180898892
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fahrbot-bot writes:
Interesting Engineering is reporting that CATL, formally known as Contemporary Amperex Technology Limited, has introduced a new fast-charging electric vehicle battery platform designed to significantly reduce charging times while maintaining long-term durability.
The company released performance data for its 5C battery, stating it can fully charge in about 12 minutes while supporting extended cycle life.
The engineering focus behind the platform centers on enabling ultra-fast charging without accelerating battery degradation. A 5C charge rate allows a battery pack to accept high power input, enabling rapid replenishment comparable to short refueling stops.
According to the company’s testing, the battery retained at least 80 percent of its original capacity after 3,000 full charge and discharge cycles under standard temperature conditions. This translates to a projected driving lifespan approaching 1.5 million miles.
The battery was also evaluated under high-temperature conditions to assess real-world endurance. At 140F, it maintained 80 percent capacity after 1,400 cycles, indicating sustained performance even under thermal stress, though with reduced cycle life compared to moderate conditions.
Material innovations underpin the system’s performance. The cathode features a protective coating to reduce structural breakdown during rapid cycling, while the electrolyte contains additives that detect and seal microscopic cracks that could accelerate degradation.
The separator incorporates a temperature-responsive coating that moderates ion movement during heat buildup, helping stabilize the cell during repeated fast charging.
180812352
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fahrbot-bot writes:
Science News is reporting that researchers have developed a robotic hand that can not only skitter about on its fingertips, it can also bend its fingers backward, connect and disconnect from a robotic arm and pick up and carry one or more objects at a time. With its unusual agility, it could navigate and retrieve objects in spaces too confined for human hands. Original study published in Nature Communications on January 20, 2026.
When attached to the mechanical arm, the robotic hand could pick up objects much like a human hand. The bot pinched a ball between two fingers, wrapped four fingers around a metal rod and held a flat disc between fingers and palm.
But the bot isn’t constrained by human anatomy. The fingers bend backward just as easily as forward, allowing the robot to hold objects against both sides of its palm simultaneously. It can even unscrew the cap off a mustard bottle while holding the bottle in place.
When the robot was separated from the arm, it was most stable walking on four or five fingers and using one or two fingers for grabbing and carrying things, the team found. In one set of trials with both bots, the hand detached from the robotic arm and used its fingers as legs to skitter over to a wooden block. Once there, it picked up the block with one finger and carried it back to the arm.
The crawling bot could one day aid in industrial inspections of pipes and equipment too small for a human or larger robot to access, says Xiao Gao, a roboticist now at Wuhan University in China. It might retrieve objects in a warehouse or navigate confined spaces in disaster response efforts.
180766118
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fahrbot-bot writes:
A simple brain-training exercise could reduce people's risk of developing dementia by 25 percent, a study reported on Monday, but with outside researchers expressing caution in interpreting the results.
The new study is a randomized controlled trial – considered the gold standard for medical research – which first began enrolling participants in the late 1990s.
More than 2,800 people aged 65 or older were randomly assigned one of three different types of brain training – speed, memory, or reasoning – or were part of a control group.
First, the participants did an hour-long training session twice a week for five weeks. One and three years later, they did four booster sessions. In total, there were fewer than 24 hours of training. During follow-ups after five, 10, and most recently 20 years, the speed training was always "disproportionately beneficial", study co-author Marilyn Albert of Johns Hopkins University in the United States told AFP.
After two decades, Medicare records showed that the people who did the speed-training and booster sessions had a 25-percent reduced risk of getting dementia, according to the study. The other two types of training did not make a statistically significant difference.
However, Rachel Richardson, a researcher at the Cochrane Collaboration not involved in the study, cautioned that "while statistically significant, the result may not be as impressive" as a 25-percent reduction. This is partly because the margins of error "range from a reduction of 41 percent to one of only five percent", she told the Science Media Centre. She added that the study excluded people with conditions such as poor vision or hearing, which meant it may not be fully representative.
"Although one subgroup analysis produced a significant result, this single finding is not generally regarded as strong enough evidence to demonstrate the intervention's effectiveness," he said.
"Further research is still needed to determine whether cognitive training can reduce the risk of dementia."
180755846
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fahrbot-bot writes:
Right now, molecules in the air are moving around you in chaotic and unpredictable ways. To make sense of such systems, physicists use a law known as the Boltzmann distribution, which, rather than describe exactly where each particle is, describes the chance of finding the system in any of its possible states. This allows them to make predictions about the whole system even though the individual particle motions are random. It's like rolling a single die: Any one roll is unpredictable, but if you keep rolling it again and again, a pattern of probabilities will emerge.
Developed in the latter half of the 19th century by Ludwig Boltzmann, an Austrian physicist and mathematician, this Boltzmann distribution is used widely today to model systems in many fields, ranging from AI to economics, where it is called "multinomial logit."
Now, economists have taken a deeper look at this universal law and come up with a surprising result: The Boltzmann distribution, their mathematical proof shows, is the only law that accurately describes unrelated, or uncoupled, systems.
The research, published in the journal Mathematische Annalen, comes from two economists and mathematicians who both have backgrounds in physics: Omer Tamuz, a professor of economics and mathematics at Caltech, and Fedor Sandomirskiy, a former Caltech postdoc now serving as an assistant professor of economics at Princeton University.
180727748
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fahrbot-bot writes:
A spectacular trove of fossils in a discovered in a cave on New Zealand's North Island has given scientists their first glimpse of ancient forest species that lived there more than a million years ago. The fossils represent 12 ancient bird species and four frog species, including several previously unknown bird species. Taken together, the fossils paint a picture of an ancient world that looks drastically different than it does today. The discovery also fills in an important gap in scientific understanding of the patterns of extinction that preceded human arrival in New Zealand 750 years ago.
The team published a study on the find in Alcheringa: An Australasian Journal of Palaeontology.
180726970
submission
fahrbot-bot writes:
Mariano Barbacid, head of the Experimental Oncology Group at the National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), has designed a therapy that successfully eliminates pancreatic tumours in mice completely and durably, with no significant side effects. The study is published in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), with Carmen Guerra as co-lead author and Vasiliki Liaki and Sara Barrambana as first authors.
Current drugs for pancreatic cancer lose effectiveness within months because the tumour becomes resistant. The group from Spain’s National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) has been able to avoid the development of resistance in animal models with a combined triple therapy.
These results “pave the way for the design of combined therapies that may improve survival,” the authors indicate, although this will not happen in the short term. The results are published in PNAS.
180684930
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fahrbot-bot writes:
Science Daily is reporting that researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan have built the smallest fully programmable autonomous robots ever created. These microscopic machines can swim through liquid, sense their surroundings, respond on their own, operate for months at a time, and cost about one penny each to produce.
Each robot is barely visible without magnification, measuring roughly 200 by 300 by 50 micrometers. That makes them smaller than a grain of salt. Because they function at the same scale as many living microorganisms, the robots could one day help doctors monitor individual cells or assist engineers in assembling tiny devices used in advanced manufacturing.
Powered by light and equipped with tiny computers, the robots swim by manipulating electric fields rather than using moving parts. They can detect temperature changes, follow programmed paths, and even work together in groups
The work was reported in Science Robotics and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Unlike previous tiny machines, these robots do not rely on wires, magnetic fields, or external controls.
Alternate article: Penn and Michigan Create World’s Smallest Programmable, Autonomous Robots
180441531
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fahrbot-bot writes:
The Associated Press is reporting that President Donald Trump has announced a bold plan for the Navy to build a new, large warship that he is calling a “battleship” as part of a larger vision to create a “Golden Fleet.”
“They’ll be the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built,” Trump claimed during the announcement at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
The ship, according to Trump, will be longer and larger than the World War II-era Iowa-class battleships and will be armed with hypersonic missiles, rail guns, and high-powered lasers — all technologies that are still being developed by the Navy.
He said Monday he will have a direct role in designing this new warship ... “The U.S. Navy will lead the design of these ships along with me, because I’m a very aesthetic person,” Trump said.
180395391
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fahrbot-bot writes:
SciTechDaily is reporting that a research team has created a quantum antenna capable of precisely measuring terahertz frequency combs for the first time.
A research team from the Faculty of Physics and the Centre for Quantum Optical Technologies at the Centre of New Technologies, University of Warsaw has introduced a new approach for detecting extremely weak terahertz signals by using a “quantum antenna.” Their method relies on a specialized system that employs Rydberg atoms for radio wave detection, allowing them not only to capture these signals but also to accurately calibrate a frequency comb in the terahertz range.
This part of the electromagnetic spectrum was considered largely unexplored until recently, and the breakthrough, reported in Optica, offers a pathway toward highly sensitive spectroscopy and a new class of quantum sensors that can function at room temperature.
Terahertz (THz) radiation occupies a unique position within the electromagnetic spectrum, sitting between microwaves (such as those used in Wi-Fi) and infrared light at the intersection of electronics and optics. It promises a wide range of applications, including scanning packages without harmful X-rays, enabling ultra-fast 6G communication, and advancing spectroscopy and organic compound imaging.
180171437
submission
fahrbot-bot writes:
The Telegraph is reporting that Ukraine forces are jamming signals for Russia's ‘invincible’ Kinzhal hyper-sonic missile with a song satirizing Russian propaganda.
Night Watch, the group operating the technology, claims to have brought down 19 Kinzhal missiles – described by Putin as “invincible” – in the past two weeks.
The team told technology website 404 Media that it is using a song and a redirection order to knock the “next-generation” missiles, which carry a 480kg payload and cost around £7.7m each, out of the sky.
Kinzhals and other guided munitions rely on the GLONASS system – Russia’s GPS-style navigation network using satellites – to find their targets. Night Watch developed its own “Lima” jamming system that replaces the missiles’ satellite navigation signals with the Ukrainian song “Our Father is Bandera”.
When the song begins, the Lima system feeds the incoming missiles a false navigation signal, tricking them into believing that they are flying over Lima, in Peru, so that they attempt to change their trajectory. Traveling at a speed of more than 4,000 miles per hour, however, the missiles become destabilized by the abrupt and unexpected change of course.
Night Watch said they developed the system after discovering that the Kinzhals used a controlled reception pattern antenna (CRPA), an antiquated type of technology for resisting, jamming and spoofing. The team told 404: “They had the same type of receivers as old Soviet missiles used to have.
“The airframe cannot withstand the excessive stress and the missile naturally fails. When the Kinzhal tried to quickly change navigation, the fuselage of this missile was unable to handle the speed and, yeah, it was just cut into two parts. The biggest advantage of those missiles, speed, was used against them.”
180157297
submission
fahrbot-bot writes:
CERN is reporting that a new cooling technique means that the ALPHA experiment at their Antimatter Factory can produce antihydrogen atoms, the simplest form of atomic antimatter, eight times faster than before – over 15,000 antihydrogen atoms in a matter of hours.
Producing and trapping antihydrogen is an extremely complicated process. Previous methods took 24 hours to trap just 2,000 atoms, limiting the scope of experiments at ALPHA. The Swansea-led team has changed that.
Using laser-cooled beryllium ions, the team has demonstrated that it is possible to cool positrons to less than 10 Kelvin (below –263C), significantly colder than the previous threshold of about 15 Kelvin. These cooler positrons dramatically boost the efficiency of antihydrogen production and trapping—allowing a record 15,000 atoms to be trapped in less than seven hours.
Alternate article in Phys.org.
179955968
submission
fahrbot-bot writes:
SciTechDaily is reporting that researchers at Northwestern University have redesigned the molecular structure of a well-known chemotherapy drug, greatly increasing its solubility, effectiveness, and safety.
For this study, the scientists created the drug entirely from scratch as a spherical nucleic acid (SNA), a nanoscale structure that incorporates the drug into DNA strands surrounding tiny spheres. This innovative design transforms a compound that normally dissolves poorly and works weakly into a highly potent, precisely targeted treatment that spares healthy cells from damage.
When tested in a small animal model of acute myeloid leukemia (AML), an aggressive and hard-to-treat blood cancer, the SNA-based version showed remarkable results. It entered leukemia cells 12.5 times more efficiently, destroyed them up to 20,000 times more effectively, and slowed cancer progression by a factor of 59, all without causing noticeable side effects.
“In animal models, we demonstrated that we can stop tumors in their tracks,” said Northwestern’s Chad A. Mirkin, who led the study. “If this translates to human patients, it’s a really exciting advance. It would mean more effective chemotherapy, better response rates and fewer side effects. That’s always the goal with any sort of cancer treatment.”
179858236
submission
fahrbot-bot writes:
Reuters and CNN are reporting that President Trump has pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty to a money laundering charge in 2023.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the Biden administration’s sentencing of Zhao was too harsh — a view the president and his top advisers share after Binance’s months-long lobbying campaign for a pardon for Zhao, who goes by CZ.
Zhao stepped down as chief of Binance in 2023 after the company pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and paid a penalty of $4.3 billion. He personally paid a fine of $50 million and served nearly four months in prison last year after pleading guilty to the same charge. However, he kept his Binance stake, with one of his appointees becoming chief executive of the company.
CNN noted that Trump has his own ties to Binance. His family’s crypto firm, World Liberty Financial — on which their wealth is increasingly dependent, is hosted on Binance.
179825512
submission
fahrbot-bot writes:
Interesting Engineering reports (also here) that China has successfully completed the first flight of its home-designed floating [in the air] wind turbine, the S1500, in Hami, Xinjiang.
The S1500 is a megawatt-scale commercial system that floats in the sky like a giant Zeppelin. Measuring approximately 197 feet long (60 meters), 131 feet wide (40 meters), and 131 feet tall (40 meters), it is by far the largest airborne wind-power generator ever built, according to Beijing SAWES Energy Technology Co., Ltd., one of the developers.
Unlike traditional turbines, the S1500 does not need a tower or deep foundation. This reduces material use by 40 percent and cuts electricity costs by 30 percent. The entire unit can be moved within hours, making it suitable for deserts, islands, and mining sites.
The S1500 features a main airfoil and an annular wing that together form a giant duct. Inside this duct are 12 turbine-generator sets, each rated at 100 kW. These rotors capture steady high-altitude winds and convert them into electricity. The power is transmitted to the ground via a tether cable.
High-altitude winds between 1,640 and 3,281 feet (500 and 10,000 meters) above the ground are stronger and steadier than surface winds. These winds are abundant, widely available, and carbon-free.
The physics of wind power makes this resource extremely valuable. “When wind speed doubles, the energy it carries increases eightfold, triple the speed, and you have 27 times the energy,” explained Gong Zeqi, a researcher from AIR.
This exponential growth shows why high-altitude turbines like the S1500 can generate much more power than conventional land-based systems.
SAWES also envisions the platform for rapid disaster response. The system can be deployed quickly after earthquakes or floods to supply electricity to lights, radios, and life-saving equipment.
“The airborne platform can be launched quickly after an earthquake or flood to keep lights, radios and life-saving equipment running,” said Weng Hanke, chief technology officer of SAWES.
179809280
submission
fahrbot-bot writes:
Popular Mechanics is reporting on a new study published in the journal Nature Materials, where scientists from the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS) have now found yet another phase, appropriately named Ice XXI. At the heart of the experiment, scientists used diamond anvil cells (DACs)—a common device used in materials science for squeezing samples under immense pressure—to subject water to 2 gigapascals (20,000 times higher than normal atmosphere) of pressure in just 10 milliseconds.
The scientists call this kind of water “supercompressed,” and it’s metastable, meaning it persists for a time even when another form of ice would be more stable. And because of the immense pressure, ice forms at room temperature but the molecules are much more densely packed.
“Rapid compression of water allows it to remain liquid up to higher pressures, where it should have already crystallized to ice VI,” Geun Woo Lee, a co-author of the study from RISS, said.
