Category: Technology

To build ultra-low-power, high-performance microprocessors, researchers used adiabatic quantum-flux-parametron (AQFP), an energy-efficient superconductor.
It’s an attempt to build extremely energy-efficient electronics for the next generation of data centers and communication networks.
Their processors have roughly the same performance as current state-of-the-art, and they’d cost much less to run.
Even though they’d need to be kept in extremely low temperatures to work, they’d still be more energy efficient.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on January 8, 2021

Removing salt from water has been a challenge for scientists for decades, and this new study might provide a way to make it easier.
Researchers found that membranes used to clean water in desalination technology are inconsistent - making them uniformly dense at the nanoscale can help.
This can improve membrane efficiency by 30-40%, making desalination cheaper.
Desalination is becoming more important every year, as more people struggle to get access to clean water.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on January 8, 2021

Using a newly devised method, natural gas can be converted to a non-explosive solid in just 15 minutes, the fastest time ever.
The solid form is called a gas hydrate, or “combustible ice” - natural gas molecules are trapped in “cages” formed by water molecules.
It’s the same way that nature stores natural gas, only it takes nature millions of years to create gas hydrates.
Other scientists used toxic substances to speed up this reaction, whereas here researchers used L-tryptophan, an essential amino-acid in our diets.
The end product is stable, can be stored in -5 degrees Celsius, and scientists are working towards commercializing this technology, and scaling it up for industrial use.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on December 11, 2020

inverse.com

Working on sodium batteries (potential alternative to lithium batteries), researchers discovered that mammalian bone design might stabilize their chemistry.
They created cathodes (electrodes that carry electrons) that are tough on the outside, and spongy on the inside.
Their proof-of-concept battery was able to maintain 91% capacity for over 10,000 charge cycles.
Lithium is explosive, and mining it is difficult and environmentally damaging, whereas sodium batteries are based on ubiquitous salt.
This is still just proof-of-concept, it gives hope, but sodium batteries are still a long way from being a viable replacement to lithium batteries.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on December 11, 2020

DeepMind’s algorithm solves a 50-year old problem of predicting how proteins fold into 3D shapes that carry out life’s tasks.
Before, scientists solved the structures of only 170,000 out of 200 million proteins, but this algorithm is a game changer that will speed up this research insanely.
The algorithm was trained on the 170,000 solved proteins in an earlier version, but the new version has an added “attention algorithm” that really did the trick.
It works similarly to how we solve puzzles - first connects pieces in small chunks, and then searches for ways to join them together.
This opens up new avenues for science, could dramatically speed up the discovery of new medications, as well as development of enzymes for biofuels and recycling.

Bulleted by Michał Słupski
on December 4, 2020

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