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Most people do not give the U.S. electric grid a second thought -- we flip a switch and the lights come on. Behind the scenes are thousands of power plants and utilities linked by millions of miles of transmission lines. And to make raw electricity useful, grid transformers convert high voltage to lower voltage that...

Date: April 9, 2024 Source: Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie Summary: An improved charging protocol might help lithium-ion batteries to last much longer. Charging with a high-frequency pulsed current reduces aging effects, an international team demonstrated. Share: An improved charging protocol m...

With animal-free dairy products and convincing vegetarian meat substitutes already on the market, it's easy to see how biotechnology can change the food industry. Advances in genetic engineering are allowing us to harness microorganisms to produce cruelty-free products that are healthy for consumers and healthier fo...

Imagine doubling the processing power of your smartphone, tablet, personal computer, or server using the existing hardware already in these devices. Hung-Wei Tseng, a UC Riverside associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, has laid out a paradigm shift in computer architecture to do just that in a r...

Penn Engineers have developed a new chip that uses light waves, rather than electricity, to perform the complex math essential to training AI. The chip has the potential to radically accelerate the processing speed of computers while also reducing their energy consumption. The silicon-photonic (SiPh) chip's design i...

Trees are struggling to sequester heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) in warmer, drier climates, meaning that they may no longer serve as a solution for offsetting humanity's carbon footprint as the planet continues to warm, according to a new study led by Penn State researchers. "We found that trees in warmer, drier...