Ions
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Heating and cooling systems are among the biggest guzzlers of energy. Berkeley Lab has now developed a new technology that heats and cools by switching a material between solid and liquid states, inducing a large temperature change from a small voltage.
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MIT engineers have developed a new type of artificial synapse that’s extremely energy efficient and ultra-fast, processing data a million times faster than synapses in the human brain. The analog device shuttles protons around instead of electrons.
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The Moon may look like a big dry ball, but there’s more water up there than you might expect. In a new study, scientists have shown that at least some of it could have been showered onto the lunar surface from the Earth’s atmosphere.
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Transmitting data from medical implants in the body can be tricky, but a new technique can essentially write data to ions in human tissue, where it can then be read from a receiver outside the body at high transmission speeds.
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Artificial devices usually don’t communicate well with nature. Now, researchers have created artificial organic neurons and synapses that can integrate with natural biological systems, and demonstrated this by making a Venus flytrap close on demand.
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Water can take on far more forms than many people give it credit for, and now scientists have recreated a particularly bizarre one in the lab – a “hot black ice” that may exist deep inside planets like Uranus and Neptune.
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Antimatter is hard to study, not least because it annihilates any container you try to put it in. Now CERN physicists have developed a new antimatter trap that can cool samples in seconds, which could help unlock a fundamental mystery of the universe.
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Dark matter should be all around us, but the stuff is frustratingly elusive. Now physicists at NIST have developed a new sensor that could help us detect certain hypothetical dark matter particles, using a two-dimensional quantum crystal.
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When you think of processes that could benefit from a high-tech makeover, the drying of fruit may not be the first that comes to mind. It turns out, however, that the use of "ionic wind" for fruit-dehydration saves energy and preserves nutrients.
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A team of MIT engineers have flown what was long thought impossible – a heavier than air craft that needs no moving parts for achieving powered lift. The 5-lb (2.3-kg) does not use propellers, turbines, or fans, but relies on a silent stream of ionized air to maintain steady flight.
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Seawater is a complex cocktail of useful minerals, but it’s hard to separate the ones we need. Now a team of scientists from Australia and the US has developed a new water desalination technique that can not only make seawater fresh enough to drink, but recover lithium ions for use in batteries.
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Magnesium-ion batteries have potential if scientists can crack the problem of finding an efficient electrolyte. Now scientists have developed a solid-state material that appears to be one of the fastest conductors of magnesium-ions, which could lead to safer and more efficient batteries.
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