Tenfold improvement in liquid batteries mean electric car refuelling could take minutes

One of the biggest drawbacks of electric vehicles – that they require hours and hours to charge – could be obliterated by new type of liquid battery that is roughly ten times more energy-dense than existing models, according to Professor Lee Cronin, the Regius Chair of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, UK. What’s so special about … Read more

What happens inside an injured brain?

Scientists have discovered that a single severe head injury can lead to dementia through a rogue protein that propagates through the brain and corrupts others, giving some much needed insight into what happens inside an injured brain. It’s part of a field of research looking into the impact of, and potential treatments for, traumatic brain … Read more

Plate tectonics observatory to create seismic shift in earthquake research

We may never be able to entirely predict earthquakes such as those that hit central Italy in 2016, but we could better assess how they’re going to play out by joining up data from different scientific fields in a new Europe-wide observatory, say scientists. In 2016 and early 2017, a series of major earthquakes rocked … Read more

How do we make snap decisions?

Decision-making is part of daily life but in many situations, from deciding whether to hit the snooze button on your alarm or reacting to an intruder, choices are made very quickly. Now we’re getting new insight into how these snap decisions are made. Professor Karin Roelofs, a psychology researcher at Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, … Read more

Dark matter clusters could reveal nature of dark energy

Scientists are hoping to understand one of the most enduring mysteries in cosmology by simulating its effect on the clustering of galaxies. That mystery is dark energy – the phenomenon that scientists hypothesise is causing the universe to expand at an ever-faster rate. No-one knows anything about dark energy, except that it could be, somehow, blowing … Read more