Lifeboat Foundation

Lithium metal batteries could store much more charge in a given space than today’s lithium-ion batteries, and the race is on to develop them for next-gen electric vehicles, electronics and other uses.

But one of the hurdles that stand in the way is a silent battle between two of the battery’s parts. The liquid between the battery electrodes, known as the electrolyte, corrodes the surface of the lithium metal anode, coating it in a thin layer of gunk called the solid-electrolyte interphase, or SEI.

Although formation of SEI is believed to be inevitable, researchers hope to stabilize and control the growth of this layer in a way that maximizes the battery’s performance. But until now they have never had a clear picture of what the SEI looks like when it’s saturated with electrolyte, as it would be in a working battery.

Aluminium Air batteries have been a thing for a while — but now a UK inventor says he’s solved one of the biggest problems with them — the toxicity of the electrolyte they’ve traditionally used.

Does this make Aluminium Air batteries viable?

Continue reading “Are Aluminium Air Batteries Now Practical?” »

Many of these systems are kept out of equilibrium because individual constituents have their own power source — ATP for cells, gas for cars. But all these extra energy sources and mismatched reactions make for a complex dynamical system beyond the reach of statistical mechanics. How can we analyze phases in such ever-changing systems?

Vitelli and his colleagues see an answer in mathematical objects called exceptional points. Generally, an exceptional point in a system is a singularity, a spot where two or more characteristic properties become indistinguishable and mathematically collapse into one. At an exceptional point, the mathematical behavior of a system differs dramatically from its behavior at nearby points, and exceptional points often describe curious phenomena in systems — like lasers — in which energy is gained and lost continuously.

Now the team has found that these exceptional points also control phase transitions in nonreciprocal systems. Exceptional points aren’t new; physicists and mathematicians have studied them for decades in a variety of settings. But they’ve never been associated so generally with this type of phase transition. “That’s what no one has thought about before, using these in the context of nonequilibrium systems,” said the physicist Cynthia Reichhardt of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. “So you can bring all the machinery that we already have about exceptional points to study these systems.”

But how electricity will be produced? So solar powered bus will be better option.

New York governor Kathy Hochul just proposed legislation to shift the whole state to 100% electric school buses by 2035.

It’s the first flying car firm to be granted a safety certificate in Japan.

SkyDrive, the Tokyo-based startup developing a personal eVTOL aircraft, revealed its ultra-light compact flying car, the SD-03, on the show floor at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week.

Continue reading “Japan’s Certified Flying Taxi Company Wants to Start Its Services by 2025” »

An evolution of its 2018 ‘Valkyrie’ hypersonic airliner concept.

If you work out of an office, you know that the coffee machine is the favorite spot in the office to hang out or have conversations at. From giving us the first cup of the day to keeping us awake for late-night meetings, that machine is a lifesaver. But just for a day, try not getting your coffee from the coffee machine. Don’t skip coffee entirely, but instead, go out to your local coffee shop that doesn’t use coffee machines or make yourself a flask at home. You will realize that hand-made coffee is inherently better than the one that is made from a machine. Not just making coffee, but highly creative jobs–like designing an outfit or writing a book–are considered best left to human creators. Many do not think that machines could emulate them. But with the takeover of artificial intelligence, this belief is steadily being challenged. Creativity and AI are together transforming many spaces that were traditionally reserved for the “artists.” In this article, we’ll be exploring these spaces and how AI is making a significant impact on them.

Continue reading “Can AI Emulate Human Creativity?” »

Here’s a video of an electric BMW that can literally change the color of its paint job with the press of a button. We still don’t know how it works.

Lakeview Generating Station was once a coal plant in Mississauga, a suburb of Toronto. But now, developers are reimagining it to become a mixed-use, lakefront village, where residents can walk or bike anywhere within the site in just 15 minutes.

Lakeview Village, as the new development will be named, will reclaim access and views of the lake, both of which the former coal plant had restricted for locals. As reported by Fast Company, the government shut down the plant in 2005, and initially planned to replace it with a gas-fired power plant. But the community protested this idea, instead pushing for the site to become something meaningful for the residents.

“There were a lot of grassroots community efforts that really resisted and had a more ambitious vision for what the waterfront could be here, toward a mixed-use, sustainable waterfront community,” Brian Sutherland, vice president of development at Argo Development Corporation, told Fast Company. Argo is leading the redevelopment project.

Horizon Aeronautics is prototyping an eVTOL hovercycle concept that uses a complex and interesting split-swashplate “Blainjett” variable pitch rotor system that only exposes half of each fan. Very odd, but Horizon says it’s highly efficient.

To understand how this Blainjett propulsion system works – and before anyone asks, no, these guys are no relation to me – you first need to understand how the swashplate and cyclic controls work to distribute thrust as a helicopter’s top rotor spins. Each blade can vary its pitch independently, with the height of the swashplate determining the pitch. With the swashplate sitting flat, pushing the whole thing up and down will change the pitch of all the blades at once.

But with the cyclic control, helicopter pilots are able to tilt the swashplate. Pushing the stick forward, for example, tilts it such that the blades gradually tilt as they spin around, getting flatter as they pass the front of the aircraft, then pitching up to develop more lift as they go around the back. The result is an asymmetry in lift, with more at the back of the disc, and the aircraft pitches forward and accelerates in that direction. The cyclic control can do this in any direction; it’s part of what makes helicopters such dynamic aircraft.