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| Credit: Tara Brown Photography/ University of Washington
Technology companies routinely build sprawling data centers to store all the baby pictures, financial transactions, funny cat videos and email messages its users hoard.
But a new technique developed by University of Washington and Microsoft researchers could shrink the space needed to store digital data that today would fill a Walmart supercenter down to the size of a sugar cube.
The team of computer scientists and electrical engineers has detailed one of the first complete systems to encode, store and retrieve digital data using DNA molecules, which can store information millions of times more compactly than current archival technologies.
In one experiment outlined in a paper presented in April at the ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, the team successfully encoded digital data from four image files into the nucleotide sequences of synthetic DNA snippets.
More significantly, they were also able to reverse that process -- retrieving the correct sequences from a larger pool of DNA and reconstructing the images without losing a single byte of information.
The team has also encoded and retrieved data that authenticates archival video files from the UW's Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal project that contain interviews with judges, lawyers and other personnel from the Rwandan war crime tribunal.
"Life has produced this fantastic molecule called DNA that efficiently stores all kinds of information about your genes and how a living system works -- it's very, very compact and very durable," said co-author Luis Ceze, UW associate professor of computer science and engineering.
"We're essentially repurposing it to store digital data -- pictures, videos, documents -- in a manageable way for hundreds or thousands of years."
The digital universe -- all the data contained in our computer files, historic archives, movies, photo collections and the exploding volume of digital information collected by businesses and devices worldwide -- is expected to hit 44 trillion gigabytes by 2020.
That's a tenfold increase compared to 2013, and will represent enough data to fill more than six stacks of computer tablets stretching to the moon. While not all of that information needs to be saved, the world is producing data faster than the capacity to store it.
DNA molecules can store information many millions of times more densely than existing technologies for digital storage -- flash drives, hard drives, magnetic and optical media. Those systems also degrade after a few years or decades, while DNA can reliably preserve information for centuries. DNA is best suited for archival applications, rather than instances where files need to be accessed immediately.
The team from the Molecular Information Systems Lab housed in the UW Electrical Engineering Building, in close collaboration with Microsoft Research, is developing a DNA-based storage system that it expects could address the world's needs for archival storage.
First, the researchers developed a novel approach to convert the long strings of ones and zeroes in digital data into the four basic building blocks of DNA sequences -- adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine.
"How you go from ones and zeroes to As, Gs, Cs and Ts really matters because if you use a smart approach, you can make it very dense and you don't get a lot of errors," said co-author Georg Seelig, a UW associate professor of electrical engineering and of computer science and engineering. "If you do it wrong, you get a lot of mistakes."
The digital data is chopped into pieces and stored by synthesizing a massive number of tiny DNA molecules, which can be dehydrated or otherwise preserved for long-term storage.
The UW and Microsoft researchers are one of two teams nationwide that have also demonstrated the ability to perform "random access" -- to identify and retrieve the correct sequences from this large pool of random DNA molecules, which is a task similar to reassembling one chapter of a story from a library of torn books.
To access the stored data later, the researchers also encode the equivalent of zip codes and street addresses into the DNA sequences. Using Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) techniques -- commonly used in molecular biology -- helps them more easily identify the zip codes they are looking for. Using DNA sequencing techniques, the researchers can then "read" the data and convert them back to a video, image or document file by using the street addresses to reorder the data.
Currently, the largest barrier to viable DNA storage is the cost and efficiency with which DNA can be synthesized (or manufactured) and sequenced (or read) on a large scale. But researchers say there's no technical barrier to achieving those gains if the right incentives are in place.
Advances in DNA storage rely on techniques pioneered by the biotechnology industry, but also incorporate new expertise. The team's encoding approach, for instance, borrows from error correction schemes commonly used in computer memory -- which hadn't been applied to DNA.
"This is an example where we're borrowing something from nature -- DNA -- to store information. But we're using something we know from computers -- how to correct memory errors -- and applying that back to nature," said Ceze.
"This multidisciplinary approach is what makes this project exciting. We are drawing from a diverse set of disciplines to push the boundaries of what can be done with DNA. And, as a result, creating a storage system with unprecedented density and durability," said Karin Strauss, a researcher at Microsoft and UW affiliate associate professor of computer science and engineering.
The research was funded by Microsoft Research, the National Science Foundation, and the David Notkin Endowed Graduate Fellowship.
Co-authors include UW computer science and engineering doctoral student James Bornholt, UW bioengineering doctoral student Randolph Lopez and Douglas Carmean, a partner architect at Microsoft Research and a UW affiliate professor of computer science and engineering.
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided byUniversity of Washington. The original item was written by Jennifer Langston. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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Awesome Facts Around The World With Detailed Information About Every Fact.....!!!
Thursday 30 June 2016
Scientists store digital images in DNA, and retrieves them perfectly
What makes individuals nasty or nice? Mathematical model explains
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| Credit: © Halfpoint / Fotolia
A University of Exeter scientist has helped develop an innovative mathematical model for exploring why some individuals evolve to be genetically programmed to be nice, while others stay nasty.
Dr Sasha Dall, Senior Lecturer in Mathematical Ecology, and a team of international colleagues have designed a new mathematical framework for examining social behaviour in a range of different species that will help advance our understanding of the evolution of sociality.
The theory of kin selection has for some time allowed biologists to explain why some animals and other organisms adopt altruistic behaviour, at their own expense, for the benefit of their relatives- worker bees laying down their lives to promote the welfare of their mother, the Queen, for example. But up until now scientists have not been able to explain the role of genetic polymorphism, or why some individuals appear to be genetically programmed to help others whilst living side-by-side with others who tend to exploit their generosity.
Using colony-living microbes as inspiration to explore why some individuals are by nature generous and others less so, the researchers produced an innovative model of social evolution that allows them to understand how far this is likely to be influenced by conditioning or the surrounding environment.
They found that the behaviour of individuals can often evolve to be determined by a set of inherited genetic tendencies that accurately predict social relationships, including their likely relatedness to other members of their community, and their surroundings rather than in direct response to what they sense or experience.
Dr Dall, a co-author on the paper, which is published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology, said: "As humans our behaviours are flexible and we base what we are meant to do on what we see after processing information about our world. However, some species rely on inherited instructions on what to do -- individuals behave differently according to which specific genetic variants they are born with. What we have been able to show is how you can get a situation where you end up with distinct levels of genetically determined niceness coexisting within populations."
Lead author on the paper Professor Olof Leimar, of Stockholm University, said: "Social evolution theory hasn't previously addressed genetic polymorphism. We have developed a model that allows us to explore this within a general framework alongside other behavioural influences. Our hope and aim is to do further work in this area to test our model experimentally."
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The above post is reprinted from materials provided byUniversity of Exeter. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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Surface of Mercury arose from deep inside the planet
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| Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington Researchers have found that several volcanic deposits on Mercury's surface require mantle melting to have started close to the planet's core-mantle boundary, which lies only 400 km below the planets surface and making it unique in the solar system.
NASA researchers have found that several volcanic deposits on Mercury's surface require mantle melting to have started close to the planet's core-mantle boundary, which lies only 400km below the planets surface and making it unique in the solar system. This is reported at the Goldschmidt conference in Yokohama, Japan.
The recent MESSENGER mission to Mercury has shown that the surface of the planet is very heterogeneous, but it can be classified into two main types of regions. One is an area of relatively young Northern Volcanic Plains (NVP) -- these are between 3.7 and 3.8 billion years old. The other area is older (4 to 4.2 Ga) and consists of intercrater plains and heavily-cratered terrains (IcP-HCT), which is between 4 and 4.2 billion years old.
The older regions contain several previously unexplained features, including a large magnesium-rich spot, which is around 10,000 000 km square -- around the size of Canada although because Mercury is much smaller than the Earth this spot takes up around 15% of the planet's surface.
Until now, there has been no satisfactory explanation of how the formation and history of the planet would have allowed these heterogeneous areas to develop without invoking melting of a heterogeneous mantle. But now a group of NASA scientists from the Johnson Space Centre in Houston, have performed a series of experiments which explain most of the chemical compositions of Mercury's surface.
The researchers looked for the answers by simulating early conditions on Mercury. Mercury is believed to have formed under highly reduced conditions. Enstatite chondrites are similarly reduced and may be a good proxy to the chemical building blocks. So the researchers took the same chemistry as found in enstatite chondrites, and began to subject them to the sort of pressures and temperatures found in the deep mantle of Mercury.
The first author of the study, Dr Asmaa Boujibar said:
"We took a powdered chemical mix similar in composition to enstatite chondrites, which is thought to represent Mercury's building blocks, and subjected it to high pressures and temperatures. The pressures were high, up to 5 GigaPascals (50,000 times the Earth's atmospheric pressure), which is the sort of pressure where you can form diamonds. This is the pressure of Mercury's core-mantle boundary."
She continued: "Mercury is a unique terrestrial planet. Unlike the Earth, it has a large core and a comparatively shallow mantle, meaning that the mantle-core boundary is only around 400 km below the planet's crust.
The key finding is that by varying pressure and temperature on only one type of composition, we could produce the variety of material found on the planet's surface. These findings indicate that the older terrains are formed by material melting at high pressures up to the core-mantle boundary, while the younger terrains are formed closer to the surface.
These results show also that Mercury likely formed with enstatite chondrites. The particularity of Mercury and these types of meteorites is their high sulfur content. The role of sulfur on magma composition was difficult to predict as Mercury is the only terrestrial planet with such high sulfur concentrations (1 to 4 weight %). For comparison, the mantles of Earth, Mars and the Moon have <0 .1="" and="" both="" composition="" effects="" explain="" heterogeneous="" mercury.="" of="" overall="" p="" pressure="" sulfur.="" sulfur="" surface="" the="" weight="">
A few regions of Mercury's surface remain difficult to explain, but it does go a long way to helping us understand why we find such a variety of features."
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided byGoldschmidt Conference. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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5 Best High-End Graphics Game You Will Love To Play On Your PC
Have you ever questioned your friends What was the best games for your PC ever? Actually, the questions make a point. Of course, Gaming is the excellent way to spend your free time. There are many games available for your PC but not many are that much entertaining. Therefore, we decided to make a list of games that you will love to play on your computer again and again. So, we bought you 5 Best Hi-End Graphics Games that you will love to play again and again on your computer. Most of them are high-end games which will require a Graphic card to run.
1. Grand Theft Auto V
Grand Theft Auto V is an open world action-adventure video game released by Rockstar North and announced by Rockstar Games. The game is played from both as a first-person or third-person view and its world are navigated on foot or by vehicle. Players manage the three lead heroes during single-player and switch between them both during and outdoor of missions. The story is focused on the heist sequences, and various missions involve shooting and driving gameplay.
2. Elder Scrolls V
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is an open world action role-playing video game produced by Bethesda Game Studios and declared by Bethesda Softworks. It is the fifth chapter in The Elder Scrolls series. Skyrim’s main story rotates around the player character and their struggle to defeat Alduin the World-Eater, a dragon who is predicted to destroy the world. The game is set two hundred years after the happenings of Oblivion and takes place in the fictional province of Skyrim. Over the course of the game, the player completes quests and develops the character by improving skills.
4. Farcry 4
Far Cry 4 is an open world action-adventure first-person shooter video game developed and published by Ubisoft. The game takes place in Kyrat, a fictional Himalayan country that usually consists of sprawling mountains and forests, enormous water systems, and villages. The central story follows Ajay Ghale, a growing Kyrati-American, as he is entangled in a civil war involving Kyrat’s Royal Army, dominated by tyrannical king Pagan Min, and a revolutionary movement called the Golden Path.
5. Need For Speed Most Wanted (2012)
Need for Speed: Most Wanted is an unrestricted world racing game developed by Criterion Games and published by Electronic Arts. Published on 4 June 2012. Need for Speed: Most Wanted is set in an open world atmosphere. The game takes on the gameplay style of the first Most Wanted title in the Need for Speed franchise.
Hummer Trojan Installs Porn App On Your Android Devices
Security researchers at Cheetah Mobile have published warnings against a newly found mobile phone trojan family, known as “Hummer” which automatically installs porn app on the infected Android devices.
Experts of the Cheetah Mobile have issued warnings against a newly found mobile phone trojan family, known as “Hummer”. A malicious software which is capable of obtaining root access, and can upload pornographic applications and display pop-up advertising banners. In the first half of 2016, the maximum number of the infected Android devices has reached 1.4 million (63 thousand. In China alone).
The security researchers at Cheetah Mobile claimed that this trojan family is one of the largest ever, with millions of Android devices infected around the world. According to the Cheetah Mobile’s appraisal, if the virus developer were able to make $0.50 (the average cost of getting a new installation) every time the virus installed an app on an Android device, the group behind this trojan family would be able to make over $500,000 daily.
Since the beginning of 2016, cybercriminals behind the Hummer began to use the 12 domains to update the Trojan and promote it in the market. According to the researchers, multiple domains are associated with Chinese e-mail. After analyzing the source code of the malware, experts have come to the conclusion that it is sponsored by the Chinese developers.
It is quite difficult to completely remove the Hummer from your Android device. Since the Trojan gets the highest level of access on the infected Android device, the usual anti-virus software is not able to clean the infected device. Even the user can’t remove the Hummer after resetting the settings of the Android device to the factory.
However, the Hummer trojan is spreading rapidly throughout the world. Hence, the countries like India, Indonesia, Turkey, and China have witnessed the largest number of infections.
Source : TechViral
Monday 27 June 2016
High levels of education linked to heightened brain tumor risk
A university degree is linked to a heightened risk of developing a brain tumor, suggests a large observational study. Gliomas, in particular, were more common among people who had studied at university for at least three years than they were among those who didn't go on to higher education, the data show.
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Credit: © ake1150 / Fotolia
A university degree is linked to a heightened risk of developing a brain tumor, suggests a large observational study, published online in theJournal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
Gliomas, in particular, were more common among people who had studied at university for at least three years than they were among those who didn't go on to higher education, the data show.
The researchers base their findings on more than 4.3 million Swedes, all of whom were born between 1911 and 1961 and living in Sweden in 1991.
They were monitored between 1993 and 2010 to see if they developed a primary brain tumor, and information on educational attainment, disposable income, marital status, and occupation was obtained from national insurance, labour market,and national census data.
During the monitoring period, 1.1 million people died and more than 48,000 emigrated, but 5735 of the men and 7101 of the women developed a brain tumor.
Men with university level education, lasting at least three years, were 19% more likely to develop a glioma--a type of cancerous tumor arising in glial cells that surround and support neurons in the brain--than men whose educational attainment didn't extend beyond the period of compulsory schooling (9 years).
Among women, the magnitude of risk was 23% higher for glioma, and 16% higher for meningioma--a type of mostly non-cancerous brain tumor arising in the layers of tissue (meninges) that surround and protect the brain and spinal cord--than it was for women who didn't go on to higher education.
Taking account of potentially influential factors, such as marital status and disposable income, only marginally affected the size of the risk, and only among the men.
High levels of disposable income were associated with a 14% heightened risk of glioma among men, but had no bearing on the risk of either meningioma or acoustic neuroma--a type of non-cancerous brain tumor that grows on the nerve used for hearing and balance.
Nor was disposable income associated with heightened risk of any type of brain tumor among the women.
Occupation also seemed to influence risk for men and women. Compared with men in manual roles, professional and managerial roles (intermediate and high non-manual jobs) were associated with a 20% heightened risk of glioma and a 50% heightened risk of acoustic neuroma.
The risk of glioma was also 26% higher among women in professional and managerial roles than it was for women in manual roles, while the risk of meningioma was 14% higher.
Single men also seemed to have a significantly lower risk of glioma than married/co-habiting men, but, on the other hand, they had a higher risk of meningioma. No such associations were evident among the women.
This is an observational study so no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect, and the researchers point out that they were not able to glean information on potentially influential lifestyle factors.
But they emphasise that their findings were consistent, and they point to the strengths of using population data.
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by BMJ.Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
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Female smokers more likely to kick the habit by 'timing' their quit date with their menstrual cycle, study shows
Women who want to quit smoking may have better success by carefully timing their quit date with optimal days within their menstrual cycle, according to a new study.
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| Credit: © Serhiy Kobyakov / Fotolia |
Women who want to quit smoking may have better success by carefully timing their quit date with optimal days within their menstrual cycle, according to a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. The results, published online this month in Biology of Sex Differences, were also presented at the annual meeting of the Organization for the Study of Sex Differences (OSSD), held at Penn.
Cigarette smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, and women experience more severe health consequences from cigarette smoking than men, including a 25 percent increased risk of developing coronary heart disease and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Research also shows that women have greater difficulty with smoking cessation than men.
"Understanding how menstrual cycle phase affects neural processes, cognition and behavior is a critical step in developing more effective treatments and in selecting the best, most individualized treatment options to help each cigarette smoker quit," said the study's lead author, Reagan Wetherill, PhD, a research assistant professor of Psychology.
Wetherill and senior author Teresa Franklin, PhD, a research associate professor of Neuroscience in Psychiatry, have been studying the brains of premenopausal women who smoke cigarettes for several years in Penn's Center for the Studies of Addiction. Their work is based on a significant animal literature showing that the natural sex hormones -- estrogen and progesterone -- which fluctuate over the course of the menstrual cycle modulate addictive behavior. The animal data show that during the pre-ovulatory, or follicular phase of the menstrual cycle, when the progesterone-to-estrogen ratio is low, women are more likely to be spurred toward addictive behaviors. Alternatively, during the early pre-menstrual or luteal phase of the menstrual cycle, when the progesterone-to-estrogen ratio is high, addictive behaviors are thwarted, suggesting that progesterone might protect women from relapsing to smoking.
In the current study, 38 physically healthy, premenopausal women who smoke and who were not taking hormonal contraceptives, ranging from 21 to 51 years of age, received a functional MRI scan to examine how regions of the brain that help control behavior are functionally connected to regions of the brain that signal reward.
The researchers theorized that the natural fluctuations in ovarian hormones that occur over the course of the monthly menstrual cycle affect how women make decisions regarding reward -- smoking a cigarette -- and so-called "smoking cues," which are the people, places and things that they associate with smoking, such as the smell of a lit cigarette or going on their coffee break. These "appetitive reminders" to smoke are perceived as pleasant and wanted, and similar to cigarettes, are also rewarding.
In 2015, the researchers showed that compared to when women are in the luteal phase of their menstrual cycle, which is the period of time following ovulation and prior to menstruation, women in the follicular phase -- which begins at menstruation and continues until ovulation -- have enhanced responses to smoking cues in reward-related brain regions. This finding led them to further test whether groups differed in the strength of the functional connections that exists between regions exerting cognitive control and reward-related brain regions. The weaker the functional connections between cognitive control brain regions and reward signaling brain regions, the less ability women have to 'Just Say No' when attempting to quit.
The women in the study were separated into two groups -- those in their follicular phase and those in their luteal phase. Results revealed that during the follicular phase, there was reduced functional connectivity between brain regions that helps make good decisions (cortical control regions) and the brain regions that contain the reward center (ventral striatum), which could place women in the follicular phase at greater risk for continued smoking and relapse. Orienting attention towards smoking cues (pictures of smoking reminders such as an individual smoking) was also shown to be associated weaker connections between cognitive control regions in follicular females.
"These data support existing animal data and an emerging human literature showing that progesterone may exert protective effects over addictive behavior and importantly, the findings provide new insights into sex differences in smoking behavior and relapse," Franklin said. "Interestingly, the findings may represent a fundamental effect of menstrual cycle phase on brain connectivity and may be generalizable to other behaviors, such as responses to other rewarding substances (i.e., alcohol and foods high in fat and sugar).
"The results from this study become extremely important as we look for more ways to help the over 40 million individuals in the U.S. alone addicted to cigarettes," Franklin, continued. "When we learn that something as simple as timing a quit date may impact a woman's cessation success, it helps us to provide more individualized treatment strategies for individuals who are struggling with addiction."
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided byPerelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal References:
- T. R. Franklin, K. Jagannathan, R. R. Wetherill, B. Johnson, S. Kelly, J. Langguth, J. Mumma, A. R. Childress. Influence of Menstrual Cycle Phase on Neural and Craving Responses to Appetitive Smoking Cues in Naturally Cycling Females. Nicotine & Tobacco Research, 2015; 17 (4): 390 DOI: 10.1093/ntr/ntu183
- Reagan R. Wetherill, Kanchana Jagannathan, Nathan Hager, Melanie Maron, Teresa R. Franklin. Influence of menstrual cycle phase on resting-state functional connectivity in naturally cycling, cigarette-dependent women. Biology of Sex Differences, 2016; 7 (1) DOI:10.1186/s13293-016-0078-6
The universe is crowded with black holes, astronomers predict
Astronomers have presented one of the most complete models of matter in the universe and predict hundreds of massive black hole mergers each year observable with the second generation of gravitational wave detectors.
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| Credit: ESO/WFI (visible); MPIfR/ESO/APEX/A.Weiss et al. (microwave); NASA/CXC/CfA/R.Kraft et al. (X-ray)
A new study published in Nature presents one of the most complete models of matter in the universe and predicts hundreds of massive black hole mergers each year observable with the second generation of gravitational wave detectors.
The model anticipated the massive black holes observed by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory. The two colliding masses created the first directly detected gravitational waves and confirmed Einstein's general theory of relativity.
"The universe isn't the same everywhere," said Richard O'Shaughnessy, assistant professor in RIT's School of Mathematical Sciences, and co-author of the study led by Krzysztof Belczynski from Warsaw University. "Some places produce many more binary black holes than others. Our study takes these differences into careful account."
Massive stars that collapse upon themselves and end their lives as black holes, like the pair LIGO detected, are extremely rare, O'Shaughnessy said. They are less evolved, "more primitive stars," that occur in special configurations in the universe. These stars from the early universe are made of more pristine hydrogen, a gas which makes them "Titans among stars," at 40 to 100 solar masses. In contrast, younger generations of stars consumed the corpses of their predecessors containing heavy elements, which stunted their growth.
"Because LIGO is so much more sensitive to these heavy black holes, these regions of pristine gas that make heavy black holes are extremely important," O'Shaughnessy said. "These rare regions act like factories for building identifiable pairs of black holes."
O'Shaughnessy and his colleagues predict that massive black holes like these spin in a stable way, with orbits that remain in the same plane. The model shows that the alignment of these massive black holes are impervious to the tiny kick that follows the stars' core collapse. The same kick can change the alignment of smaller black holes and rock their orbital plane.
The calculations reported in Nature are the most detailed calculations of its kind ever performed, O'Shaughnessy said. He likens the model to a laboratory for assessing future prospects for gravitational wave astronomy. Other gravitational wave astronomers are now using the model in their own investigations as well.
"We've already seen that we can learn a lot about Einstein's theory and massive stars, just from this one event," said O'Shaughnessy, also a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration that helped make and interpret the first discovery of gravitational waves. "LIGO is not going to see 1,000 black holes like these each year, but many of them will be even better and more exciting because we will have a better instrument--better glasses to view them with and better techniques."
O'Shaughnessy is a member of RIT's Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation where he collaborates with Carlos Lousto, professor in RIT's School of Mathematical Sciences and a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.
"We feel like parents of a beautiful daughter called gravitational wave astronomy born a few months ago and seeing her grow more gorgeous by the day," Lousto said.
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Rochester Institute of Technology. The original item was written by Susan Gawlowicz. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
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Scientists just made it cheaper to produce hydrogen from water
A hydrogen-fuel economy could finally become a reality with the recent discovery of a cheap, stable and efficient means of getting hydrogen from water.
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Credit: Image courtesy of KTH The Royal Institute of Technology
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A hydrogen-fuel economy could finally become a reality with the recent discovery of a cheap, stable and efficient means of getting hydrogen from water.
If a cheap, stable and efficient way could be found to produce hydrogen from water, a hydrogen-fuel economy could finally become a reality.
Scientists at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm now report that they have unlocked one major barrier to exploiting this renewable energy source.
Because the best-performing catalysts for electrochemical oxidation, or "water splitting," are expensive precious metals, the research team led by KTH Professor Licheng Sun is one of many worldwide searching for cheaper alternatives. Sun had earlier developed molecular catalysts for water oxidation (Nature Chem. 2012, 4, 418) with an efficiency approaching that of natural photosynthesis.
Last week his team reported in Nature Communications that it has discovered that a new material composed of common earth-abundant elements could be used as a catalyst for water splitting, which could help change the economics of large scale hydrogen fuel production.
Researcher Ke Fan says that the new material is a monolayered double hydroxide involving nickel and vanadium, which offers a state-of-art electrocatalyst for water oxidation. The low-cost, highly efficient nickel-vanadium monolayer outperforms other electrocatalysts that are composed of non-precious materials, Fan says. And it offers a competitive, cheap alternative to catalysts that rely on more expensive, precious materials, such as iridium oxide (IrO2) or ruthenium oxide (RuO2).
"This is the first time that the metal, vanadium, has been used to dope nickel hydroxide to form a water oxidation catalyst, and it works very well -- even beyond our expectations," Fan says. "No doubt this material can greatly expand the scope of non-precious metal elements of electrocatalysts, and it opens new areas for water splitting."
One possibility the discovery raises is large-scale production of hydrogen fuel using Sun's catalyst.
The material possesses a layered structure with monolayer nickel-vanadium oxygen polyhedron connected together with a thickness below 1 nanometer, says researcher Hong Chen.
"This monolayer feature not only increases the active surface area, but also enhances the electron transfer within the material," Chen says.
Sun expects the research to "open a new area of low-cost water oxidation catalysts, featuring stability and efficiencies that equal or even surpass some of today's best catalysts including RuO2 and IrO2."
Story Source:
The above post is reprinted from materials provided by KTH The Royal Institute of Technology. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
- Ke Fan, Hong Chen, Yongfei Ji, Hui Huang, Per Martin Claesson, Quentin Daniel, Bertrand Philippe, Håkan Rensmo, Fusheng Li, Yi Luo, Licheng Sun. Nickel–vanadium monolayer double hydroxide for efficient electrochemical water oxidation. Nature Communications, 2016; 7: 11981 DOI:10.1038/ncomms11981
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