And now for something weird...

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,086
https://www.oregonlive.com/nation/2021/06/mine-sniffing-rat-ends-years-of-hard-work-in-cambodia.html
Mine-sniffing rat ends years of hard work in Cambodia
“Although still in good health, he has reached a retirement age and is clearly starting to slow down,” APOPO said. “It is time.”

Magawa has cleared more than 1.5 million square feet of land, the equivalent of some 20 soccer fields, sniffing out 71 land mines and 38 items of unexploded ordnance, according to APOPO.
 

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,220

In 2001, Two People Became The First Humans To Have Sex "On The Moon"

"Yeah, it's more uncomfortable than not," Roberts told CBS. "But it wasn't about the comfort at that point. It was about the expression. And no one had ever had sex on the moon before."
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,086
First, they are using electricity (using the colloquial expression of electricity as energy in a scientific paper means it was designed for the public) as the EMF force media in the conversion of chemical energy to electrical energy. I fail to see how this is new (other than the nanotube angle) since solvent-induced electron flow is pretty common in the semiconductor field.
 

ZCochran98

Joined Jul 24, 2018
303
Yes. Excellent observation! Solvent-induced electron flow common in semiconductors employ zigzag nanotubes.
The angle of the nanotube's hexagonal carbon-atom lattice. Armchair nanotubes - so called because of the armchair-like shape of their edges - have identical chiral indices and are highly desired for their perfect conductivity. A journey of a thousand miles begins with the single step. Without zigzagging.
Interestingly-enough, if you unzip those nanotubes into nanoribbons, armchair-type nanoribbons are semiconductive (with the bandgap being entirely dependent on width of the ribbon), while zig-zag-type are highly-conductive (I suppose this makes sense, as the dominant edge of the nanoribbon is 90 degrees rotated of the dominant edge of the nanotube, so zigzag nanotubes become armchair nanoribbons). These nanoribbons can be used to create ultrafast 2D transistors called "GNRFETs" (with transistion frequencies exceeding 1.5 to 15 THz).
 

nsaspook

Joined Aug 27, 2009
13,086
https://scitechdaily.com/mit-engine...completely-new-way-of-generating-electricity/
The solvent takes electrons away, and the system tries to equilibrate by moving electrons,” Strano says. “There’s no sophisticated battery chemistry inside. It’s just a particle and you put it into solvent and it starts generating an electric field.”
It's mainly simple electrochemistry inside transferring energy to an electric field using charge separation.

In the longer term, this approach could also be used to power micro- or nanoscale robots. Strano’s lab has already begun building robots at that scale, which could one day be used as diagnostic or environmental sensors. The idea of being able to scavenge energy from the environment to power these kinds of robots is appealing, he says.

“It means you don’t have to put the energy storage on board,” he says. “What we like about this mechanism is that you can take the energy, at least in part, from the environment.”
Of course you need to look at the total energy used here for what you get as the usable reaction energy. The net efficiency of comparing the max device possible output power to the amount of power needed for the construction of the device and active chemicals means that, while it's interesting research, the likelihood of practicality is near zero.
 

ZCochran98

Joined Jul 24, 2018
303
Knowledge at the nanoscale has been the main focus of the nanotechnology research community. The academic R&D sector needs to actively minimize administrative red tape and bureaucracy to enable the efficient practice of nanoscience and technology. The private sector with individual billionaires are investing in nanotechnology laboratories, bypassing oversight by the public for information and relieving government entities a fiscal audits so they no longer have to defend the purchase of a $3,000 screwdriver destined for Black ops. The byproduct of which, allows the next step logical progression , advancements if you will, of existing technologies encouraging new economical and profitable manufacturing techniques.
Tell me about it. I did my MS thesis on GNRFET-based devices (hybrid with superconductive systems), and the biggest issue I ran into with such nanotech research is the fact that the bulk of my own research (excluding the background/literature review/model origin research) is based on theory and high-accuracy physics simulation because I had no access to a lab or materials to make these devices, nor even the money to outsource it to a group that could. Hard to justify spending who-knows-how-much money on something that is still technologically in its infancy and may or may not be, ultimately, profitable. Makes trying to publish in IEEE very challenging too, as reviewers tend to balk at research based on theory and simulation. American Physical Society (APS) on the other hand, they have no problem with simulation-based research, which is a boon for academia at least....
 
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