Lifeboat Foundation

Extracting lithium from California’s Salton Sea for use in batteries.

California’s toxic Salton Sea has enough lithium to make the U.S. self-sufficient in the mineral, which is a key component of rechargeable batteries. WSJ explores the tech being developed to extract it—and what it means for the future of domestic production. Photo: Kaitlyn Wang.

Continue reading “The Race to Make This Dying U.S. Lake the ‘Saudi Arabia of Lithium’” »

No matter how small, learn how scientists can detect human gravity fields.

First turbine erected at what will be the biggest wind project in Australia.

CEO Sundar Pichai tells WIRED that Google’s new, more powerful Gemini chatbot is an experiment in offering users a way to get things done without a search engine. It’s also a direct shot at ChatGPT.

Join the discussion on this paper page.

Localization of light is observed in photonic quasicrystals with various orders of rotational symmetry.

A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University has successfully developed a new program that enables robots to learn how to open doors independently.

A robot that can learn to open most types of doors, cabinets, drawers and refrigerators – without human direction – may pave the way for your future robot butler.

Continue reading “This robot can figure out how to open almost any door on its own” »

Tesla has signed a deal with Choice Hotels International to bring chargers to thousands of additional hotels.

Over the last year, Tesla has become increasingly dominant in the charging space. It’s not like it wasn’t already, but with NACS, its own charge connector, becoming the standard in North America, and the release of its Universal Wall Connector, it is now extremely dominant.

The Tesla Universal Wall Connector is now becoming the top option for commercial level 2 installations as it can serve all EV owners now and it is future-proof for when everyone moves to NACS.

Britain’s largest telecom service provider has put forward a plan to ensure that EVs are always within range of a charger. To do that, they’re planning to retrofit their existing street cabinets into publicly accessible L2 chargers.

Retrofitting a city’s existing electronic and digital infrastructure to promote widespread adoption of EVs isn’t a new idea — but UK telecom giant BT Group isn’t content to just talk about what’s possible. They’ve already done it!

The first such telecom cabinet-to-L2 charger conversion has already been completed in East Lothian, Scotland, and BT Group isn’t stopping there. The company says it plans to convert more cabinets in Scotland, England, Wales, and Northern Ireland in the coming months, with as many as 600 such conversions earmarked for completion by the end of 2024.