Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists from the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research (DIFFER) have created a database of 31,618 molecules that could potentially be used in future redox-flow batteries. These batteries hold great promise for energy storage. Among other things, the researchers used artificial intelligence and supercomputers to identify the molecules’ properties. Today, they publish their findings in the journal Scientific Data.

In recent years, chemists have designed hundreds of molecules that could potentially be useful in flow batteries for energy storage. It would be wonderful, researchers from DIFFER in Eindhoven (the Netherlands) imagined, if the properties of these molecules were quickly and easily accessible in a database. The problem, however, is that for many molecules the properties are not known. Examples of molecular properties are redox potential and water solubility. Those are important since they are related to the power generation capability and energy density of redox flow batteries.

To find out the still-unknown properties of molecules, the researchers performed four steps. First, they used a desktop computer and smart algorithms to create thousands of virtual variants of two types of molecules. These molecule families, the quinones and aza aromatics, are good at reversibly accepting and donating electrons. That is important for batteries. The researchers fed the computer with backbone structures of 24 quinones and 28 aza-aromatics plus five different chemically relevant side groups. From that, the computer created 31,618 different molecules.

25 years ago, the film Contact made its theatrical debut starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey and told the story of Dr. Eleanor Arroway (Jodie Foster) who picked up a radio signal from the star Vega and how this discovery impacted not just herself, but humanity as a whole. Over time, she discovers the signal has embedded instructions sent by the aliens to build a device capable of sending one person into outer space, presumably to meet the Vegans.

The device is built, and she is eventually hurled through a series of outer space tunnels where she meets an alien in the form of her long-deceased father. Right before she’s sent back home, the alien informs her, “This was just a first step. In time you’ll take another.” When she awakens, her colleagues inform her the pod she sat in fell straight through the device and she never actually left. With no hard evidence of both her travels and meeting the aliens, Eleanor is left scrutinized by both the public and Congress. She is ultimately given a “healthy grant” to fund further research into finding more signals from ET, and the film ends with her pondering her journey to the stars.

While some moviegoers were bummed that they didn’t see the aliens—who instead downloaded Jodie Foster’s consciousness so they could talk to her easier—the important message of the film, and the book that it’s based on, is to persevere, but also knowing there will be hardships and sacrifices along the way. In the case of Eleanor, she loses her father at a very young age who had gotten her hooked on astronomy. Later, she passes on love with Palmer Joss (Matthew McConaughey) to remain in pursuit of her research, all while consistently being roadblocked by her former boss. And even after she reaches her goal of contacting the aliens who sent the message, she’s still scrutinized and ridiculed.

The minerals were found inside a slice of the El Ali meteorite, which landed in Somalia in 2020.

An international team of researchers are suggesting that our understanding of the origins of our universe may need some updates.

As detailed in a new paper published this week in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, they say the universe may have begun with a “Big Bounce” rather than a Big Bang.

In other words, the cosmos may have been born following of the end of a previous cosmological phase — a bounce — and not the result of space-time inflating exponentially into existence.

LONDON, Nov 28 (Reuters) — Britain’s Rolls-Royce (RR.L) said it has successfully run an aircraft engine on hydrogen, a world aviation first that marks a major step towards proving the gas could be key to decarbonising air travel.

The ground test, using a converted Rolls-Royce AE 2100-A regional aircraft engine, used green hydrogen created by wind and tidal power, the British company said on Monday.

Rolls and its testing programme partner easyJet (EZJ.L) are seeking to prove that hydrogen can safely and efficiently deliver power for civil aero engines.

Acer has fixed a high-severity vulnerability affecting multiple laptop models that could enable local attackers to deactivate UEFI Secure Boot on targeted systems.

The Secure Boot security feature blocks untrusted operating systems bootloaders on computers with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) chip and Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) firmware to prevent malicious code like rootkits and bootkits from loading during the startup process.

Reported by ESET malware researcher Martin Smolar, the security flaw (CVE-2022–4020) was discovered in the HQSwSmiDxe DXE driver on some consumer Acer Notebook devices.

A fake Android SMS application, with 100,000 downloads on the Google Play store, has been discovered to secretly act as an SMS relay for an account creation service for sites like Microsoft, Google, Instagram, Telegram, and Facebook.

A researcher says the infected devices are then rented out as “virtual numbers” for relaying a one-time passcode used to verify a user while creating new accounts.

While the app has an overall rating of 3.4, many user reviews complain that it is fake, hijacks their phones, and generates multiple OTPs (one-time passwords) upon installation.

Meta has been fined €265 million ($275.5 million) by the Irish data protection commission (DPC) for a massive 2021 Facebook data leak exposing the information of hundreds of million users worldwide.

This concludes the DPC’s investigation of potential GDPR violations by Meta, launched on April 14, 2021, following the publishing of data belonging to 533 million Facebook users on a hacker forum.

The exposed data included personal information, such as mobile numbers, Facebook IDs, names, genders, locations, relationship statuses, occupations, dates of birth, and email addresses.

An annual APS video prize went to supercomputer simulations, control of chaotic Faraday waves, and studies of a large bubble in a bottle.