Lithium metal battery charges fast by stowing ions in a hollow core

this will inform rather well on the design problems with lithium.  early days here, but the geometyry and the gold acts to control deposition surprisingly well and the payoff is huge.

Let us hope tnhis can really turn into a manufacturing process.

It also shows us why real progress has been do slow and even painful

Lithium metal battery charges fast by stowing ions in a hollow core

By Nick Lavars

A new battery design out of South Korea could help unlock fast-charging, high-density batteries

https://newatlas.com/energy/lithium-metal-battery-charges-fast-hollow-core/

Scientists at South Korea's National Research Council of Science & Technology have demonstrated a promising new battery architecture, and one that could lead to big improvements in capacity and charge times. The breakthrough stems from a new design for high-density lithium metal batteries that carefully controls problematic ion growths, enabling it to maintain its function over hundreds of cycles.

The lithium batteries in use today feature an anode component made out of graphite, but were scientists able to use pure lithium metal instead, it would mark a huge leap in energy storage technology. That's because lithium metal has a theoretical capacity that is around 10 times higher, at around 3,860 mAh/g compared to graphite's 372 mAh/g, which would send electric vehicles much farther on each charge, for example, or enable smartphones to run for a week.

But these batteries generate energy through different chemical reactions, and with these come another set of problems to solve. As a lithium-metal battery is cycled, lithium ions grow unevenly on the anode surface into tentacle-shaped formations known as dendrites. The protrusions can cause the anode to expand and the battery to short or catch fire. A great deal of research focuses on solving this issue.

The authors of this new study approached the problem with a porous carbon structure featuring a hollow core, to serve as the anode. These Li-confinable core–shell hosts, as they're called, are seen as an exciting prospect in this field, with an ability to prevent dendrite growth and volume expansion by stowing the lithium away in a hollow core during cycling. They do, however, suffer from poor electrochemical performance in another way, with undesirable lithium growth still forming on the surface of the structure during operation, something known as top plating.

The team has developed a new design for these structures that incorporates a small amount of gold nanoparticles in the hollow core. These particles have an affinity for lithium ions and are therefore able to control the direction they grow in, coaxing them into the core, while also creating nanoscale pores in the shell to further promote the migration of lithium ions towards the hollow center.

This served to prevent dendrite growth and top plating, with the resulting battery design showing great potential in the team's simulated experiments. Lithium ion deposition was kept within the structure under high-current charging conditions, and enabled it to retain 82.5 percent of its capacity over 500 charging cycles at a high current density. The team believe this longevity and tolerance for high current densities points to a high-capacity battery that not only can go the distance, but be recharged quickly as well.

“Despite the merit of high capacity, the Li-metal batteries have many hurdles to be overcome for commercialization mainly due to stability and safety issues,” said Dr. Byung Gon Kim, who led the research team. “Our study is invaluable in that we developed a technique for mass production of Li-metal reservoir with high coulombic efficiency for fast-rechargeable Li-metal batteries.”

Tore Says she Stopped the Steal in 2016...

It is abundently clear that elections are stolen and have been for decades, particularly by the DEMs. The game has gone on from a few rotten bouroughs to actual state level fraud.

The traditional closeness of the popular vote at the presidential level election after election is likely impossible and more likely reflect the BUY driving it.  Jusy enough is good enough.

Thje absurdity of it all blew up in 2020 when they simply could not hide it anymore.  Lies aside, Trump had enough to win in 2016. He had completely disproven the naysayes in 2020 and had an overwelming landslide that could only be changed by truckloads of illegal ballots.  

Read thdeough this to know how the steal was done.

Tore Says she Stopped the Steal in 2016...

The Russia Hoax propagated by Operation Crossfire Hurricane is central to the Deep State's continued perpetration of their crimes.

Mar-a-Lago was raided because the DOJ needed to remove all of the Crossfire Hurricane evidence away from Donald Trump, to impede his litigations and especially, to prevent public discovery of their crimes.

The Globalists who have infiltrated our government require control over all of the Crossfire Hurricane records, in order to continue their unimpeded destruction of the United States and to complete the handover of this country to the World Economic Forum.

The Russia Hoax is a false narrative that is central to many of the criminal activities of the Administrative State, now acting through the Biden Regime.

The Russia Hoax is a false flag that "justified" the spying on Trump's campaign and the unrelenting sabotage of Trump's presidency. It "justified" the FBI's interference in the 2020 Election with the cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop and with the censorship and the massive de-platformings of those who discussed it on social media.

The Russia Hoax "justified" the Mueller Investigation and, as we've recently learned from Tore Maras, the Russia Hoax prompted Obama's DHS Secretary, Jeh Johnson to declare election hardware and software to be Federal "Critical Infrastructure" on January 6th, 2017, two weeks before Trump took office.

By alleging that Russia had attacked US Critical Infrastructure, our elections were quietly federalized and they thereby came under the control of the Globalists without our knowledge or consent.

The false allegation that the Russians hacked the 2016 Election and that the Russians installed Trump into the Presidency is what ostensibly triggered the DHS to be brought into the 2018 and 2020 elections via their private contractors, like CrowdStrike and other Deep State cut-outs and fronts, who have contracted with either 1) the States' Secretaries of State; 2) the Counties' Boards of Electors; or 3) County Judges, in order to control the elections in their respective jurisdictions, according to contracts unearthed by Tore Says followers.

After seeing the actual contracts made between DHS cut-outs (e.g, CrowdStrike and CIS, Inc) and the secretaries of state of both Colorado and Ohio, as well as the contracts between DHS cut-outs and North Carolina's Hoke County Board of Elections and with Texas' Dallas County Judge, Tore recommends that we all send an email our County Board of Elections, Secretary of State and our County judge and that we ask them if they have entered into any such agreements with the Federal Government or with their contractors, granting them control over our elections.

Verify who is controlling the elections in your county and tell them, "I never consented to federal agencies in any part of my elections," and assert your right.

By law, US elections are to be handled at the county level, not by unelected Communist Feds who are actively sabotaging every aspect of our nation and our sovereignty.

This is how our country is being stolen by the Globalists. No amount of poll-watching will stop the steal of the next elections. We must end the use of these DHS-controlled voting machines and go back to paper ballots.

Over the course of this information war that's been strafing us for the past several years, many of us have heard rumors about how the digital election theft, which had become routine since 2004 during the Shrub Era was disrupted in 2016, allowing Donald Trump to win.

In this audio, Tore Maras makes the bombshell announcement that it was she who disabled the DHS' 2016 theft operation, which was being run out of Georgia.

As a former contractor at a privatized intelligence firm, Tore was familiar with the equipment and the software because she had been hired to hijack the elections in foreign governments in the past:

"I admitted to making sure that the closet they had to rig the election was inoperable. And if you remember in Georgia, DHS, Homeland Security, CISA got caught getting in there.

"Who did I tell you runs the f*ing elections? I know their name, I know the unit and I have the evidence – not in my possession, so don't raid me, because you're not going to find it...

"Your own government has been rigging the elections. This is why they tormented President Trump, because they didn't know where it came from. Everyone thought MOSSAD helped. Why would MOSSAD help? They do the same thing [steal elections from their own people].

"DHS got caught. In Georgia, in 2016. Nobody asked, 'What was Homeland Security doing in the election machines if they're not connected to the internet? Because they're the ones that rigged the elections and they got caught, because I set them up from West Brunswick, because they had to use that closet! And that was an unmasked IP, because it was migrated over to the one in Virginia. I set it and I did it!...

"And every single time I go to court so that I could put that evidence in there, I keep getting kicked out of there. And every single time, I keep putting it in, I get kicked out of it. And the thing is, I don't want to give it to anyone, because no one is going to utilize it and showcase it but I'm going to make sure the f*ing world sees it.

"Me putting it on my podcast or on my website isn't going to help. I want it on the record. CISA did it. They got caught in 2016. CISA sat on the Halderman Report. CISA, CISA, CISA, CISA!...

"The only duly-elected president you have had in two decades is President Donald J Trump – and they had stolen millions of votes already, by the time that shifted in. Because I knew [laughs] it was so hilarious, when they tried to activate – they couldn't! It was perfect! It was absolutely perfect!...

"I am frustrated. So frustrated. We had Barack Hussein Obama's transition team, in May, insert themselves in the highest positions. We have Federal Employees – Barack Hussein Obama-appointed Federal Employees – organizing and literally calling it a 'coup'.

"And he's [Obama] going to sit there and say that the President [Trump] orchestrated a coup?

"You guys orchestrated a coup for the patriots, so that you could entrap them, so you can make sure this never happens again!

"What's the point? Sometimes, I actually think, 'What's the point?' Yeah. So I've got half a million people that are awake. Half a million people that see. But then, I have a half a billion other people sitting there, talking shit about me, when they're bought, when they're assets of Brennan's and Obama's, trying to choke the truth and they know they can't kill me off, 'cause that's not allowed, 'cause then they'll never get the keys...

"They've been stealing elections for two decades. You didn't like Bush? Well, that was rigged. You didn't like Obama? Well, that was frickin rigged. Everything has been rigged! And the one time someone is elected, even though the chips were stacked against him –

"Then, out of nowhere, some random person that no one who ran operations could even see coming – that's what made it so fucking perfect – that you would not be able to see it coming, because it was unexpected. Not even JOB [John Owen Brennan] would have seen that coming. Not even Hussein [Barack Obama] would have seen that coming.

"'Cause, you know, self-preservation kicks in. 'This bitch is not going to do it. We've got her wrapped-up with a f*ing bow and blacklisted her. There's no way she could do anything...'

Tore Maras is running for Secretary of State for Ohio but naturally, the Deep State wants to stop that. Last Thursday, a GOP-financed kangaroo court proceeding ruled that she cannot appear on the ballot, despite having previously been approved by the Secretary of State and by the Ohio State Board of Elections. The grounds for her removal are accusations of her being a "Trumper", an "election denier" and "the Kraken".

This kangaroo "ruling"now goes back to her opponent, World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and the incumbent Ohio Secretary of State, Frank LaRose. He is responsible for finalizing her disqualification to run against him. This is similar to what the GOP did to America-First Robby Starbuck's candidacy and others.

But Tore is unfazed:

"When I decided to run for office, I ran not only to win but also to demonstrate how elections are stolen. Election Fraud does not occur just at the ballot box – it may occur from Petition to ballot box.

"This decision assisted in exposing how the incumbent, his office and more importantly, the uniparty establishment actively participated in excluding from the ballot an independent who is a whistleblower that has been exposing the fact Americans have not had free and fair elections for a very long time...

"I am someone who rigged elections in other nations, and therefore I know a coup, either against a state or nation, it is preferred to be done through elections. Just thank John Bolton and Frank LaRose, who witnessed election rigging in Ukraine, firsthand in 2019.

"Larose, Ohio GOP and the rest of the unelected establishment underestimated the will and the tenacity of the American People.

"This dispute will be placed on a national platform in the coming days and, in light of SCOTUS precedent, it is unconscionable and repugnant to the United States and Ohio constitutions to have elections until this matter is resolved."

USask chemists solve 27-year-old riddle, produce promising new compound

They were actually able to make this compound.  ring molecules are hardly common but lend themselves to unusual applications.  Understand that I have identified H3O3 as a ring molecule in nature.

so something like this is actualloy worth been excited about.

we can count on it been surprising and so far semi stable.  May need refrigeration in order to make a lot..  .

USask chemists solve 27-year-old riddle, produce promising new compound

SASKATOON – University of Saskatchewan (USask) chemists have successfully produced for the first time a new, stable organic compound which has eluded other scientists for more than 27 years.

While researchers theorized in 1995 the existence of a stable form of [10]annulene, a flat ring of 10 carbon atoms which are attached together by alternating single and double bonds, it has proven impossible to produce in the laboratory—until now.

“We had champagne,” said Dr. Michel Gravel (PhD), lead researcher and professor of chemistry at USask’s College of Arts and Science. “We did not wait for the publication to be accepted to celebrate. We definitely had a celebration when we observed the molecule for the first time.”

The compound is a clear, colourless liquid at room temperature, absorbs ultraviolet light, and involves a complex 12-step process over multiple months to produce. To make only 10 milligrams of the [10]annulene it requires 1,000 times that amount of starting material.

“Our synthesis is inherently very inefficient,” said Gravel. “What's remarkable, what people are excited about, is that we were able to make it at all.”

The results, which were published in the journal Nature Synthesis, are the culmination of an iterative, eight-year process for Gravel, who worked with two graduate students, Dr. Karnjit Parmar (PhD) and Christa Blaquiere, and two undergraduate students, Brianna Lukan, and Sydnie Gengler.

“It’s a liquid that’s rather volatile. If you left it on the countertop, it would be all gone by morning,” said Gravel.

The compound has potential to replace benzene—a six-carbon ring structure—in many applications, including as an organic semiconductor for use in electronics and solar panels. First, Gravel needs to produce more of the substance to better investigate its properties.

“Perhaps it will last longer, perhaps it will conduct better. We don’t know yet,” he said.

While the properties of many compounds can be forecast using computer modelling, for [10]annulene and other so-called “aromatic” molecules—those with alternating single and double bonds—computation has not caught up with experimentation. Scientists must produce the compounds to examine them.

Gravel is working on a new pathway to make this and other [10]annulenes more efficiently, reducing the number of steps from 12 to three or four, and increasing the output yield.

“If everything goes well, we’re looking at a few months to produce the compound using the new pathway,” said Gravel. “If things don’t go well, maybe never.”

Earth-packed tire walls prove as structurally sound as concrete

i am not convinced because tires will be attacked by dry rot and produce failure points.

What about oing this to produce seawalls?  large sized aggregate is indiocated but speed of assembly is a plus and dfouble rowing the wall or even much wider provides a solid base for a roadbad as well.  what about putting down short steel pilings as well to anchor it all.  I undermined, it could even be added to.

Just give up on real precission design..

Earth-packed tire walls prove as structurally sound as concrete

By Loz Blain

August 23, 2022

Used car tires are a massive, non-biodegradable landfill problem – and a huge opportunity in construction, argues a new study

Australian researchers have analyzed the structural properties of walls made from end-of-life car tires packed with dirt, giving engineers some figures to work with and making a well-known upcycling technique available to the construction industry.

Car tires are an environmental nightmare. Ubiquitous, consumable, filthy to burn and they take hundreds of years to decompose in landfill, where an awful lot of them end up. Any project that can recycle them, like grinding them up for use as asphalt filler or insulation, or using them as swings and bumpers in kids' playgrounds, is an environmental boon.

For decades, people have been recycling yesterday's rubber donuts into tomorrow's tire walls, stacking them in staggered formations and packing them with dirt. You'd have seen this kind of thing plenty at motor racing facilities – indeed, some tires have been unusually keen to get involved. The Earthship movement takes the idea further, creating retaining walls and entire buildings out of tire walls, sometimes filling them with concrete rubble and broken bricks to allow for drainage, or even rendering over the top for a smoother appearance.

Earthship-style construction makes use of recycled materials like old tires

These kinds of projects, though, are pretty niche. And researchers at the University of South Australia saw an opportunity in the 55 million tires the country disposes of every year. This 450,000-odd tonnes of toxic garbage could become free building materials for use in all sorts of mainstream construction projects if it was studied and documented to the point where engineers can use it.

"The lack of supporting data has prevented wider uptake of tire walls by engineers and architects, and we’re hoping this study will change that and expand the range of projects in which these walls are used," said Dr. Martin Freney, co-author of a new study that submits these tire walls to a full structural analysis. "The wall we tested was the first of its kind to be scientifically tested in this fashion, and all the data indicates tire walls can be extremely strong and safe structures.”

"Not only are the tire walls as structurally sound as concrete or wood sleeper retaining walls, they are also extremely resilient," he continued. "Unlike a concrete wall, we found these walls have the ability to ‘bounce back into shape’ following impact, such as from an earthquake. And if a drainage material such as recycled concrete rubble or crushed bricks is used to fill the tires, they also offer excellent drainage, which can be a major consideration in many retaining wall scenarios. Furthermore, the use of recycled fill materials reduces the environmental impact of the wall."

University of South Australia researchers submitted tire walls to a full engineering assessment, deeming them as structurally sound as concrete or wood sleepers

University of South Australia

The researchers hope the data they've generated, as well as associated software models, will be used to create certified design guidelines and building code provisions to encourage the wider adoption of this environmentally-friendly – if labor-intensive – construction method.

“We really believe this research provides a strong evidence base for the expanded use of tire walls in housing and other applications, and the next step will be to engage with an industry partner to develop a range of real-world applications for tire walls,” Dr Freney said.

The study is published in the journal Engineering Structures.

Source: University of South Australia

Another Path to Intelligence

Same path as ours actually if you understand the demands made to manage fingers and tenticles.  That advance alone helps to explain advancing intelligence in biology.  That may even be enough.

It is always all about networking and speed and precission are second to all that.  So a naturally networked sritter will be a smart critter.  Recall that our complex brain is completely new and even novel.  all other creatures do quite well without it.  

Our autonomic nervous system shows ample decission making capacity as well so perhaps we need to acknowledge that our cerebaum is something else supporting our nervous system but also more separate than we think.

Another Path to Intelligence

Octopus brains are nothing like ours—yet we have much in common.

BY JAMES BRIDLE

August 17, 2022

https://nautil.us/another-path-to-intelligence-23113/?ref=refind

It turns out there are many ways of “doing” intelligence, and this is evident even in the apes and monkeys who perch close to us on the evolutionary tree. This awareness takes on a whole new character when we think about those non-human intelligences which are very different to us. Because there are other highly evolved, intelligent, and boisterous creatures on this planet that are so distant and so different from us that researchers consider them to be the closest things to aliens we have ever encountered: cephalopods.

Cephalopods—the family of creatures which contains octopuses, squids, and cuttlefish—are one of nature’s most intriguing creations. They are all soft-­bodied, containing no skeleton, only a hardened beak. They are aquatic, although they can survive for some time in the air; some are even capable of short flight, propelled by the same jets of water that move them through the ocean. They do strange things with their limbs. And they are highly intelligent, easily the most intel­ligent of the invertebrates, by any measure.

Octopuses in particular seem to enjoy demonstrating their intelli­gence when we try to capture, detain, or study them. In zoos and aquariums they are notorious for their indefatigable and often suc­cessful attempts at escape. A New Zealand octopus named Inky made headlines around the world when he escaped from the National Aquarium in Napier by climbing through his tank’s overflow valve, scampering eight feet across the floor, and sliding down a narrow, 106-­foot drainpipe into the ocean. At another aquarium near Dun­edin, an octopus called Sid made so many escape attempts, including hiding in buckets, opening doors, and climbing stairs, that he was eventually released into the ocean. They’ve also been accused of flood­ing aquariums and stealing fish from other tanks: Such tales go back to some of the first octopuses kept in captivity in Britain in the 19th century and are still being repeated today.

ESCAPE ARTISTS: Inky the octopus objected to his captivity, and escaped through a narrow drainpipe one night. Here, he’s pictured in footage taken before his great escape. Video still courtesy of Inside Edition / YouTube.

Otto, an octopus living in the Sea­Star Aquarium in Coburg, Germany, first attracted media attention when he was caught juggling hermit crabs. Another time he smashed rocks against the side of his tank, and from time to time would completely rearrange the contents of his tank “to make it suit his own taste better,” according to the aquar­ium’s director. One time, the electricity in the aquarium kept shorting out, which threatened the lives of other animals as filtration pumps ground to a halt. On the third night of the blackouts, the staff started taking night shifts sleeping on the floor to discover the source of the trouble—and found that Otto was swinging himself to the top of his tank, and squirting water at a low­-hanging bulb that seemed to be annoying him. He’d figured out how to turn the lights off.

Octopuses are no less difficult in the lab. They don’t seem to like being experimented on and try to make things as difficult as possible for researchers. At a lab at the University of Otago in New Zealand, one octopus discovered the same trick as Otto: It would squirt water at light bulbs to turn them off. Eventually it became so frustrating to have to continually replace the bulbs that the culprit was released back into the wild. Another octopus at the same lab took a personal dislike to one of the researchers, who would receive half a gallon of water down the back of the neck whenever they came near its tank. At Dal­housie University in Canada, a cuttlefish took the same attitude to all new visitors to the lab but left the regular researchers alone. In 2010, two biologists at the Seattle Aquarium dressed in the same clothes and played good cop/bad cop with the octopuses: One fed them every day, while the other poked them with a bristly stick. After two weeks, the octopuses responded differently to each, advancing and retreating, and flashing different colors. Cephalopods can recognize human faces.

Octopuses enjoy demonstrating their intelli­gence when we try to detain or study them.

All these behaviors—as well as many more observed in the wild—suggest that octopuses learn, remember, know, think, consider, and act based on their intelligence. This changes everything we think we know about “higher order” animals, because cephalopods, unlike apes, are very, very different to us. That should be evident just from the extraor­dinary way their bodies are constituted—but the difference extends to their minds as well.

Octopus brains are not situated, like ours, in their heads; rather, they are decentralized, with brains that extend throughout their bodies and into their limbs. Each of their arms contains bundles of neurons that act as independent minds, allowing them to move about and react of their own accord, unfettered by central control. Octopuses are a con­federation of intelligent parts, which means their awareness, as well as their thinking, occurs in ways which are radically different to our own.

Perhaps one of the fullest expressions of this difference is to be found, not in the work of scientists, but in a novel. In his book Children of Time, science-fiction writer Adrien Tchaikovsky conceptualizes octopus intelligence as a kind of multi­threaded processing system. For the space­faring octopuses in Children of Time, their awareness—their consciousness—is tripartite. Their higher functions, which Tchaikovsky calls the “crown,” are embedded in their head-­brain, but their “reach,” the “arm­-driven undermind,” is capable of solving prob­lems independently—sourcing food, opening locks, fighting, or fleeing from danger. Meanwhile, a third mode of thinking and communicat­ing, the “guise,” controls the strobing and spotting of the octopuses’ “skin, ‘the chalkboard of the brain,’” where it doodles its thoughts from moment to moment. In this way, the octopuses freewheel through space, constructing ships, habitats, and whole societies which owe as much to bursts of emotion, flights of fancy, acts of curiosity and bore­dom, as they do to conscious intent. Tchaikovsky’s octopuses are lively, frantic, bored, creative, distracted, and poetic—all at the same time: a product of the constant dialogue and conflict within their own nervous systems. As Tchaikovsky tells it, octopuses are multiple intel­ligences in singular bodies.

Each of an octopus’ arms contains bundles of neurons that act as independent minds.

Tchaikovsky based his research on visits to the Natural History Museum in London, conversations with scientists and his own background as a zoologist. But what are we to make of such creatures—such intelligences—that require the tools of science fiction to make them intelligible to us? How can they appear so extraordinarily other, yet exist on the same planet, part of the same evolutionary process, as us?

The kind of self­ awareness which we can observe with the mirror test—the kind that is most like our own—seems to have appeared in apes somewhere between the bonobo and the orang­utan, or between 18 and 14 million years ago. That’s when one of the qualities which make up our kind of intelligence seems to have evolved. Humans parted ways with chimpanzees only about 6 million years ago, so it’s understandable that our intelligence might be similar to theirs. But primates split from other mammals around 85 million years ago, while mammals themselves appeared distinct from other animals over 300 million years ago. To find a common ancestor with cephalopods, we need to go back twice that far, to 600 million years ago.

In his book Other Minds, the philosopher Peter Godfrey-­Smith ima­gines who this common ancestor might have been. Although we cannot know for sure, it was most likely some kind of small, flat worm, just millimeters long, swimming through the deep, or crawling on the ocean floor. It was probably blind, or light­-sensitive in some very basic way. Its nervous system would have been rudimentary: a network of nerves, perhaps clustered into a simple brain. “What these animals ate, how they lived and reproduced,” he writes, “all are unknown.” It’s hard to imagine something less like us, yet alive, than tiny near-­blind worms wriggling on the ocean floor. But we come from them, and so does the octopus.

Six hundred million years down the evolutionary tree—and 600 million up the other side too. While that distance makes all the obvi­ous differences between us and the octopus understandable, it makes the similarities even more startling.

The tree of evolution bears many fruits and flowers and intelligence has flowered everywhere.

One of the most remarkable features of octopuses is their eyes, which are remarkably like our own. Like ours, their eyes consist of an iris, a circular lens, vitreous fluid, pigments, and photoreceptors. In fact, the octopus eye is superior to ours in one notable way: Because of the way they develop, the fibers of the optic nerves grow behind the retina rather than through it, meaning they lack the central blind spot common to all vertebrates. And this difference exists because the octopus eye evolved entirely separately from our own, starting from that blind flatworm 600 million years ago, along an entirely different branch of the evolutionary tree.

This is an example of convergent evolution. The octopuses’ eye evolved to do much the same thing as our eye, entirely separately but only slightly differently. Two incredibly complex, but startlingly sim­ilar structures appeared in the world, by different routes, in different contexts. And if something as complex and adaptive as the eye can evolve more than once, then why can’t intelligence do the same?

This idea of branching and splitting of the evolutionary tree is overly simplistic, if not entirely false. For now, let’s simply imagine it this way: The tree of evolution bears many fruits and many flowers, and intelligence, rather than being found only in the highest branches, has in fact flowered everywhere.

The intelligence of the octopus is one such flower. As Godfrey­-Smith puts it, “Cephalopods are an island of mental complexity in the sea of invertebrate animals.” Because our most recent common ancestor was so simple and lies so far back, cephalopods are an independent experiment in the evolution of large brains and complex behavior. If we can make contact with cephalopods as sentient beings, it is not because of a shared history, not because of kinship, but because evo­lution built minds twice over.” If twice, then likely many more.

Reprinted with permission from Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Copyright © James Bridle 2022. All rights reserved.

Lead image: Saranya_V / Shutterstock

Similarity Between Schizophrenia and Dementia Discovered for the First Time

we must start lookig closely at our data sets.  It is way to easy for a second phenom to be simply obscured and then dismissed as an error.

It really takes BIG data to overcome this type of bias.  That is almost impossible when the research has an agenda..

What this shows is that there is a separate pathology at work that expresses as brain degenration and it conforms to alzheimers.  this today becomes a diagnostic problem  we need to get it right.

Similarity Between Schizophrenia and Dementia Discovered for the First Time

August 4, 2022

https://neurosciencenews.com/ftd-schizophrenia-21180/

Summary: Study reveals striking similarities in both behaviors and neuroanatomical changes between people with schizophrenia and behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia.

Source: Max Planck Institute

Researchers have, for the first time, compared schizophrenia and frontotemporal dementia—disorders that are both located in the frontal and temporal lobe regions of the brain.

The idea can be traced back to Emil Kraepelin, who coined the term “dementia praecox” in 1899 to describe the progressive mental and emotional decline of young patients. His approach was quickly challenged, as only 25% of those affected showed this form of disease progression.

But now, with the help of imaging and machine learning, scientists have found the first valid indications of neuroanatomical patterns in the brain that resemble the signature of patients with frontotemporal dementia.

It is rare that scientists in basic research go back to seemingly obsolete findings that are more than 120 years old. In the case of Nikolaos Koutsouleris and Matthias Schroeter, who are researchers and physicians, this was even a drive.

It´s about Emil Kraepelin, founder of the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry (MPI) as well as the psychiatric hospital of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), and his term “dementia praecox,” coined in 1899.

This was his definition for young adults who increasingly withdraw from reality and fall into an irreversible, dementia-like state. Kraepelin lived to see his concept refuted.

By the beginning of the 20th century, experts were beginning to use the term “schizophrenia” for these patients, since the disease does not take such a bad course in all persons concerned.

Kraepelin had the idea of a frontotemporal disease, he assumed that the reason for the sometimes-debilitating course of the patients is located in the frontal and temporal lobe areas of the brain. That’s where personality, social behavior and empathy are controlled.

“But this idea was lost as no pathological evidence for neurodegenerative processes seen in Alzheimer’s Disease was found in the brains of these patients,” says Koutsouleris, who works at Kraepelin’s places of work, the MPI and LMU.

He continues: “Ever since I became a psychiatrist, I wanted to work on this question.” Fifteen years later, with sufficiently large data sets, imaging techniques and machine learning algorithms, the professor had the tools at hand to potentially find answers.”

He had found the right partner in Matthias Schroeter, who studies neurodegenerative diseases, specifically frontotemporal dementias, at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.

Similarities between schizophrenia and frontotemporal dementia

Frontotemporal dementia (FTD), especially the behavioral variant (bvFTD), is difficult to recognize in its early stages because it is often confused with schizophrenia. Thus, the similarities are obvious: in sufferers of both groups, personality as well as behavioral changes occur.

An often dramatic development for affected persons and relatives sets in. Since both disorders are located in the frontal, temporal and insular regions of the brain, it was obvious to compare them directly as well.

“They seem to be on a similar symptom spectrum, so we wanted to look for common signatures or patterns in the brain,” Koutsouleris says, describing his plan.

With an international team, Koutsouleris and Schroeter used artificial intelligence to train neuroanatomical classifiers of both disorders, which they applied to brain data from different cohorts.

The result, just published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, was that 41% of schizophrenia patients met the classifier’s criteria for bvFTD.

“When we saw this in schizophrenic patients as well, it rang a bell—indicating a similarity between the two disorders,” Koutsouleris and Schroeter recall.

The research team found that the higher the patients’ bvFTD score, which measured the similarity between the two disorders, the more likely they were to have a “bvFTD-like” phenotype and the less likely they were to improve their symptoms over two years.

A 23-year-old patient does not recover

“I just wanted to know why my 23-year-old patient with onset symptoms of schizophrenia, such as hallucinations, delusions, and cognitive deficits, had not improved at all, even after two years, while another who started out just as bad was continuing his education and had found a girlfriend. Again and again, I saw these young people who did not recover at all,” Koutsouleris says.

When the researchers also checked the correlations in high-risk patients such as the 23-year-old, they found confirmation at the neuroanatomical level of what Kraepelin had been the first to decisively describe: no improvement whatsoever in the condition of some patients, quite the opposite.

Neuroanatomical patterns of schizophrenia. Credit: Koutsouleris

Similar neuronal structures were affected, in particular the so-called default mode network and the salience network of the brain, responsible for attention control, empathy and social behavior, showed volume decreases in the gray matter area that houses the neurons. In bvFTD, certain neurons (von Economo neurons) perish; in schizophrenia, these neurons are also altered. This was reflected by the neuroanatomical score: after one year, it had doubled in these severely affected persons.

As a comparison, the scientists had also calculated the Alzheimer’s score using a specific classifier and did not find these effects there.

“This means that the concept of dementia praecox can no longer be completely wiped away; we provide the first valid evidence that Kraepelin was not wrong, at least in some of the patients,” Schroeter says.

Today, or in the near future, this means that experts will be able to predict which subgroup patients belong to.

“Then intensive therapeutic support can be initiated at an early stage to exploit any remaining recovery potential,” Koutsouleris says.

In addition, new personalized therapies could be developed for this subgroup that promote a proper maturation and connectivity of the affected neurons and prevent their progressive destruction as part of the disease process.

About this schizophrenia and dementia research news

Author: Press Office

Source: Max Planck Institute

Contact: Press Office – Max Planck Institute

Image: The image is credited to Koutsouleris

Original Research: Closed access.

“Exploring Links Between Psychosis and Frontotemporal Dementia Using Multimodal Machine Learning” by Nikolaos Koutsouleris et al. JAMA Psychiatry

Abstract

Exploring Links Between Psychosis and Frontotemporal Dementia Using Multimodal Machine Learning

Importance

The behavioral and cognitive symptoms of severe psychotic disorders overlap with those seen in dementia. However, shared brain alterations remain disputed, and their relevance for patients in at-risk disease stages has not been explored so far.

Objective

To use machine learning to compare the expression of structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) patterns of behavioral-variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), Alzheimer disease (AD), and schizophrenia; estimate predictability in patients with bvFTD and schizophrenia based on sociodemographic, clinical, and biological data; and examine prognostic value, genetic underpinnings, and progression in patients with clinical high-risk (CHR) states for psychosis or recent-onset depression (ROD).

Design, Setting, and Participants

This study included 1870 individuals from 5 cohorts, including (1) patients with bvFTD (n = 108), established AD (n = 44), mild cognitive impairment or early-stage AD (n = 96), schizophrenia (n = 157), or major depression (n = 102) to derive and compare diagnostic patterns and (2) patients with CHR (n = 160) or ROD (n = 161) to test patterns’ prognostic relevance and progression. Healthy individuals (n = 1042) were used for age-related and cohort-related data calibration. Data were collected from January 1996 to July 2019 and analyzed between April 2020 and April 2022.

Main Outcomes and Measures

Case assignments based on diagnostic patterns; sociodemographic, clinical, and biological data; 2-year functional outcomes and genetic separability of patients with CHR and ROD with high vs low pattern expression; and pattern progression from baseline to follow-up MRI scans in patients with nonrecovery vs preserved recovery.

Results

Of 1870 included patients, 902 (48.2%) were female, and the mean (SD) age was 38.0 (19.3) years. The bvFTD pattern comprising prefrontal, insular, and limbic volume reductions was more expressed in patients with schizophrenia (65 of 157 [41.2%]) and major depression (22 of 102 [21.6%]) than the temporo-limbic AD patterns (28 of 157 [17.8%] and 3 of 102 [2.9%], respectively). bvFTD expression was predicted by high body mass index, psychomotor slowing, affective disinhibition, and paranoid ideation (R2 = 0.11). The schizophrenia pattern was expressed in 92 of 108 patients (85.5%) with bvFTD and was linked to the C9orf72 variant, oligoclonal banding in the cerebrospinal fluid, cognitive impairment, and younger age (R2 = 0.29). bvFTD and schizophrenia pattern expressions forecasted 2-year psychosocial impairments in patients with CHR and were predicted by polygenic risk scores for frontotemporal dementia, AD, and schizophrenia. Findings were not associated with AD or accelerated brain aging. Finally, 1-year bvFTD/schizophrenia pattern progression distinguished patients with nonrecovery from those with preserved recovery.

Conclusions and Relevance

Neurobiological links may exist between bvFTD and psychosis focusing on prefrontal and salience system alterations. Further transdiagnostic investigations are needed to identify shared pathophysiological processes underlying the neuroanatomical interface between the 2 disease spectra.

Blowhole wave energy generator exceeds expectations in 12-month test

I like this.  Done right we have a two way bellows able to extract a serious portion of the passing wave stroke.  We are taliking about a simple restricted two way annulus able to convert the natural pressurev stroke either way.  hopefully without valves.

I am glad that even the first outing has been positive.  Thse can also be built into breakwaters in particular which are already controlling wave action.

Then we will see artificial reefs with maximal wave action to work with.  We may start this in Haiwaii where we already have natural reefs to work with as well.

Blowhole wave energy generator exceeds expectations in 12-month test

By Loz Blain

July 31, 2022

The UniWave 200 has been making reliable, clean energy for Australia's King Island for a year now, delivering better performance than expected

Wave Swell Energy's remarkable UniWave 200 is a sea platform that uses an artificial blowhole formation to create air pressure changes that drive a turbine and feed energy back to shore. After a year of testing, the company reports excellent results.

As we've discussed before, the UniWave system is a floatable device that can be towed to any coastal location and connected to the local energy grid. It's designed so that wave swells force water into a specially designed concrete chamber, pressurizing the air in the chamber and forcing it through an outlet valve. Then as the water recedes, it generates a powerful vacuum, which sucks air in through a turbine at the top and generates electricity that's fed into the grid via a cable.

As a result, it draws energy from the entire column of water that enters its chamber, a fact the team says makes it more efficient than wave energy devices that only harvest energy from the surface or the sea floor.

The UniWave 200 in place off King Island, Tasmania

Wave Swell Energy

WSE's key innovation here is that one-way generation; other devices that harvest the same effect use bi-directional turbines, requiring the ability to reverse blade pitch or redirect the airflow. WSE says its design allows for far cheaper and simpler turbines, that should also last longer since they're not getting as much salt water splashed through them when a big wave hits. Indeed, all this device's moving parts are above the waterline, a fact that should help extend its service life as well as making it completely harmless to marine life.

Interestingly, the UniWave's design also makes it easy to incorporate into breakwaters and seawalls, where it can take a coastal erosion protection project and turn it into a clean energy source. You can see an animation showing how it works in the video below.

WSE Technology and King Island Project

A 200-kW test platform was installed last year off King Island, facing the notoriously rough seas of Bass Strait, which separates the island state of Tasmania from the mainland of Australia. There, it's been contributing reliable clean energy to the island's microgrid around the clock for a full 12 months. The WSE team has made a few live tweaks to the design during operation, improving its performance beyond original expectations.

“We set out to prove that Wave Swell’s wave energy converter technology could supply electricity to a grid in a range of wave conditions, and we have done that,” said WSE CEO Paul Geason in a press release. "One key achievement has been to deliver real-world results in Tasmanian ocean conditions to complement the AMC test modeling. In some instances, the performance of our technology in the ocean has exceeded expectations due to the lessons we’ve learnt through the project, technological improvements and the refinements we have made over the course of the year."

"Our team is excited to have achieved a rate of conversion from wave power to electricity at an average of 45 to 50% in a wide range of wave conditions," he continues. "This is a vast improvement on past devices and shows that the moment has arrived for wave power to sit alongside wind, solar and energy storage as part of a modern energy mix."

We asked Geason over email how much energy the device generated during the trial. "It's important to stress that the demonstration at King Island was not about producing high volumes of electricity," he responds. "Rather, it was to prove the capabilities of our technology in a variety of wave conditions. The results have met and at times exceeded our expectations. As an example, when the unit is generating 40 kW of power in reasonable wave conditions, you could extrapolate the amount of energy to be in the order of 1MWh in a 24 hour period."

The UniWave can turn erosion protection projects into clean power sources

Wave Swell Energy

The King Island platform will remain in place at least until the end of 2022, and the company is now gearing up to go into production.

"Having proven our device can survive the toughest conditions the Southern Ocean and Bass Strait can throw at it, and deliver grid compliant electricity, our priority now shifts to commercializing the technology," said Gleason. "For Wave Swell this means ensuring the market embraces the WSE technology and units are deployed to deliver utility scale clean electricity to mainland grids around the world.”

Geason tells New Atlas that commercial deployments could vary in size. "The units can scale up from 200 kW," he writes. "Exact size will depend upon the attributes of the wave climate at any particular location. The sweet spot, as you put it, will be site dependent. We're currently engaged with a number of third parties that are seeking to deploy commercial units, and our efforts and resources are focused on further deployments and commercialization of our technology."

See the UniWave 200 test platform running in the video below.

Life hacks from India on how to stay cool (without an air conditioner)

It is not just India where things simply get too hot.  My own go to is to simply fill a bathtub and make the temperature around ten degrees less than body temperature and then simpy soak in it for half an hour at least.

wrapping a wet towel around your head is also excellent sense as that is exactly where you are in danger.

Otherwise learn to find tree based shade and even hep creare it.  We are taliking about a ten plus drop in temperature under a large tree drawing water and exhaling hunid air.  great on a truly hot noonday..

Opinion: Life hacks from India on how to stay cool (without an air conditioner)

August 2, 20224:15 PM ET

GULREZ SHAH AZHAR

Malaka Gharib/ NPR

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/08/02/1114354904/opinion-life-hacks-from-india-on-how-to-stay-cool-without-an-air-conditioner?

In Uttar Pradesh, India, where I grew up, temperatures can soar as high as 120 degrees in May and June. But very few people have access to an air conditioner.

With a per capita income of around a $1,000 a year, many people in this part of the country can't afford to buy an A/C unit or pay the power bills that come with using one.

So how do people keep cool?

That's a question that people are asking themselves as the world faces unprecedented heat waves, including in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and Europe, where many do not have air conditioners. Severe heat has already killed thousands of people this summer.

Yet people in India and in other countries across the Global South have long figured out ways to deal with the horrible heat. And so, I'd like to share a few tips on how to stay cool that I've learned from my upbringing and elders in Uttar Pradesh. Some of the advice is just what you'd think – like drinking lots of liquids and staying out of the sun – but others might surprise you.

I know that each of these tips on their own may seem trivial. But as a heat wave researcher, I can tell you that done together, they can really help the body cool down. The key is to be mindful of the power of heat – and remain prepared to prevent its adverse effects.

And remember, upon seeing any signs of heatstroke — like fever, headache, nausea, confusion or weakness — call an ambulance ASAP and get medical help. Use ice packs while waiting to be treated at the hospital. Seriously, don't delay. Heatstroke can be fatal.

Here are a few tried-and-tested tips from India on how to stay cool without an air conditioner. (Also: We want to hear from you! Scroll to the end of this story to find out how to share tips from your culture on how to cope with heat.)

Drink lots of liquids — it doesn't have to be water!

Volunteers distribute free cold drinks to commuters on a hot day in Amritsar, India, on June 29.NARINDER NANU/AFP via Getty Images

There are all kinds of wonderful drinks in India that people can make at home or pick up at a street market vendor. In addition to water, we quench our thirst with fruity drinks like sugarcane juice, coconut water, a tangy, raw mango juice called aam ka pana and an apple juice called bel ka sharbat. We also like cooling, milk-based drinks like lassi, a yogurt beverage popular in the summertime, and buttermilk. The key is to drink plenty of fluids to replenish the electrolytes lost in sweat and keep your body hydrated.

Find a cool spot to chill out.

Seek out the coolest parts of the building where you live and make that the place where you sleep or hang out. Because heat rises, lower floors in a multi-story house are cooler. Verandas are shady and airy. During the day, block out the sunlight with heavy curtains. Turn on any fans you have. And don't be afraid to move the furniture around in your quest for coolness. Back in Uttar Pradesh, we used to scoot our beds closer to the windows so we could catch a breeze while we slept.

If it becomes impossibly stuffy indoors, move outdoors and lay in a hammock. Air created from swinging helps cool the body down. As a kid, I remember that mango orchards were the best for hanging out, as the dense foliage there provided maximum shade coverage.

Use water in creative ways.

A boy jumps into Dal Lake to cool off on a hot summer's day in Srinagar, India, on July 18.Tauseef Mustafa/AFP via Getty Images

In India, we have a number of contraptions to manage heat without an air conditioner. That includes khus — grass curtains hung over doors and windows and sprayed with water. The curtains convert the dry wind outside into a fragrant, cool, damp breeze as it blows into the house. And the ubiquitous swamp cooler, which works best in low-humidity settings. Also known as an evaporative cooler, this electrical device passes a room's air over water-saturated pads, which cools down the air, then blows that air back into the room. These devices are cheaper than air conditioners and use less energy. You can even make one yourself.

Even if you don't have khus curtains or a swamp cooler, you can find other ways to use water to regulate your body temperature. Take a cold bath or shower. Or take a light towel, called a gamchha in Hindi, dampen it and wear it around your neck or on your head like a scarf. This wet garb is omnipresent even now among men in the hinterlands and small towns.

You can also play with water. When I was a kid in India, I'd have water balloon fights with neighborhood kids. Or we'd fill a tub with water and splash it on each other in the backyard.

Take a break.

During the hottest parts of the day, try not to burn energy or exhaust yourself by going out, exercising or standing outside, because the scorching sunlight and hot air will make you hotter. Instead, do what I did in Uttar Pradesh: chill at home or take an afternoon siesta. If you have to work and have a flexible schedule, try to perform your duties in the cooler hours of the day. Farmers in my state, for example, schedule work in the early mornings and late evenings. And markets close in the hot afternoons but remain open until late in the night.

Wear airy and light-colored clothing.

Choose airy cotton fabrics that don't trap body heat, and colors like white, yellow and light blue that reflect light off the body. Darker colors absorb heat much faster, heating up our bodies. In Uttar Pradesh, many people wear a light-colored kurta, a loose, collarless shirt, and pajama, a lightweight drawstring trouser.

A/C is great ... until the power goes out

In 2010, my family in Uttar Pradesh finally got an air conditioner. They say it's great for keeping cool, and they keep it on all day in the summer. But their reliance on A/C makes their willingness to tolerate heat even more difficult when the power goes out – which happens often in India. So they go back to the age-old practices that I just shared here to beat the heat.

Did you grow up without air conditioner in a hot country? How did you deal with the heat? Email us at goatsandsoda@npr.org with the subject line "Heat hacks" and we may feature your story on NPR.org. Please include your name and location. Submissions close on Wednesday, August 10. Thank you for everyone who responded to this callout. Submissions are now closed. Read a sampling of reader responses here.

Dr. Gulrez Shah Azhar is a Seattle-based Aspen New Voices fellow who is researching the health impacts of heat. Previously, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington, a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Public Health.