Post Scientist

Performance of lithium-ion batteries will be essential to make the clean transition cheaper and easier, which in turn requires a new generation of materials for anodes in those batteries. One of the best-performing options, a silicon-monoxide-carbon composite, suffers from a series of unwanted chemical reactions. A new preparation technique for this anode material appears to have finally solved the problem. The hunt for the next generation of materials for anodes in lithium-ion batteries has long suffered from a series of parasitic chemical reactions for many of the proposed replacements for the graphite that is conventionally used. A novel preparation technique for a silicon-monoxide-carbon composite material looks set to finally deliver the efficiency gains desired with none of the unwanted side reactions....

A new approach to manufacturing perovskite solar cells has addressed previous problems and yielded devices with high efficiency and excellent stability, researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) report in the new issue of the journal Science . Developing highly stable and efficient perovskites based on a rich mixture of bromine and iodine is considered critical for the creation of tandem solar cells. The two elements, however, tend to separate when exposed to light and heat and thus limit the voltage and stability of a solar cell. "This new growth approach can significantly suppress the phase segregation," said Kai Zhu, a senior scientist at NREL, principal investigator on the project, and lead author of the new paper "Compositional texture engineering for highly stable wi...

Starting Jan. 1, many Americans will qualify for a tax credit of up to $7,500 for buying an electric vehicle. The credit, part of changes enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act, is designed to spur EV sales and reduce greenhouse emissions. But a complex web of requirements, including where vehicles and batteries must be manufactured to qualify, is casting doubt on whether anyone can receive the full $7,500 credit next year. For at least the first two months of 2023, though, a delay in the Treasury Department's rules for the new benefit will likely make the full credit temporarily available to consumers who meet certain income and price limits. The new law also provides a smaller credit for people who buy a used EV. Certain EV brands that were eligible for a separate tax credit that began in 2010 and that ...

Spontaneous, random baby movements aid development of their sensorimotor system, according to new research led by the University of Tokyo. Detailed motion capture of newborns and infants was combined with a musculoskeletal computer model to enable researchers to analyze communication among muscles and sensation across the whole body.  Researchers found patterns of muscle interaction developing based on the babies' random exploratory behavior that would later enable them to perform sequential movements as infants. Better understanding how our sensorimotor system develops could help us gain insight into the origin of human movement as well as earlier diagnoses of developmental disorders. Right from birth—and even in the womb—babies start to kick, wiggle and move seemingly without aim or external stimulation. These are called "spontaneous movements," and researchers believe that they have an important role to play in the development of the sensorimotor system, ...

Females, on average, are better than males at putting themselves in others' shoes and imagining what the other person is thinking or feeling, suggests a new study of over 300,000 people in 57 countries. Researchers found that females, on average, score higher than males on the widely used "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" Test, which measures "theory of mind" (also known as "cognitive empathy"). This finding was observed across all ages and most countries. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , is the largest study of theory of mind to date. A fundamental part of human social interaction and communication involves putting ourselves in other people's shoes, to imagine another person's thoughts and feelings. This is kn...

Brown algae take up large amounts of carbon dioxide from the air and release parts of the carbon contained therein back into the environment in mucous form. This mucus is hard to break down for other ocean inhabitants, thus the carbon is removed from the atmosphere for a long time, as researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen now show. They reveal that the algal mucus called fucoidan is particularly responsible for this carbon removal and estimate that brown algae could thus remove up to 550 million tons of carbon dioxide from the air every year—almost the amount of Germany's entire annual greenhouse gas emissions. Brown algae are true wonder plants when it comes to absorbing carbon dioxide from the air. They even outcompete forests on land in this, and thus play a decisive role in the atmosphere and our climate. Researchers at t...

A new study that reconstructs the history of sea level at the Bering Strait shows that the Bering Land Bridge connecting Asia to North America did not emerge until around 35,700 years ago, less than 10,000 years before the height of the last ice age (known as the Last Glacial Maximum). The new findings, published the week of December 26 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , indicate that the growth of the ice sheets—and the resulting drop in sea level—occurred surprisingly quickly and much later in the glacial cycle than previous studies had suggested. "It means that more than 50% of the global ice volume at the Last Glacial Maximum grew after 46,000 years ago," said Tamara Pico, assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences at UC Santa Cruz and a corresponding author of the paper. "This is important for understanding the feedbac...