The lithium-ion batteries that power our laptops, smartphones and electric vehicles could have significantly higher energy density if their graphite anodes were to be replaced by lithium metal anodes. Hampering this change, however, has been the so-called dendrite problem. Over the course of several battery charge/discharge cycles, particularly when the battery is cycled at a fast rate, microscopic fibers of lithium, called "dendrites," sprout from the surface of the lithium electrode and spread like kudzu across the electrolyte until they reach the other electrode.
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This news release is available in French.
Montreal, December 17, 2013 — From the Holocaust to the Cambodian Civil War to the Somali refugee crisis, the past century has been rife with mass forced migrations. According to a recent study by the UN Refugee Agency, over 42 million people worldwide are currently displaced from their homes.
San Antonio (Dec. 16, 2013) – Development of oil and natural gas in a 16-county region of West Texas added more than $14.5 billion in total economic impact during 2012, according to a study released today by the Center for Community and Business Research in The University of Texas at San Antonio Institute for Economic Development. In addition, the region supported 21,450 full-time jobs for workers in oil and gas, drilling, support operations, pipeline construction, refineries and petrochemicals.
Highlights of the UTSA study concluded that in 2012 the region generated:
It's the festive season, time for eating, drinking and being merry, and any thoughts of reaching goals like losing weight or keeping on top of finances go out of the window.
And now a team of psychologists at the University of Sheffield have carried out new research which suggests that burying our head in the sand instead of trying to meet our targets this month is completely understandable - in fact we are motivated to do so.
Do you have a forgettable face? Many of us go to great lengths to make our faces more memorable, using makeup and hairstyles to give ourselves a more distinctive look.
Now your face could be instantly transformed into a more memorable one without the need for an expensive makeover, thanks to an algorithm developed by researchers in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).
Chemists at Umeå University in Sweden have been able to trace narcotics substances and prescription drugs in measurements of wastewater from 33 Swedish sewage treatment plants. Cocaine, amphetamine, and methamphetamine, in measurable concentrations, were found in a total of half of the locations.
DURHAM, N.H. – The restraint and seclusion of students in U.S. public schools in response to student behavior problems are used much more frequently on students with a disability than on students without a disability, and especially in affluent school districts, according to new research at the Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire.
Restraint is a practice that uses physical or mechanical means to restrict a student's freedom of motion. Seclusion is a practice that usually involves the involuntary isolation of a student for a period of several minutes.
Photolithography uses light beams to design thin geometric patterns on the substrates of semiconductors used in microelectronic devices. This is achieved using a chemical reaction on a light-sensitive chemical, called photoresist. The trouble is that the phenomenon of light diffraction does not permit highly accurate patterns. Often, the edges of stripes have low contrast, and the distances between the stripes and the stripes' width are limited by what is referred to as Rayleigh's diffraction limit.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — It's the time of year when many of us celebrate the holidays with festive foods and drinks, including alcohol. No better time then to ask if it is true, as is widely held, that moderate consumption of alcohol is beneficial to health.
A research team led by an immunologist at the University of California, Riverside now has data that could put the question to rest. The researchers found that moderate alcohol consumption could bolster our immune system, and potentially our ability to fight infections.
OAK RIDGE, Tenn., Dec. 16, 2013 – By controlling the temperature of silica rods as they grow, researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory could be setting the stage for advances in anti-reflective solar cells, computer monitors, TV screens, eye glasses and more.
HOUSTON – (Dec. 16, 2013) – Ribbons of ultrathin graphene combined with polyurethane paint meant for cars is just right for deicing sensitive military radar domes, according to scientists at Rice University.
The Rice lab of chemist James Tour, in collaboration with Lockheed Martin, developed the compound to protect marine and airborne radars with a robust coating that is also transparent to radio frequencies.
The research was published this week in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials and Interfaces.
Scientists from the Hamburg Center for Free-Electron Laser Science have devised a novel way to boil water in less than a trillionth of a second. The theoretical concept, which has not yet been demonstrated in practice, could heat a small amount of water by as much as 600 degrees Celsius in just half a picosecond (a trillionth of a second). That is much less than the proverbial blink of an eye: one picosecond is to a second what one second is to almost 32 millennia. This would make the technique the fastest water-heating method on earth.
Researchers from the University of Houston have found a catalyst that can quickly generate hydrogen from water using sunlight, potentially creating a clean and renewable source of energy.
Their research, published online Sunday in Nature Nanotechnology, involved the use of cobalt oxide nanoparticles to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
By 2017, all of the year's end-of-life refrigerators, TVs, mobile phones, computers, monitors, e-toys and other products with a battery or electrical cord worldwide could fill a line of 40-ton trucks end-to-end on a highway straddling three quarters of the Equator.
That forecast, based on data compiled by "Solving the E-Waste Problem (StEP) Initiative" — a partnership of UN organizations, industry, governments, non-government and science organizations— represents a global jump of 33% in just five years.
(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — More intensive screening to identify firearm owners among individuals who are subject to domestic violence restraining orders, and streamlining processes to recover guns at the time those restraining orders are served could help enforce existing laws that prohibit these offenders from having firearms, a pilot study conducted by violence prevention experts at the University of California, Davis, and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health has found.