Last Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev Dies

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Russian and Soviet politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union.  As the country's head of state from 1988 to 1991, he served as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1988 to 1989, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet from 1989 to 1990, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991, and President of the Soviet Union from 1990 until the country's dissolution in 1991.  Ideologically, Gorbachev initially adhered to Marxism–Leninism but moved towards social democracy by the early 1990s.

Gorbachev was born in Privolnoye, Stavropol Krai, to a poor peasant family of Russian and Ukrainian heritage. Growing up under the rule of Joseph Stalin, in his youth, he operated combine harvesters on a collective farm before joining the Communist Party, which then governed the Soviet Union as a one-party state according to the prevailing interpretation of Marxist–Leninist doctrine. Studying at Moscow State University, he married fellow student Raisa Titarenko in 1953 and received his law degree in 1955. Moving to Stavropol, he worked for the Komsomol youth organization and, after Stalin's death, became a keen proponent of the de-Stalinization reforms of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.  He was appointed the First Party Secretary of the Stavropol Regional Committee in 1970, in which position he oversaw construction of the Great Stavropol Canal.  In 1978, he returned to Moscow to become a Secretary of the party's Central Committee, and in 1979 joined its governing Politburo.  Three years after the death of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev—following the brief tenures of Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko—in 1985 the Politburo elected Gorbachev as General Secretary, the de facto leader.

Although committed to preserving the Soviet state and its socialist ideals, Gorbachev believed significant reform to be necessary, particularly after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.  He withdrew from the Soviet–Afghan War and embarked on summits with United States president Ronald Reagan to limit nuclear weapons and end the Cold War.  Domestically, his policy of glasnost ("openness") allowed for enhanced freedom of speech and press, while his perestroika ("restructuring") sought to decentralize economic decision-making to improve its efficiency. His democratization measures and formation of the elected Congress of People's Deputies undermined the one-party state. Gorbachev declined to intervene militarily when various Eastern Bloc countries abandoned Marxist–Leninist governance in 1989–1990.  Internally, growing nationalist sentiment threatened to break up the Soviet Union, leading Marxist–Leninist hardliners to launch the unsuccessful August Coup against Gorbachev in 1991. In the coup's wake, the Soviet Union dissolved against Gorbachev's wishes. After resigning the presidency, he launched the Gorbachev Foundation, became a vocal critic of Russian presidents Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin, and campaigned for Russia's social-democratic movement.  Gorbachev died in 2022 after a period of illness.

Widely considered one of the most significant figures of the second half of the 20th century, Gorbachev remains the subject of controversy. The recipient of a wide range of awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize, he was praised for his role in ending the Cold War, introducing new political and economic freedoms in the Soviet Union, and tolerating both the fall of Marxist–Leninist administrations in eastern and central Europe and the reunification of Germany.  Conversely, in Russia he is often derided for accelerating the dissolution of the Soviet Union—an event which weakened Russia's global influence and precipitated an economic collapse in Russia and associated states.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Gorbachev

 

Washing Dishes with Superheated Steam Is More Effective and Earth-friendly

Simulations show steam kills bacteria on a plate in 25 seconds without soap

From:  American Institute of Physics

Superheated steam dishwashers could provide a more effective, environmentally friendly solution than conventional dishwashers. Researchers simulated such a dishwasher, finding that it killed 99% of bacteria on a plate in just 25 seconds. The model of an idealized dishwasher looks like a box with solid sides, a top opening, and a nozzle at the bottom. A plate covered with heat-resistant bacteria is placed directly above the nozzle. Once the plate reaches a certain threshold temperature, the microorganisms are deemed inactivated.

Conventional dishwashers often do not kill all the harmful microorganisms left on plates, bowls, and cutlery. They also require long cycle times that use large quantities of electricity, and the soap pumped in and out is released into water sources, polluting the environment.

Superheated steam dishwashers could provide a more effective, environmentally friendly solution. In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers from the Technical University of Dortmund and the Technical University of Munich simulated such a dishwasher, finding that it killed 99% of bacteria on a plate in just 25 seconds.

The model of an idealized dishwasher looks like a box with solid side walls, a top opening, and a nozzle at the bottom. A plate covered with a heat-resistant strain of bacteria is placed directly above the nozzle. Once the plate reaches a certain threshold temperature in the simulation, the microorganisms are deemed inactivated.

"Steam comes out of the nozzle at a very high velocity. We can see shocks, and the turbulent flow that is created has eddies and vortices," said author Natalie Germann, of the Technical University of Dortmund. "We also include heat transfer, which shows how the heat changes in the simulation box and the condensation on the solid surfaces."

The shock waves, created by the high velocity of the steam, are reflected at surfaces in the dishwasher. While the team focused on bacteria in this work, the shocks could be used to effectively remove food debris in the future.

"Our study helps determine the strength of the shocks, the position of the shocks, and the vortices that are created inside the dishwasher," said author Laila Abu-Farah, of the Technical University of Munich. "These things are very important for arranging the items or objects inside the dishwasher and the placement and orientation of the nozzles."

While the simulations show quick inactivation of the bacteria, actual applications of the dishwasher would include more than one plate and therefore require more time. However, the researchers believe it would still be much faster and more effective than conventional technology.

The superheated steam dishwasher would initially cost more but would pay off in the long run with savings on water, electricity, and detergent. It would be ideal for use in restaurants, hotels, and hospitals, which must meet high hygienic standards.

"We confirmed that the dishwasher application using superheated steam is promising," said Germann. "This is the first work combining fluid dynamics and heat transfer with phase change and bacterial inactivation. It thus lays the foundation for future computational research and further technical work."

        https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/08/220830131616.htm

 

Polypill Reduces Cardiovascular Mortality by 33 Percent in Patients Treated After a Heart Attack

This could become an integral part of global strategies to prevent adverse cardiovascular events in this patient population

From:  Mt. Sinai Health System [press release]

August 26, 2022 -- A three-drug medication known as a “polypill,” developed by the Spanish National Center for Cardiovascular Research (CNIC) and Ferrer, is effective in preventing secondary adverse cardiovascular events in people who have previously had a heart attack, reducing cardiovascular mortality by 33 percent in this patient population.  These are findings from the SECURE trial led by Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD, Director of Mount Sinai Heart and Physician-in-Chief of The Mount Sinai Hospital, and General Director of CNIC.

The study results were announced Friday, August 26, in a Hot Line session at the European Society of Cardiology Congress (ESC 2022) in Barcelona, Spain, and published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

“The results of the SECURE study show that for the first time that the polypill, which contains aspirin, ramipril, and atorvastatin, achieves clinically relevant reductions in the recurrent cardiovascular events among people who have recovered from a previous heart attack because of better adherence to this simplified approach with a simple polypill, rather than taking them separately as conventional,” says Dr. Fuster.

Patients recovering from a heart attack—also known as myocardial infarction—are prescribed specific treatments to prevent subsequent cardiovascular events. Standard therapy includes three different drugs: an antiplatelet agent (like aspirin); ramipril or a similar drug to control blood pressure; and a lipid-reducing drug, such as a statin. However, fewer than 50 percent of patients consistently adhere to their medication regimen.

“Although most patients initially adhere to treatment after an acute event such as an infarction, adherence drops off after the first few months. Our goal was to have an impact right from the start, and most of the patients in the study began taking a simple polypill in the first week after having a heart attack,” Dr. Fuster explains.

“Adherence to treatment after an acute myocardial infarction is essential for effective secondary prevention,” said José María Castellano, MD, study first author and Scientific Director of Fundación de Investigación HM Hospitales.

CNIC scientists first demonstrated that prescription of their polypill significantly improved treatment adherence among patients recovering after a myocardial infarction, in the FOCUS study, previously published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC).

The CNIC team launched the SECURE study, an international randomized clinical trial, to determine whether the improved treatment adherence with the polypill translated into a reduction in cardiovascular events. The polypill analyzed in the study, commercialized under the name Trinomia, contains aspirin (100 mg), the angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitor ramipril (2.5, 5, or 10 mg), and atorvastatin (20 or 40 mg).

“The polypill, being a very simple strategy that combines three essential treatments for this type of patient, has proved its worth because the improved adherence means that these patients are receiving better treatment and therefore have a lower risk of recurrent cardiovascular events,” added Dr. Castellano.

SECURE included 2,499 patients from seven European countries (Spain, Italy, Germany, the Czech Republic, France, Poland, and Hungary) recovering after a heart attack. Study participants were randomly assigned to receive standard therapy or the CNIC polypill. The average age of the participants was 76 years, and 31 percent were women. The study population included 77.9 percent with hypertension, 57.4 percent with diabetes, and 51.3 percent with a history of smoking tobacco.

Researchers analyzed the incidence of four major cardiovascular events: death from cardiovascular causes, non-fatal myocardial infarction, non-fatal stroke, and need for emergency coronary revascularization (the restoration of blood flow through a blocked coronary artery). The study followed patients for an average of three years and produced conclusive results: patients taking the CNIC polypills had a 24 percent lower risk of these four events than patients taking the three separate drugs.

The standout finding of the study is the effect of the polypill on the key outcome of cardiovascular-related death, which showed a relative reduction of 33 percent, from 71 patients in the group receiving standard treatment to just 48 in the polypill group. Importantly, the study found that patients in the polypill group had a higher level of treatment adherence than those in the control group, thus confirming the findings of the earlier FOCUS study, and in part such good adherence appears to explain the benefits of the simple polypill.

“The 33 percent reduction in cardiovascular mortality demonstrates the efficacy of treatment with Trinomia compared to standard treatment. These results ratify our purpose of making a positive impact in society and represent an important step in our mission to provide significant and differential value to people who suffer from serious health conditions,” explains Oscar Pérez, Chief Marketing, Market Access and Business Development Officer at Ferrer.

“The SECURE study findings suggest that the polypill could become an integral element of strategies to prevent recurrent cardiovascular events in patients who have had a heart attack. By simplifying treatment and improving adherence, this approach has the potential to reduce the risk of recurrent cardiovascular disease and death on a global scale,” adds Dr. Fuster.

The SECURE trial was funded by the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (trial identifier NCT02596126 

The Electric Car Snow Job

From:  RealClear Policy.com

By Andrew I. Fillat and Henry I. Miller

August 22, 2022 – The United States is being taken for a very expensive ride by an unholy alliance between climate ideologues and business opportunists, who have exerted undue influence over public opinion and government institutions in the name of climate change. The misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Biden last Tuesday, allocates $369 billion to climate initiatives – a hugely expensive exercise in virtue-signaling that can be expected to reduce global warming by the year 2100 by only 0.0009 to 0.028 degrees Fahrenheit. It’s a tour de force of political showboating, and the electric vehicle (EV) aspects may be the bill’s most egregious example of non-cost-effective spending.

[Much more at:  https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2022/08/22/the_electric_car_snow_job_849154.html ]

  

A New Neuromorphic Chip for AI on the Edge

It works at a small fraction of the energy and size of today's computer platforms

From:  University of California San Diego

August 17, 2022 -- An international team of researchers has designed and built a chip that runs computations directly in memory and can run a wide variety of AI applications -- all at a fraction of the energy consumed by computing platforms for general-purpose AI computing. The NeuRRAM neuromorphic chip brings AI a step closer to running on a broad range of edge devices, disconnected from the cloud, where they can perform sophisticated cognitive tasks anywhere and anytime without relying on a network connection to a centralized server.

The NeuRRAM neuromorphic chip brings AI a step closer to running on a broad range of edge devices, disconnected from the cloud, where they can perform sophisticated cognitive tasks anywhere and anytime without relying on a network connection to a centralized server. Applications abound in every corner of the world and every facet of our lives, and range from smart watches, to VR headsets, smart earbuds, smart sensors in factories and rovers for space exploration.

The NeuRRAM chip is not only twice as energy efficient as the state-of-the-art "compute-in-memory" chips, an innovative class of hybrid chips that runs computations in memory, it also delivers results that are just as accurate as conventional digital chips. Conventional AI platforms are a lot bulkier and typically are constrained to using large data servers operating in the cloud.

In addition, the NeuRRAM chip is highly versatile and supports many different neural network models and architectures. As a result, the chip can be used for many different applications, including image recognition and reconstruction as well as voice recognition.

"The conventional wisdom is that the higher efficiency of compute-in-memory is at the cost of versatility, but our NeuRRAM chip obtains efficiency while not sacrificing versatility," said Weier Wan, the paper's first corresponding author and a recent Ph.D. graduate of Stanford University who worked on the chip while at UC San Diego, where he was co-advised by Gert Cauwenberghs in the Department of Bioengineering.

The research team, co-led by bioengineers at the University of California San Diego, presents their results in the Aug. 17 issue of Nature.

Currently, AI computing is both power hungry and computationally expensive. Most AI applications on edge devices involve moving data from the devices to the cloud, where the AI processes and analyzes it. Then the results are moved back to the device. That's because most edge devices are battery-powered and as a result only have a limited amount of power that can be dedicated to computing.

By reducing power consumption needed for AI inference at the edge, this NeuRRAM chip could lead to more robust, smarter and accessible edge devices and smarter manufacturing. It could also lead to better data privacy as the transfer of data from devices to the cloud comes with increased security risks.

On AI chips, moving data from memory to computing units is one major bottleneck.

"It's the equivalent of doing an eight-hour commute for a two-hour work day," Wan said.

To solve this data transfer issue, researchers used what is known as resistive random-access memory, a type of non-volatile memory that allows for computation directly within memory rather than in separate computing units. RRAM and other emerging memory technologies used as synapse arrays for neuromorphic computing were pioneered in the lab of Philip Wong, Wan's advisor at Stanford and a main contributor to this work. Computation with RRAM chips is not necessarily new, but generally it leads to a decrease in the accuracy of the computations performed on the chip and a lack of flexibility in the chip's architecture.

"Compute-in-memory has been common practice in neuromorphic engineering since it was introduced more than 30 years ago," Cauwenberghs said. "What is new with NeuRRAM is that the extreme efficiency now goes together with great flexibility for diverse AI applications with almost no loss in accuracy over standard digital general-purpose compute platforms."

A carefully crafted methodology was key to the work with multiple levels of "co-optimization" across the abstraction layers of hardware and software, from the design of the chip to its configuration to run various AI tasks. In addition, the team made sure to account for various constraints that span from memory device physics to circuits and network architecture.

"This chip now provides us with a platform to address these problems across the stack from devices and circuits to algorithms," said Siddharth Joshi, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame , who started working on the project as a Ph.D. student and postdoctoral researcher in Cauwenberghs lab at UC San Diego.

Chip performance

Researchers measured the chip's energy efficiency by a measure known as energy-delay product, or EDP. EDP combines both the amount of energy consumed for every operation and the amount of times it takes to complete the operation. By this measure, the NeuRRAM chip achieves 1.6 to 2.3 times lower EDP (lower is better) and 7 to 13 times higher computational density than state-of-the-art chips.

Researchers ran various AI tasks on the chip. It achieved 99% accuracy on a handwritten digit recognition task; 85.7% on an image classification task; and 84.7% on a Google speech command recognition task. In addition, the chip also achieved a 70% reduction in image-reconstruction error on an image-recovery task. These results are comparable to existing digital chips that perform computation under the same bit-precision, but with drastic savings in energy.

Researchers point out that one key contribution of the paper is that all the results featured are obtained directly on the hardware. In many previous works of compute-in-memory chips, AI benchmark results were often obtained partially by software simulation.

Next steps include improving architectures and circuits and scaling the design to more advanced technology nodes. Researchers also plan to tackle other applications, such as spiking neural networks.

"We can do better at the device level, improve circuit design to implement additional features and address diverse applications with our dynamic NeuRRAM platform," said Rajkumar Kubendran, an assistant professor for the University of Pittsburgh, who started work on the project while a Ph.D. student in Cauwenberghs' research group at UC San Diego.

In addition, Wan is a founding member of a startup that works on productizing the compute-in-memory technology. "As a researcher and an engineer, my ambition is to bring research innovations from labs into practical use," Wan said.

New architecture

The key to NeuRRAM's energy efficiency is an innovative method to sense output in memory. Conventional approaches use voltage as input and measure current as the result. But this leads to the need for more complex and more power hungry circuits. In NeuRRAM, the team engineered a neuron circuit that senses voltage and performs analog-to-digital conversion in an energy efficient manner. This voltage-mode sensing can activate all the rows and all the columns of an RRAM array in a single computing cycle, allowing higher parallelism.

In the NeuRRAM architecture, CMOS neuron circuits are physically interleaved with RRAM weights. It differs from conventional designs where CMOS circuits are typically on the peripheral of RRAM weights.The neuron's connections with the RRAM array can be configured to serve as either input or output of the neuron. This allows neural network inference in various data flow directions without incurring overheads in area or power consumption. This in turn makes the architecture easier to reconfigure.

To make sure that accuracy of the AI computations can be preserved across various neural network architectures, researchers developed a set of hardware algorithm co-optimization techniques. The techniques were verified on various neural networks including convolutional neural networks, long short-term memory, and restricted Boltzmann machines.

As a neuromorphic AI chip, NeuroRRAM performs parallel distributed processing across 48 neurosynaptic cores. To simultaneously achieve high versatility and high efficiency, NeuRRAM supports data-parallelism by mapping a layer in the neural network model onto multiple cores for parallel inference on multiple data. Also, NeuRRAM offers model-parallelism by mapping different layers of a model onto different cores and performing inference in a pipelined fashion.

An international research team

The work is the result of an international team of researchers.

The UC San Diego team designed the CMOS circuits that implement the neural functions interfacing with the RRAM arrays to support the synaptic functions in the chip's architecture, for high efficiency and versatility. Wan, working closely with the entire team, implemented the design; characterized the chip; trained the AI models; and executed the experiments. Wan also developed a software toolchain that maps AI applications onto the chip.

The RRAM synapse array and its operating conditions were extensively characterized and optimized at Stanford University.

The RRAM array was fabricated and integrated onto CMOS at Tsinghua University.

The Team at Notre Dame contributed to both the design and architecture of the chip and the subsequent machine learning model design and training.

The research started as part of the National Science Foundation funded Expeditions in Computing project on Visual Cortex on Silicon at Penn State University, with continued funding support from the Office of Naval Research Science of AI program, the Semiconductor Research Corporation and DARPA JUMP program, and Western Digital Corporation.

        https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/08/220817114253.htm

  

Basics of Platinum

Platinum is a chemical element with the symbol Pt and atomic number 78. It is a dense, malleable, ductile, highly unreactive, precious, silverish-white transition metal. Its name originates from Spanish platina, a diminutive of plata "silver".

Platinum is a member of the platinum group of elements and group 10 of the periodic table of elements. It has six naturally occurring isotopes. It is one of the rarer elements in Earth's crust, with an average abundance of approximately 5 μg/kg. It occurs in some nickel and copper ores along with some native deposits, mostly in South Africa, which accounts for 80% of the world production. Because of its scarcity in Earth's crust, only a few hundred tonnes are produced annually, and given its important uses, it is highly valuable and is a major precious metal commodity.

Platinum is one of the least reactive metals. It has remarkable resistance to corrosion, even at high temperatures, and is therefore considered a noble metal. Consequently, platinum is often found chemically uncombined as native platinum. Because it occurs naturally in the alluvial sands of various rivers, it was first used by pre-Columbian South American natives to produce artifacts. It was referenced in European writings as early as the 16th century, but it was not until Antonio de Ulloa published a report on a new metal of Colombian origin in 1748 that it began to be investigated by scientists.

Platinum is used in catalytic converters, laboratory equipment, electrical contacts and electrodes, platinum resistance thermometers, dentistry equipment, and jewelry. Platinum is used in the glass industry to manipulate molten glass which does not "wet" platinum. As a heavy metal, it leads to health problems upon exposure to its salts; but due to its corrosion resistance, metallic platinum has not been linked to adverse health effects.  Compounds containing platinum, such as cisplatin, oxaliplatin and carboplatin, are applied in chemotherapy against certain types of cancer.

Pure platinum is less expensive than pure gold, having been so continuously since 2015.  In early 2021, the value of platinum ranged from US$1,055 to US$1,320 per troy ounce.

History of Platinum

Early uses

Archaeologists have discovered traces of platinum in the gold used in ancient Egyptian burials as early as 1200 BC. For example, a small box from burial of Shepenupet II was found to be decorated with gold-platinum hieroglyphics.  However, the extent of early Egyptians' knowledge of the metal is unclear. It is quite possible they did not recognize there was platinum in their gold.

The metal was used by pre-Columbian Americans near modern-day Esmeralda, Ecuador to produce artifacts of a white gold-platinum alloy. Archeologists usually associate the tradition of platinum-working in South America with the La Tolita Culture (circa 600 BC – AD 200), but precise dates and location is difficult, as most platinum artifacts from the area were bought secondhand through the antiquities trade rather than obtained by direct archeological excavation.  To work the metal, they would combine gold and platinum powders by sintering. The resulting gold–platinum alloy would then be soft enough to shape with tools.  The platinum used in such objects was not the pure element, but rather a naturally occurring mixture of the platinum group metals, with small amounts of palladium, rhodium, and iridium.

European discovery

The first European reference to platinum appears in 1557 in the writings of the Italian humanist Julius Caesar Scaliger as a description of an unknown noble metal found between Darién and Mexico, "which no fire nor any Spanish artifice has yet been able to liquefy".  From their first encounters with platinum, the Spanish generally saw the metal as a kind of impurity in gold, and it was treated as such. It was often simply thrown away, and there was an official decree forbidding the adulteration of gold with platinum impurities.

In 1735, Antonio de Ulloa and Jorge Juan y Santacilia saw Native Americans mining platinum while the Spaniards were travelling through Colombia and Peru for eight years. Ulloa and Juan found mines with the whitish metal nuggets and took them home to Spain. Antonio de Ulloa returned to Spain and established the first mineralogy lab in Spain and was the first to systematically study platinum, which was in 1748. His historical account of the expedition included a description of platinum as being neither separable nor calcinable. Ulloa also anticipated the discovery of platinum mines. After publishing the report in 1748, Ulloa did not continue to investigate the new metal. In 1758, he was sent to superintend mercury mining operations in Huancavelica.

In 1741, Charles Wood, a British metallurgist, found various samples of Colombian platinum in Jamaica, which he sent to William Brownrigg for further investigation.

In 1750, after studying the platinum sent to him by Wood, Brownrigg presented a detailed account of the metal to the Royal Society, stating that he had seen no mention of it in any previous accounts of known minerals.  Brownrigg also made note of platinum's extremely high melting point and refractoriness toward borax.  Other chemists across Europe soon began studying platinum, including Andreas Sigismund Marggraf, Torbern Bergman, Jöns Jakob Berzelius, William Lewis, and Pierre Macquer. In 1752, Henrik Scheffer published a detailed scientific description of the metal, which he referred to as "white gold", including an account of how he succeeded in fusing platinum ore with the aid of arsenic.  Scheffer described platinum as being less pliable than gold, but with similar resistance to corrosion.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platinum 

A New Concept for Low-Cost Batteries

Made from inexpensive, abundant materials, an aluminum-sulfur battery could provide low-cost backup storage for renewable energy sources.

By David L. Chandler at MIT News Office

August 24, 2022 -- As the world builds out ever larger installations of wind and solar power systems, the need is growing fast for economical, large-scale backup systems to provide power when the sun is down and the air is calm. Today’s lithium-ion batteries are still too expensive for most such applications, and other options such as pumped hydro require specific topography that’s not always available.

Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have developed a new kind of battery, made entirely from abundant and inexpensive materials, that could help to fill that gap.

The new battery architecture, which uses aluminum and sulfur as its two electrode materials, with a molten salt electrolyte in between, is described today in the journal Nature, in a paper by MIT Professor Donald Sadoway, along with 15 others at MIT and in China, Canada, Kentucky, and Tennessee.

“I wanted to invent something that was better, much better, than lithium-ion batteries for small-scale stationary storage, and ultimately for automotive [uses],” explains Sadoway, who is the John F. Elliott Professor Emeritus of Materials Chemistry.

In addition to being expensive, lithium-ion batteries contain a flammable electrolyte, making them less than ideal for transportation. So, Sadoway started studying the periodic table, looking for cheap, Earth-abundant metals that might be able to substitute for lithium. The commercially dominant metal, iron, doesn’t have the right electrochemical properties for an efficient battery, he says. But the second-most-abundant metal in the marketplace — and actually the most abundant metal on Earth — is aluminum. “So, I said, well, let’s just make that a bookend. It’s gonna be aluminum,” he says.

Then came deciding what to pair the aluminum with for the other electrode, and what kind of electrolyte to put in between to carry ions back and forth during charging and discharging. The cheapest of all the non-metals is sulfur, so that became the second electrode material. As for the electrolyte, “we were not going to use the volatile, flammable organic liquids” that have sometimes led to dangerous fires in cars and other applications of lithium-ion batteries, Sadoway says. They tried some polymers but ended up looking at a variety of molten salts that have relatively low melting points — close to the boiling point of water, as opposed to nearly 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit for many salts. “Once you get down to near body temperature, it becomes practical” to make batteries that don’t require special insulation and anticorrosion measures, he says.

The three ingredients they ended up with are cheap and readily available — aluminum, no different from the foil at the supermarket; sulfur, which is often a waste product from processes such as petroleum refining; and widely available salts. “The ingredients are cheap, and the thing is safe — it cannot burn,” Sadoway says.

In their experiments, the team showed that the battery cells could endure hundreds of cycles at exceptionally high charging rates, with a projected cost per cell of about one-sixth that of comparable lithium-ion cells. They showed that the charging rate was highly dependent on the working temperature, with 110 degrees Celsius (230 degrees Fahrenheit) showing 25 times faster rates than 25 C (77 F).

Surprisingly, the molten salt the team chose as an electrolyte simply because of its low melting point turned out to have a fortuitous advantage. One of the biggest problems in battery reliability is the formation of dendrites, which are narrow spikes of metal that build up on one electrode and eventually grow across to contact the other electrode, causing a short-circuit and hampering efficiency. But this particular salt, it happens, is very good at preventing that malfunction.

The chloro-aluminate salt they chose “essentially retired these runaway dendrites, while also allowing for very rapid charging,” Sadoway says. “We did experiments at very high charging rates, charging in less than a minute, and we never lost cells due to dendrite shorting.”

“It’s funny,” he says, because the whole focus was on finding a salt with the lowest melting point, but the catenated chloro-aluminates they ended up with turned out to be resistant to the shorting problem. “If we had started off with trying to prevent dendritic shorting, I’m not sure I would’ve known how to pursue that,” Sadoway says. “I guess it was serendipity for us.”

What’s more, the battery requires no external heat source to maintain its operating temperature. The heat is naturally produced electrochemically by the charging and discharging of the battery. “As you charge, you generate heat, and that keeps the salt from freezing. And then, when you discharge, it also generates heat,” Sadoway says. In a typical installation used for load-leveling at a solar generation facility, for example, “you’d store electricity when the sun is shining, and then you’d draw electricity after dark, and you’d do this every day. And that charge-idle-discharge-idle is enough to generate enough heat to keep the thing at temperature.”

This new battery formulation, he says, would be ideal for installations of about the size needed to power a single home or small to medium business, producing on the order of a few tens of kilowatt-hours of storage capacity.

For larger installations, up to utility scale of tens to hundreds of megawatt hours, other technologies might be more effective, including the liquid metal batteries Sadoway and his students developed several years ago and which formed the basis for a spinoff company called Ambri, which hopes to deliver its first products within the next year. For that invention, Sadoway was recently awarded this year’s European Inventor Award.

The smaller scale of the aluminum-sulfur batteries would also make them practical for uses such as electric vehicle charging stations, Sadoway says. He points out that when electric vehicles become common enough on the roads that several cars want to charge up at once, as happens today with gasoline fuel pumps, “if you try to do that with batteries and you want rapid charging, the amperages are just so high that we don’t have that amount of amperage in the line that feeds the facility.” So having a battery system such as this to store power and then release it quickly when needed could eliminate the need for installing expensive new power lines to serve these chargers.

The new technology is already the basis for a new spinoff company called Avanti, which has licensed the patents to the system, co-founded by Sadoway and Luis Ortiz ’96 ScD ’00, who was also a co-founder of Ambri. “The first order of business for the company is to demonstrate that it works at scale,” Sadoway says, and then subject it to a series of stress tests, including running through hundreds of charging cycles.

Would a battery based on sulfur run the risk of producing the foul odors associated with some forms of sulfur? Not a chance, Sadoway says. “The rotten-egg smell is in the gas, hydrogen sulfide. This is elemental sulfur, and it’s going to be enclosed inside the cells.” If you were to try to open up a lithium-ion cell in your kitchen, he says (and please don’t try this at home!), “the moisture in the air would react and you’d start generating all sorts of foul gases as well. These are legitimate questions, but the battery is sealed, it’s not an open vessel. So I wouldn’t be concerned about that.”

The research team included members from Peking University, Yunnan University and the Wuhan University of Technology, in China; the University of Louisville, in Kentucky; the University of Waterloo, in Canada; Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee; and MIT. The work was supported by the MIT Energy Initiative, the MIT Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation, and ENN Group.

        https://news.mit.edu/2022/aluminum-sulfur-battery-0824

 

Giza Church Fire Kills 41 in Egypt

On 13 August 2022, a fire broke out at the Abu Sefein Church, a Coptic church in the Imbaba neighborhood of Giza on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. The fire started during Sunday worship services when nearly 5,000 worshippers were gathered.  41 people died during the fire, including at least 18 children.  One of the church's priests, Abdul Masih Bakhit, was among those who died in the fire.

Background

The church is named for Saint Mercurius, known in Arabic as Abu Sefein, and it is one of the largest churches in Giza. Egyptian law strictly regulates construction in churches, historically requiring a presidential decree to gain a building permit.  Due to the difficulty in gaining approval for projects, unauthorized construction is widespread, often without following fire safety regulations.  It had initially been converted into a church without a permit, though it was retroactively legalized.

Description of the Fire

The Ministry of Interior said that the fire was caused by a faulty air-conditioning unit on the second floor of the church.  According to the Ministry of Health most of the deaths were due to smoke inhalation or being trampled in the stampede to escape the building.  The church hosts a nursery in its fourth floor.  A neighboring church's priest said that children were taken to higher floors to escape the blaze instead of being evacuated.  Eyewitnesses reported that people attempted to jump to safety from the upper floors to escape the fire.

The response time of firefighters to this incident is not clear. The Health Ministry said the first fire truck arrived two minutes after the first reports of a fire were received, however, relatives of those trapped in the church said that paramedics and firefighters were slow in reaching the site, and one witness said it took two hours for a fire truck to arrive.  Bystanders reportedly rushed into the church to help evacuate those trapped until the fire's intensity and smoke became too overwhelming.  Eyewitnesses reported that the fire began at 8:00 AM and lasted for two hours.

Victims

The fire resulted in 41 deaths and 45 non-fatal injuries.  Security services reported that at least 18 of the deceased were children.  One local hospital's records showed 20 bodies received, among them 10 children, while another local hospital received 21 bodies.

Response

The fire's death toll was among the largest in Egypt's recent history, and the country's top prosecutor ordered an investigation into the blaze.  While Egypt's Copts have faced discrimination, attacks, and religious violence, both the church authorities and the Egyptian state agencies believe the fire to be accidental.  Electrical fires occur often in Egypt, where building and inspection standards are inadequate and poorly enforced.  Multiple fires have occurred in public areas throughout Egypt, including the 2002 El Ayyat railway fire which resulted in 370 deaths; a 2020 hospital fire that killed seven patients; and the 2021 Cairo clothing factory fire that resulted in 20 deaths.

President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi issued a statement expressing his regret, saying, "I offer my sincere condolences to the families of the innocent victims that have passed on to be with their Lord in one of his houses of worship,"  Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly announced that each deceased person's family would be given 100,000 Egyptian pounds in compensation, while those injured would be given up to 20,000 Egyptian pounds, and the Minister of Social Solidarity further announced that al-Azhar Mosque and other civil society groups would be offering an additional 50,000 Egyptian pounds to the victims and their families.  Al-Azhar Mosque expressed its condolences, and the grand imam of al-Azhar Ahmed El-Tayeb offered his sympathy to the Coptic pope Tawadros II.  Mohamed Salah, captain of the Egypt national football team, also tweeted his condolences, and made a donation of three million Egyptian pounds to help rebuild the church.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giza_church_fire

 

Machine Learning Algorithm Predicts How to Get the Most out of Electric Vehicle Batteries

Researchers have developed a machine learning algorithm that could help reduce charging times and prolong battery life in electric vehicles by predicting how different driving patterns affect battery performance, improving safety and reliability.

From:  University of Cambridge  

August 23, 2022 -- The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, say their algorithm could help drivers, manufacturers and businesses get the most out of the batteries that power electric vehicles by suggesting routes and driving patterns which minimise battery degradation and charging times.

The team developed a non-invasive way to probe batteries and get a holistic view of battery health. These results were then fed into a machine learning algorithm that can predict how different driving patterns will affect the future health of the battery.

If developed commercially, the algorithm could be used to recommend routes which get drivers from point to point in the shortest time without degrading the battery, for example, or recommend the fastest way to charge the battery without causing it to degrade. The results are reported in the journal Nature Communications.

The health of a battery, whether it's in a smartphone or a car, is far more complex than a single number on a screen. "Battery health, like human health, is a multi-dimensional thing, and it can degrade in lots of different ways," said first author Penelope Jones, from Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. "Most methods of monitoring battery health assume that a battery is always used in the same way. But that's not how we use batteries in real life. If I'm streaming a TV show on my phone, it's going to run down the battery a whole lot faster than if I'm using it for messaging. It's the same with electric cars -- how you drive will affect how the battery degrades."

"Most of us will replace our phones well before the battery degrades to the point that it's unusable, but for cars, the batteries need to last for five, ten years or more," said Dr Alpha Lee, who led the research. "Battery capacity can change drastically over that time, so we wanted to come up with a better way of checking battery health."

The researchers developed a non-invasive probe which sends high dimensional electrical pulses into a battery and measures the response, providing a series of 'biomarkers' of battery health. This method is gentle on the battery and doesn't cause it to degrade any further.

The electrical signals from the battery were converted into a description of the battery's state, which was fed into a machine learning algorithm. The algorithm was able to predict how the battery would respond in the next charge-discharge cycle, depending on how quickly the battery was charged and how fast the car would be going the next time it was on the road. Tests with 88 commercial batteries showed that the algorithm did not require any information about previous usage of the battery to make an accurate prediction.

The experiment focused on lithium cobalt oxide (LCO) cells, which are widely used in rechargeable batteries, but the method is generalisable across the different types of battery chemistries used in electric vehicles today.

"This method could unlock value in so many parts of the supply chain, whether you're a manufacturer, an end user, or a recycler, because it allows to capture the health of the battery beyond a single number, and because it's predictive," said Lee. "It could reduce the time it takes to develop new type of batteries, because we'll be able to predict how they will degrade under different operating conditions."

The researchers say that in addition to manufacturers and drivers, their method could be useful for businesses which operate large fleets of electric vehicles, such as logistics companies. "The framework we've developed could help companies optimise how they use their vehicles to improve the overall battery life of the fleet," said Lee. "There's so much potential with a framework like this."

"It's been such an exciting framework to build, because it could solve so many of the challenges in the battery field today," said Jones. "It's a great time to be involved in the field of battery research, which is so important in helping address climate change by transitioning away from fossil fuels."

The researchers are now working with battery manufacturers to accelerate the development of safer, longer lasting next-generation batteries. They are also exploring how their framework could be used to develop optimal fast charging protocols to reduce electric vehicle charging times without causing degradation.

The research was supported by the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability, the Ernest Oppenheimer Fund, the Alan Turing Institute and the Royal Society.

        https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/08/220823162725.htm

  

Mosquitoes Have a Bizarre Sense of Smell, Study Finds

The unconventional way mosquitoes process odors could help explain why they are so good at finding humans to bite

From The Brink (at Boston University)

By Jessica Colarossi

August 18, 2022 -- If you’ve ever sprayed yourself head to toe in bug repellent, yet still felt like a mosquito magnet, it will come as no shock to you that mosquitoes are very, very good at finding humans to bite. One key factor in this superpower is their keen sense of smell, or olfaction, which relies on the olfactory system. 

“Mosquitoes are highly specialized,” says Meg Younger, a Boston University College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of biology who studies mosquito olfaction. These relentless, buzzing creatures are designed to find us, bite us, use proteins in our blood to reproduce—and repeat. Mosquitoes, as much as they feel like a seasonal nuisance in the Northeast US, are deadly creatures that kill more people than any other animal in the world. Depending where they live, certain types of mosquitoes transmit diseases like malaria, West Nile virus, Zika virus, dengue, eastern equine encephalitis, and others.  And warmer, dry, and tropical climates battle mosquitoes all year long. 

Younger is working to crack the code on how mosquitoes use their sense of smell to track us in order to better understand how we can repel them more effectively. In a new paper published in Cell, Younger and her colleagues describe the unique and previously unknown way Aedes aegypti mosquitoes process smell at the biological level; their findings are a departure from the central theories that previously guided our understanding of insect olfaction. 

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes normally inhabit warm, tropical climates, and have caused minor outbreaks of dengue in southern states like Florida and Texas. But in recent years, they’ve been spotted as far north as Connecticut, raising alarm bells about what to expect as global temperatures continue to warm. 

“This is part of why this work is going to get more and more important,” says Younger, who began the study while completing postdoctoral research with Leslie B. Vosshall at The Rockefeller University, a biomedical research-focused institution in New York.

How Smell Works

For humans, scents are registered in the brain by a flow of communication that begins in the nose, which is lined with special cells called olfactory sensory neurons.  These neurons—which house sensory receptors, specialized molecules that are stimulated by odor particles—act as detectors of odor and as messengers to the brain.

“The central dogma in olfaction is that sensory neurons, for us in our nose, each express one type of olfactory receptor,” Younger says. This is the underlying organizational principle of olfaction: one receptor to one neuron. For example, the smell of a freshly baked apple pie is actually a chemical code created by different odor molecules. As the distinct smell wafts into our noses, it triggers sensory receptors that match the different odor molecules; corresponding neurons then communicate to a brain region called the olfactory bulb—or the antenna lobe in insects—where it maps the odor code.

According to the study findings, Aedes aegypti mosquitoes’ olfactory system is organized very differently, with multiple sensory receptors housed within one neuron, a process called gene coexpression.  This uniquely specialized olfactory system could help explain why mosquitoes are so good at sniffing out humans to bite. 

“This is shockingly weird,” says Younger, who initially thought her look into mosquito sensory neurons would prove it to be like every other olfactory system, like in flies and mice. The difference might seem technical, but it suggests that mosquitoes’ sense of smell is highly attuned to humans. “It’s not what we expected,” she says.   

Past research has found that even eliminating entire receptors in mosquitoes that are used for decoding carbon dioxide—a major chemical cue that they use to hunt humans—does not interfere with them finding people. Younger’s latest study may indicate one reason why.

In her lab at BU, Younger is raising mosquitoes in incubators and using modern genetic tools to understand olfaction in ways that were not possible a decade ago. For this study, the researchers developed mosquitoes that would light up under the microscope when exposed to certain smells—they expressed fluorescent proteins that glow under the microscope, allowing the researchers to see chemical responses to odorants. They also used CRISPR technology (which stands for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and is a genetic tool created to edit DNA in living organisms) to label different groups of sensory neurons, while preserving the function of the cell proteins.

All of the results point to an olfactory system that is unconventional in the way that it coexpresses sensory receptors within individual sensory neurons. This suggests redundancy in the code for human odor—and possibly a stronger sense of smell that draws mosquitoes to humans. The next step is figuring out what role coexpression plays in driving the behaviors of Aedes aegypti mosquitoes. 

“A compelling idea is that it’s making them good at finding people,” Younger says. Her long-term goal is to intervene i

n mosquito biting by generating new, improved repellents, or attractants that are more appealing to mosquitoes than human blood. “As we learn about how odor is encoded in their olfactory system, we can create compounds that are more effective based on their biology,” she says.  

Until then, Younger uses bug spray—brands with 15 to 25 percent DEET or picaridin tend to be rated most effective—to protect herself from mosquitoes outdoors. Eventually, with more and more research, she hopes there will be a better option. 

This research received support from the National Institutes of Health.

        https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/mosquitoes-have-a-bizarre-sense-of-smell/

 

Leadership Online: Charisma Matters Most in Video Communication

Managers need to make a consistent impression in order to motivate and inspire people, and that applies even more to video communication than to other digital channels. That is the result of a study by researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) [in Germany]. 

From:  Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

August 9, 2022 -- They investigated the influence that charismatic leadership tactics used in text, audio and video communication channels have on employee performance. They focused on mobile work and the gig economy, in which jobs are flexibly assigned to freelancers via online platforms.

Since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, more and more people are working partly or entirely from home or in mobile work arrangements. At the same time, the so-called gig economy is growing. It involves the flexible assignment of short-term work to freelancers or part-time, low-wage staff via online platforms. Both trends are accelerating the digitalization of work. However, compared to face-to-face conversation between people in the same place, communication through digital channels offers fewer opportunities to motivate people and show charisma. This presents new challenges for managers. The impact of charismatic leadership tactics (CLTs) and the choice of communications channel (text, audio or video) on staff performance is the subject of a study by Petra Nieken, professor of human resource management at the Institute of Management at KIT. The study has been published in the journal The Leadership Quarterly.

Charismatic Leadership Tactics Can Be Learned and Objectively Observed

A charismatic leadership style can be learned; researchers speak of charismatic leadership tactics, which include verbal, paraverbal and non-verbal means such as metaphors, anecdotes, contrasts, rhetorical questions, pitch and tone of voice, and gestures. CLTs can be objectively observed and measured. They can be selectively changed in randomized controlled trials. "Managers can use the entire range of CLTs in face-to-face meetings. Digital communication reduces the opportunities to signal charisma," says Nieken. "Depending on the communication channel, visual and/or acoustic cues can be missing. The question is whether people's performance suffers as a result or if they adjust their expectations to the selected channel."

In the first part of her study, Nieken conducted a field test with text, audio and video communication channels in which a task description was presented neutrally in one case and with the use of as many CLTs as possible in the other. In the neutral case, video messages led to lower performance than did audio and text messages. In contrast, there were no significant differences in performance in the CLT case. "The results show a positive correlation between video communication and charismatic communication; the charismatic video led to better performance than the neutral video," explains Nieken. "So we can conclude that it's most important for managers to convey a consistent impression when they use the video channel."

Traditional Charisma Questionnaires Do Not Predict Staff Performance

In the second part of her study, Nieken had the different cases assessed with traditional questionnaires like the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire (MLQ) and compared the results with those from the first part. Charisma noted in the questionnaires correlated with the use of CLTs but not with staff performance. "Traditional questionnaires like the MLQ are not suitable for predicting how people will perform in mobile work situations, working from home or in the gig economy," concludes Nieken.

        https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/08/220809101802.htm

  

Ultra-thin but Tough Implantable Material Could Treat Spinal Cord Injury and Parkinson's Disease

Flexible implanted electronics are a step closer toward clinical applications thanks to a recent breakthrough technology developed by a research team from Griffith University and UNSW Sydney [both in Australia].

From:  Griffith University

August 10, 2022 -- The work was pioneered by Dr Tuan-Khoa Nguyen, Professor Nam-Trung Nguyen and Dr Hoang-Phuong Phan (currently a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales) from Griffith University's Queensland Micro and Nanotechnology Centre (QMNC) using in-house silicon carbide technology as a new platform for long-term electronic biotissue interfaces.

The project was hosted by the QMNC, which houses a part of the Queensland node of the Australian National Nanofabrication Facility (ANFF-Q).

ANFF-Q is a company established under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy to provide nano- and microfabrication facilities for Australia's researchers.

The QMNC offers unique capabilities for the development and characterisation of wide band gap material, a class of semiconductors that have electronic properties lying between non-conducing materials such as glass and semi-conducting materials such as silicon used for computer chips.

These properties allow devices made of these materials to operate at extreme conditions such as high voltage, high temperature, and corrosive environments.

The QMNC and ANFF-Q provided this project with silicon carbide materials, the scalable manufacturing capability, and advanced characterisation facilities for robust micro/nanobioelectronic devices.

"Implantable and flexible devices have enormous potential to treat chronic diseases such as Parkinson's disease and injuries to the spinal cord," Dr Tuan-Khoa Nguyen said.

"These devices allow for direct diagnosis of disorders in internal organs and provide suitable therapies and treatments.

"For instance, such devices can offer electrical stimulations to targeted nerves to regulate abnormal impulses and restore body functions."

Because of direct contact requirement with biofluids, maintaining their long-term operation when implanted is a daunting challenge.

The research team developed a robust and functional material system that could break through this bottleneck.

"The system consists of silicon carbide nanomembranes as the contact surface and silicon dioxide as the protective encapsulation, showing unrivalled stability and maintaining its functionality in biofluids," Professor Nam-Trung Nguyen said.

"For the first time, our team has successfully developed a robust implantable electronic system with an expected duration of a few decades."

The researchers demonstrated multiple modalities of impedance and temperature sensors, and neural stimulators together with effective peripheral nerve stimulation in animal models.

Corresponding author Dr Phan said implanted devices such as cardiac pace markers and deep brain stimulators had powerful capabilities for timely treatment of several chronical diseases.

"Traditional implants are bulky and have a different mechanical stiffness from human tissues that poses potential risks to patients. The development of mechanically soft but chemically strong electronic devices is the key solution to this long-standing problem," Dr Phan said.

The concept of the silicon carbide flexible electronics provides promising avenues for neuroscience and neural stimulation therapies, which could offer live-saving treatments for chronic neurological diseases and stimulate patient recovery.

"To make this platform a reality, we are fortunate to have a strong multidisciplinary research team from Griffith University, UNSW, University of Queensland, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) -- ERATO, with each bringing their expertise in material science, mechanical/electrical engineering, and biomedical engineering," said Dr Phan.

        https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/08/220810105134.htm