adminCan portabella mushrooms stop cell phone batteries from degrading over time? Researchers think so. They have created a new type of lithium-ion battery anode using portabella mushrooms, which are inexpensive, environmentally friendly and easy to produce.
Clive ThompsonThis story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. If you drive out to visit Disney’s Epcot center in Orlando, Fla., you will arrive at one of the biggest parking lots in America. With room for 12,000 cars, it sprawls out over 7 million square feet — about the size of 122 football fields. If you look at the lot on Google Maps, you realize that it’s nearly the size of Epcot center itself. Disney built one Epcot to hold the visitors. Then it built another to hold the cars. Disney isn’t alone in its expansive approach to parking. Parking is, after all, what cars do most of the time: The average automobile spends 95 percent of its…
adminA highly efficient biomaterial has been created that catalyzes the formation of hydrogen — one half of the ‘holy grail’ of splitting water to make hydrogen and oxygen for fueling cheap and efficient cars that run on water.
adminMale moths locate females by navigating along the latter’s pheromone (odor) plume. Two strategies are involved: males must find the outer envelope of the pheromone plume, and then head upwind. Can understanding such insect behavior be useful for robotics research? Yes, according to an entomologist, whose research using computer simulations shows that such insect behavior has implications for airborne robots (drones) that ply the sky searching for signature odors.
