Lifeboat Foundation

Ammonia-oxidizing microorganisms (AOM) use ammonia for energy and account for the annual oxidation of approximately 2.3 trillion kilograms of nitrogen in soil, freshwater, the subsurface and man-made ecosystems.

But one major question that has remained unanswered for decades is how different AOM species coexist in the same environment: do they compete for ammonia or instead use other alternative compounds for their energy needs?

New research by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the University of Oklahoma and other collaborators found an answer that significantly changes the understanding of ammonia oxidation, a critical component of the global nitrogen cycle. The research appears in Nature Microbiology.

Chinese researchers have reportedly developed a high-powered microwave weapon cooled by a Stirling engine.

Chinese scientists have reportedly used the cooling properties of the Stirling engine to increase the power of a high-power microwave weapon.

Continue reading “China unveils ‘world’s first’ Stirling engine-cooled microwave weapon” »

Many researchers now believe that within the next few decades, power plants will provide carbon-free electricity from thermonuclear fusion.

EV charging network Electrify America will soon offer the public an EV charging experience safe from the elements, where drivers can pull in, plug in, and chill out while their vehicle replenishes. This flagship indoor charging station kicks off a potential future in which you don’t have to wait in your car or outside while you charge… It also has complimentary Wi-Fi.

Electrify America is one of the largest open DC fast charging networks in the US that is investing billions into expanding EV infrastructure to support the growing number of zero-emissions vehicles hitting roads.

Outside of the Tesla Supercharger network, Electrify America is easily the most prominent and recognizable name in its respective space, expanding cleaner energy alternatives like solar farms to support its growing number of EV charging stations.

The University of Rochester’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE) has just thrown a spark into the fusion energy race. In a series of experiments, scientists at LLE pioneered a revolutionary “spark plug” for direct-drive inertial confinement fusion (ICF) methods. This development could be vital to unlocking the future of clean and abundant energy.

The LLE is home to the large OMEGA laser system. They conducted experiments that fired 28 kilojoules of laser energy at small capsules filled with deuterium and tritium fuel. The result? Capsules implode, creating a plasma hot enough to kickstart fusion reactions between the fuel nuclei.

A research team at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) has developed a thermally refractory material that maintains its optical properties even at temperatures of 1,000 degrees Celsius and in strong ultraviolet illumination. The material can be used in various applications ranging from space and aerospace to thermal photovoltaic (TPV) systems.

Thermal radiation is the term used to define the electromagnetic radiation emitted from all matter whose temperature is above absolute zero. The radiation results from the heat generated when charges in the material move and are released in the form of electromagnetic radiation.

Scientists have been working on tapping this radiation as a form of energy source. The heat from facilities such as thermal power generation plants and industrial sites can be repurposed for heating, cooling, and even energy production when suitable thermal refractory materials are available.

New telescope detects more sources in six months than in the 60-year history of X-ray astronomy.

With the support of electrical transport and magnetic measurement systems of Steady High Magnetic Field Facility (SHMFF), a research team from Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), discovered a new superconducting material called (InSe2)xNbSe2, which possesses a unique lattice structure. The superconducting transition temperature of this material reaches 11.6 K, making it the transition metal sulfide superconductor with the highest transition temperature under ambient pressure.

The results were published in Journal of the American Chemical Society.

TMD materials have received lots of attention due to their numerous applications in the fields of catalysis, energy storage, and integrated circuits. However, the relatively low superconducting transition temperatures of TMD superconductors have limited their potential use.

Large energetic laser facilities provide an amazing tool for bringing matter into high energy density states but achieving a good energy conversion requires to optically smooth the high-power laser beams. Optical smoothing reduces the laser spatial and temporal coherences, allowing to mitigate the development of unwanted laser–plasma instabilities (LPI). Two schemes have been mainly developed: polarization smoothing and smoothing by spectral dispersion. Here, we focus on the latter. Smoothing by spectral dispersion consists in broadening the spectrum usually through a sinusoidal phase modulation and dispersing it with an optical grating. It is usually considered that the modulation frequency should be equal to the inverse of the time delay of the grating, because it maximizes the number of uncorrelated speckles patterns at a given bandwidth. However, current optical smoothing designs are still not sufficient for mitigating LPI. Because the optical smoothing system possesses degrees of freedom, we propose to improve the optical smoothing efficiency by a better tuning of those parameters. Considering the Laser Mégajoule optical system framework, we show that an increase in the modulation frequency allows a better efficiency of the smoothing while keeping the same bandwidth. We assess the efficiency by looking at a better mitigation of the stimulated Brillouin scattering that, due to its dangerousness in hohlraums developed for inertial confinement fusion applications in the indirect drive scheme, serves as a witness instability.