The mechanical process of cell division exerts powerful, if microscopic, forces. How do the molecular machines that power it manage the strain?
Category: energy
Some People Can ‘Absorb’ a Richer Version of Reality, Scientists Say. Are You One of Them?
“A lot of [the research subjects] are engineers, scientists—like very rational people,” Lifshitz says. “And it just shows me that the imagination is so powerful, that there’s so much we don’t even know yet about, if you invest energy into your imagination, it can actually come to life.”
He believes that through experiences like nature exposure, psychedelic therapy, or practices like creating a Tulpa, people can train themselves to be more absorptive. And that, from his perspective, would create a better world.
“I’m personally really interested in the idea that you can actually train yourself to have life feel more magical,” Lifshitz says. “You can make life enchanted through the power of your mind.”
Wet coffee grounds turned into high-grade solid fuel in just 90 seconds
A research team at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM) has developed a technology that converts wet spent coffee grounds directly into high-quality biochar in just 90 seconds, with no drying or oil removal required. The breakthrough offers a fast, energy-efficient path to turning high-moisture organic waste into valuable fuel and carbon materials. The study, led by Dr. Taejun Park in collaboration with GodTech Co., Ltd., was published in the Chemical Engineering Journal, one of the world’s leading journals in chemical engineering.
Addressing a growing waste challenge Every year, global coffee consumption generates more than 10 million tons of spent coffee grounds, most of which end up in landfills or are incinerated, releasing greenhouse gases and polluting the environment.
Spent coffee grounds hold real energy potential, but their high moisture content has long been a barrier. Converting them into fuel or carbon products typically requires energy-intensive predrying, making large-scale resource recovery economically impractical.
Synchronized infrared lasers control molecular shape changes and expose hidden fingerprints
Researchers from the Molecular Physics and Physical Chemistry departments of the Fritz Haber Institute have shown how two highly synchronized infrared (IR) laser beams can control molecules as they switch between different structural conformations. Their study provides a new window into how molecules rearrange themselves during chemical reactions, offering fundamental insights into the microscopic processes that govern chemistry.
Chemical reactions are the foundation of all the processes that sustain life. Researchers around the world are working to develop precise physical descriptions of these processes to better understand, predict or specifically control them.
In chemical reactions, molecules undergo various structural transformations, changing their 3D shapes between different conformations. These changes can be visualized as movements across an energy landscape, where the shape of the terrain determines how fast a reaction proceeds. Similar to a ball rolling through a hilly landscape, a molecule must overcome energy barriers—the “mountains”—to settle into a new, stable state in the next “valley.”
Orbitronics clears key hurdle with direct orbital currents, boosting signals 100-fold
Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) are the first to directly utilize orbital currents without the need for conversion of the orbital current into a spin current.
“We have thus realized the first purely orbitronic device approach,” said Dr. Christin Schmitt, a scientist in the research group of Professor Mathias Kläui at the JGU Institute of Physics.
Orbitronics is a promising technology for future memory devices, as it could enable the realization of large-scale storage media with extremely low energy consumption. It is based on orbital moments, which can be described in simplified terms as the quantum-mechanical “vortices” of electrons around atomic nuclei, as well as orbital currents, i.e., the movement of these circulations through an electrical conductor.
Unlocking the ‘black box’ of carbon materials: Study reveals origins of defect peaks
Carbon materials, such as carbon fibers and activated carbons, are essential across a wide variety of fields, encompassing everything from aerospace engineering to fuel cells and thermal insulation. For decades, Raman, infrared and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) have been the primary tools used to analyze carbon materials. However, because of their diverse structural conditions and inconsistencies in their interpretation, researchers have found it challenging to assign specific spectral peaks to exact, localized chemical structures.
The detailed origin and nature of these peaks, and their exact effect on important material characteristics, have often remained unclear.
To tackle this issue, a research team led by Associate Professor Yasuhiro Yamada from the Graduate School of Engineering, Chiba University, Japan, used isotropic pitch-based carbon fiber—a cost-effective material widely used for high-temperature thermal insulation—as a general model to analyze carbon materials prepared at high temperatures of 1,473 K (1,200 °C) or higher.
RNA Folding Energy of Long-Range Genomic Interactions Regulates Discontinuous Transcription in SARS-CoV-2
Coronaviruses use discontinuous transcription to generate subgenomic RNAs (sgRNAs) that encode structural and accessory proteins. However, the factors regulating sgRNA abundance in SARS-CoV-2 remain unclear. Here, we combined strand-specific RNA sequencing, RNA–RNA interaction mapping, prediction of RNA folding energies, and targeted mutagenesis to define the regulation of (–) sgRNA synthesis in SARS-CoV-2 infection. We demonstrated that the relative (–) sgRNA abundance across viral genes is stable throughout infection and largely correlates with corresponding (+) sgmRNA levels. Through meta-analysis of published SPLASH data, we found that the frequency of long-range interactions between the 5′ genomic transcription regulatory sequence TRS-Leader and downstream TRS-Body sequences correlates with sgRNA abundance.
Electrochemical research takes major strides towards harvesting a vital battery material
The supply of lithium—the battery material that keeps digital devices humming, EVs racing and renewable energy on the grid— will not meet even half the expected demand by 2040.
Ramping up production using old methods will create new problems, including environmental damage, pollution, cost and water scarcity. Unconventional ways must be found to fill this lithium gap.
One promising solution is electrochemical intercalation. Common in the world of batteries and supercapacitors, it’s when researchers apply electricity to insert ions between the layers of a different material.
In a First For Science, A Satellite Has Identified What It’s Seeing From Space
The standard approach to satellite imagery is to snap huge batches of pictures and beam them back to Earth, where they can be sifted through by human operators and the best available algorithms.
It’s all worked well so far, but the time, transmission bandwidth, and energy required are starting to become bottlenecks. Modern satellites are simply capturing more pixels than scientists have time to look at.
However, the YAM-9 satellite has just done something different: It has identified and described features in its image scans without needing to check back with ground control.