold and eco-friendly

Posted by in categories: computing, food, sustainability

Recycling previous metals from electronic waste is very expensive and, at a large scale, often requires exorbitant amounts of power and very expensive machines to recycle efficiently. However, scientists have discovered a food byproduct, whey protein, capable of recovering gold from electronic waste, making the recycling process substantially more efficient than it once was. With this byproduct, the energy cost of the entire recycling process can be 50 times lower than the value of the gold extracted from electronic components. The team found they could extract around 450mg of gold from 20 motherboards using this method.

This magical organic material comes in the form of whey proteins, a byproduct of dairy. Scientist Raffaele Mezzenga from the Department of Health Sciences and Technology discovered that an organic sponge made from whey proteins is exceptionally good at extracting metals from electronic components. To make this sponge, the scientists denature whey proteins under an acidic bath and high temperatures so the substance turns into a gel. Then, the scientists dry the gel, creating a sponge out of the whey protein fibrils.

But before the sponge can be used, the electronic waste must be prepared so it can do its job. First, electronic waste is dissolved in an acid bath to ionize the metals; then, the sponge is placed in the metal ion solution. Once in the bath, the ionized metals attach to the protein sponge, like a magnet picking up metal shavings. Mezzenga and his team of scientists discovered that most metal ions can adhere to the sponge, but gold ions do so a lot more efficiently.

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