Science News

Reliably monitoring the amount of lithium (Li) present in rechargeable batteries, specifically in the so-called cathode active material (CAM), is key to understanding the condition of batteries from the time when it is fabricated to the end of its operation. However, a reliable methodology to directly track the active Li in batteries without damaging them does not exist yet.

Engineers at Georgia Tech have designed a process that converts carbon dioxide removed from the air into useful raw material that could be used for new plastics, chemicals, or fuels.

More than 100 facilities designed to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere are in various stages of development around the world. In the United States, the first direct air capture (DAC) plant opened last fall in Northern California. The U.S. Department of Energy is funding four more regional DAC hubs with billions of dollars in seed money.

Astronauts Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams say they have complete confidence in the Starliner despite questions about Boeing's safety culture.

Since 2020, the annual market size of molded fiber product (MFP) worldwide has exceeded $3.5 billion US, and is growing rapidly. The reliability of MFP is closely related to its mechanical properties during the use. The unpredictable mechanical properties make it difficult to design and improve MFP.

A green industrial future for Europe may depend on an element that is part of a household staple: table salt. Dr. John Abou-Rjeily, a researcher at Tiamat Energy in France, is using sodium to develop rechargeable batteries. Sodium is a part of sodium chloride, an ionic compound that is the technical name for ordinary salt.

A remotely operated underwater robot built by a team of Rice University engineering students pioneers a new way to control buoyancy via water-splitting fuel cells. The device, designed and constructed at the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen over the course of a year-long senior design capstone class, offers a more power-efficient method of maintaining neutral buoyancy—a critical component in underwater operations.

As summer approaches, electricity demand surges in the U.S., as homes and businesses crank up the air conditioning. To meet the rising need, many East Coast cities are banking on offshore wind projects the country is building in the Atlantic Ocean.

A team of researchers led by Professor Philip C.Y. Chow from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) has made a significant breakthrough in the field of organic photovoltaics.

Thermochromic perovskite is a new color switch material used in energy-saving smart windows. Despite its potential for energy savings, thermochromic perovskite suffers from poor weather resistance, susceptibility to water damage, and high optical haze, limiting its practical application.

Pacemakers, defibrillators, radar technology and electric vehicles all need electrical components called capacitors that can store and release a lot of energy in a matter of a few microseconds. Researchers at the University of Twente have recently found a way to increase these capacitors' storage, efficiency and durability.

Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and robots are becoming increasingly advanced, exhibiting capabilities that vaguely resemble those of humans. The growing similarities between AIs and humans could ultimately bring users to attribute human feelings, experiences, thoughts, and sensations to these systems, which some people perceive as eerie and uncanny.

Many things can go wrong when additively manufacturing (AM) metal and without in-situ process monitoring, defects can only be detected and characterized after a product is built. Most commonly, manufacturers will use a high-speed camera to keep an eye on the melt pool geometry and its variation during a short period of the laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) process.

Whether on Earth or in space, autonomous energy is critical in order to keep power systems running independently for extended periods of time, particularly in remote or unpredictable environments.

As a grid-scale energy storage system, flow batteries have gained increasing attention as a means to address the challenges associated with fluctuations and intermittency in renewable energy sources.

A new streaming technique allows playback of data while it is being generated. When scientists want to look at a tiny structure in a material, even one just a few atoms in size, they frequently turn to X-ray microscopy.

For Michael Saliba and Mahdi Malekshahi, it was one of those moments in science when good experimental results raised more questions. The University of Stuttgart researchers recently developed a new process to make solar cells with perovskites—advanced crystalline materials with the potential to revolutionize solar technology. Their cells were very efficient and stable, but there was one catch: they did not have a detailed understanding of why this process worked so well.

As solar energy development accelerates, how do Americans actually feel about those large scale solar, or LSS, farms they see along the highway or near their neighborhood? A new survey has found that for residents living within three miles of a large-scale solar development, positive attitudes outnumbered negative attitudes by almost a 3–to–1 margin.

Robotics engineers have worked for decades and invested many millions of research dollars in attempts to create a robot that can walk or run as well as an animal. And yet, it remains the case that many animals are capable of feats that would be impossible for robots that exist today.

In the quest for more efficient and sustainable energy solutions, a multi-university research team has reached a significant milestone in capacitor technology. Researchers from the University of Houston, Jackson State University and Howard University have developed a new type of flexible high-energy-density capacitor, which is a device that stores energy.