Post Scientist

Queen Mary University researchers have developed a new AI-powered framework, MetaBeeAI, designed to help scientists review and analyze vast amounts of literature faster, more transparently, and with greater human oversight. Dr. Rachel Parkinson, who is the leading researcher on this project, states that MetaBeeAI could potentially transform how evidence is gathered across fields from environmental science to medicine. It is an intelligence system that combines large language models with human validation to accelerate systematic reviews of scientific research while maintaining traceability and scientific rigor. The research is published in the journal Ecological Informatics . As scientific publishing continues to grow rapidly, researchers face an increasing challenge: there are now simply too many papers for humans alone to process efficiently. This means that systematic reviews—considered one of the gold standards of evidence synthesis—can take months or even years to c...

Demand for lithium has surged in recent years as lithium-ion batteries increasingly power more of our world. And yet, even as places like the U.S., Europe, and Australia have abundant lithium resources within their borders, China dominates global lithium refining. The biggest hurdle to tapping into the U.S. and Australia's lithium is getting it out of hard rock minerals in a form that is useful. Extracting lithium from hard rock today is an energy- and waste-intensive process that is often far more expensive than getting lithium from brine water, which also has major environmental drawbacks. Currently, lithium hard rock extraction involves baking t...

  A new invention from a team that includes a University of Maryland researcher halts the copper degradation cycle that turns statues, roofs, and even nickels green. Researchers have developed a liquid reactive ink that can print copper onto nearly any surface without oxidation or corrosion. Shenqiang Ren, a professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, along with Professor Liangbing Hu from Yale University and Senior Scientist Haimei Zheng from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, led a collaborative effort that spanned over a decade of discovery. The results of this work were published in Science as a cover article. Copper is a hidden backbone of modern life, carrying electricity in AI systems, ...

  Solar cells, devices that can convert sunlight into electricity, are now widely used in many countries and are contributing to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions on Earth. While most of the solar cells on the market today are based on silicon, energy engineers have been exploring the potential of other photovoltaic materials, including a class of materials known as perovskites. Perovskites are materials with a characteristic crystal structure; the same structure of the mineral calcium titanium oxide CaTiO 3 . A promising solar cell design introduced over the past decades entails the stacking of silicon and perovskite layers to produce so-called tandem cells, a type of photovoltaics that can capture a broader range of the solar spectrum than single-layer solar cells. Perovskite/silicon solar cells have been found to exhibit remarkable power conversion efficiencies, which essentially means that they convert a higher percentage of sunlight into electricity. Neve...

A popular sodium-ion battery designed by the company Hina and used in cars and large-scale energy storage systems in China matches performance parameters and production quality of Tesla's lithium-ion batteries, finds new research published in Cell Reports Physical Science . Once the Hina battery is tweaked to charge more effectively at low temperatures and function better at high energy densities, it could provide a cost-effective alternative for future electric vehicle batteries that depend on sodium—an abundant and easily sourced material—instead of lithium. "The combination of good uniformity, high power capability, and strong low-temperature performance makes these cells attractive for stationary storage, grid services, and shorter-range or commercial vehicles where potential lower cost and resource availability matter more than maximum driving range," says Moritz Schütte, a battery researcher at RWTH Aachen University in Germany. How the Hina cells wer...

  Today, magnetic field sensors are one of the invisible mass-produced products in the electronics industry. They measure movement, positions or distances and can be found in window contacts, steering wheels, hard disks, packaging and cell phones. Billions of these components are manufactured every year. "Many of these sensors contain materials like nickel or cobalt," says Dr. Denys Makarov, head of the Intelligent Materials and Systems Department at the Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research at HZDR. "These are materials that can harm the environment and health when not properly disposed." At the same time, producing them often requires energy-intensive processes and complex manufacturing steps. The development of sustainable sensors is a technical challenge. While iron is easily available and biocompatible, on its own, it does not achieve the sensitivity required for many of today's magnetic field sensors. The research team therefor...

A Russian influence campaign hijacked hundreds of Bluesky accounts—many belonging to influential Americans—to spread propaganda, researchers said, in a striking disinformation tactic that weaponized authentic identities rather than relying on fake accounts.  The campaign, which the researchers at Clemson University linked to the Moscow-based firm Social Design Agency (SDA), targeted journalists, academics, and filmmakers on the tech platform. Many of the compromised accounts were used to post anti-Ukraine narratives, illustrating how pro-Kremlin propagandists are seeking novel ways to undermine support for the war-torn country that Russia invaded in 2022. "Looks like someone got into my account and posted some story about France and Ukraine," Wall Street Journal reporter Alex Ward wrote on Bluesky. The post in question has now been deleted and Ward said he had regained control of his account. A database of compromised accounts—created by an internet monitor tra...