Lifeboat Foundation

To understand why Mark Zuckerberg thinks “the metaverse” is the next frontier, consider the case of Sam Peurifoy. The 27-year-old chemistry PhD from Columbia University left his job at Goldman Sachs at the height of the pandemic and is now seeking out his fortune in crypto by playing video games.

He has recruited dozens of people from Mexico to the Philippines to a “Guild” that plays under the command of “Captain” Peurifoy. In exchange, he ponies up the funds needed to enter Axie Infinity, a game where players collect Smooth Love Potion — a digital token that can potentially be converted into real money.

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed a scalable, low-cost electrochemical pulse method to improve the contact between layers of materials in solid-state batteries, resolving one of the big challenges in the commercial development of safe, long-lived energy storage systems. The new technology could pave the way for electric vehicles and smartphones that work much longer with each charge.

One of the challenges in manufacturing solid-state batteries is the difficulty of getting materials to properly join and remain stable during repeated cycles of charging and discharging. This leads to instability in the joints and causes the formation of voids, something known as contact impedance. Applying high pressures is one way to solve this problem, but that process can lead to shorting and would need to be re-applied periodically to extend the battery’s life using an expensive aftermarket application.

ORNL scientists have found that they could eliminate these voids by applying a short, high-voltage electrochemical pulse when joining layers of lithium metal anode material with a solid electrolyte material. These pulses see a current surrounding the lithium metal-encased voids and cause them to dissipate, leading to increased contact at the interface of the materials while resulting in no detrimental effects.

Princeton researchers have invented bubble casting, a new way to make soft robots using “fancy balloons” that change shape in predictable ways when inflated with air.

The new system involves injecting bubbles into a liquid polymer, letting the material solidify and inflating the resulting device to make it bend and move. The researchers used this approach to design and create hands that grip, a fishtail that flaps and slinky-like coils that retrieve a ball. They hope that their simple and versatile method, published Nov. 10 in the journal Nature, will accelerate the development of new types of soft robots.

Traditional rigid robots have multiple uses, such as in manufacturing cars. “But they will not be able to hold your hands and allow you to move somewhere without breaking your wrist,” said Pierre-Thomas Brun, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering and the lead researcher on the study. “They’re not naturally geared to interact with the soft stuff, like humans or tomatoes.”

Let’s take a look at a highly abstracted neuron. It’s like a tootsie roll, with a bulbous middle section flanked by two outward-reaching wrappers. One side is the input—an intricate tree that receives signals from a previous neuron. The other is the output, blasting signals to other neurons using bubble-like ships filled with chemicals, which in turn triggers an electrical response on the receiving end.

Here’s the crux: for this entire sequence to occur, the neuron has to “spike.” If, and only if, the neuron receives a high enough level of input—a nicely built-in noise reduction mechanism—the bulbous part will generate a spike that travels down the output channels to alert the next neuron.

But neurons don’t just use one spike to convey information. Rather, they spike in a time sequence. Think of it like Morse Code: the timing of when an electrical burst occurs carries a wealth of data. It’s the basis for neurons wiring up into circuits and hierarchies, allowing highly energy-efficient processing.

Covid vaccines alerted to the world to RNA’s potential. Now the technology is being used as an alternative to pesticides.

Our addiction to chemical pesticides comes with a bunch of downsides. New sprays made from RNA might offer a smarter, cleaner way to wage war on pests.

Gold is one of the world’s most popular metals. Malleable, conductive and non-corrosive, it’s used in jewelry, electronics, and even space exploration. But traditional gold production typically involves a famous toxin, cyanide, which has been banned for industrial use in several countries.

The wait for a scalable non-toxic alternative may now be over as a research team from Aalto University in Finland has successfully replaced cyanide in a key part of gold extraction from ore. The results are published in Chemical Engineering.

Study shows new chloride-based process recovers 84% of gold compared to the 64% recovered with traditional methods.

At the conference, Science History Institute postdoctoral researcher Megan Piorko presented a curious manuscript belonging to English alchemists John Dee (1527–1608) and his son Arthur Dee (1579–1651). In the pre-modern world, alchemy was a means to understand nature through ancient secret knowledge and chemical experiment.

Within Dee’s alchemical manuscript was a cipher table, followed by encrypted ciphertext under the heading “Hermeticae Philosophiae medulla”—or Marrow of the Hermetic Philosophy. The table would end up being a valuable tool in decrypting the cipher, but could only be interpreted correctly once the hidden “key” was found.

It was during post-conference drinks in a dimly lit bar that Megan decided to investigate the mysterious alchemical cipher—with the help of her colleague, University of Graz postdoctoral researcher Sarah Lang.

An international team of space researchers working with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center has found previously unknown organic molecules on Mars using a new experiment aboard the Curiosity rover. The results are published in the journal Nature Astronomy.

To date, NASA has sent nine orbiters and six rovers to Mars, in part to learn more about the possibility of extraterrestrial life. To that end, the planet has been photographed with various types of cameras. More recently, rovers have dug down into the Martian soil to collect samples for analysis. The goal of such work is to learn more about the chemicals in the soil on or near the surface, but more specifically, to see if it contains organic molecules. If so, they could be evidence of life or prior life on the planet. The rovers have found organic molecules, but samples were not sufficient to claim they were produced or used by a living organism. Thus, the search continues. In this new effort, after the Curiosity rover’s drill stopped working in 2,017 the control team chose to conduct a type of experiment that had not been done by the rover before.

Curiosity carries an instrument called the Sample Analysis at Mars, an array of cups that hold samples of soil as they are being analyzed. The array has 74 cups—all but nine of them are empty most of the time. The other nine hold chemicals that are used to conduct other kinds of experiments. Because of the drill malfunction, the team at NASA chose to drop soil samples into the cups containing the chemicals and then to analyze the chemicals released due to reactions. The researchers found organic molecules in the soil that had never been seen on Mars before. While the new experiment did not find evidence of life, it did show that there are other novel ways to test for it on Mars and other planets.

An international team of scientists from Austria and Germany has launched a new paradigm in magnetism and superconductivity, putting effects of curvature, topology, and 3D geometry into the spotlight of next-decade research. The results are published in Advanced Materials.

Traditionally, the primary field in which curvature plays a pivotal role is the theory of general relativity. In recent years, however, the impact of curvilinear geometry has entered various disciplines, ranging from solid-state physics to soft-matter physics to chemistry and biology; and giving rise to a plethora of emerging domains, such as curvilinear cell biology, semiconductors, superfluidity, optics, plasmonics and 2D van der Waals materials. In modern magnetism, superconductivity and spintronics, extending nanostructures into the third dimension has become a major research avenue because of geometry-, curvature-and topology-induced phenomena. This approach provides a means to improve conventional functionalities and to launch novel functionalities by tailoring the curvature and 3D shape.

“In recent years, there have appeared experimental and theoretical works dealing with curvilinear and three-dimensional superconducting and (anti-)ferromagnetic nano-architectures. However, these studies originate from different scientific communities, resulting in the lack of knowledge transfer between such fundamental areas of condensed matter physics as magnetism and superconductivity,” says Oleksandr Dobrovolskiy, head of the SuperSpin Lab at the University of Vienna. “In our group, we lead projects in both these topical areas and it was the aim of our perspective article to build a ‘bridge’ between the magnetism and superconductivity communities, drawing attention to the conceptual aspects of how extension of structures into the third dimension and curvilinear geometry can modify existing and aid launching novel functionalities upon solid-state systems.”