Researchers depressurized a tank of liquid carbon dioxide (CO2), instantly freezing it and releasing solid flakes. These were blended into cement paste and pressed into discs roughly the size of a dime, each sealed with a thin layer of vegetable oil to keep water in and air out. The team trained lasers on each, observing for the first time the transient chemical reaction that might explain why CO2-injected cement paste gains its strength faster. Injecting CO2 into cement products like concrete is one way to store it and keep it out of the atmosphere. The process has attracted commercial interest, with a growing number of companies offering CO2-injected concrete mixes. But until now, the underlying cement chemistry hadn't been directly visualized. A new open-access paper in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society ' led by Associate Professor Admir Masic and first-authored by graduate student Marcin Hajduczek, both of the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub and MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering ' describes the chemical sequence that unfolds after CO2 meets fresh cement paste. Co-authors include MIT colleagues Santiago El Awad and Franz-Josef Ulm, alongside researchers from IIT Jodhpur and CarbonCure Technologies....
For remotely operated underwater vehicles, cloudy and turbulent waters are often a no-go. When vehicles settle on the seafloor or dig through a sandbed, they can kick up clouds of sediment that make it tough for onboard cameras to see through. Often, the only thing to do is to wait until the marine dust settles before a vehicle can safely proceed. The method fuses visual images from optical cameras with acoustic data from sonar sensors. The combination enables a vehicle to quickly map the general shape of its surroundings using sonar, even in low-visibility waters. A vehicle can move toward certain shapes in the sonar-mapped environment, coming close enough for optical cameras to visually resolve specific objects in detail. The researchers tested the method in tank experiments where they could control the water's degree of visibility. Even in the cloudiest conditions, the system was able to see through the sediment to map the tank's environment and visualize centimeter-scale details of objects in the tank....
Slowly but surely, artificial intelligence is finding its way into sports. The latest venue' This year's World Cup, where Google will be partnering with the defending champions Argentina to showcase Gemini on and off the pitch. The agreement with the Argentine Football Association (AFA) makes Gemini the main global sponsor of the national team. As part of the collaboration, Google Gemini's logo will appear on the Albiceleste's training kit and the AI tool itself will be used to analyze the team's plays, form, performance, and statistics. During the tournament, players and coaching staff will have access to AI models to break down plays, analyze opponent statistics and, in theory, shorten the time it takes for that analysis to be put into action on the pitch. Google has not detailed exactly what internal tools Argentina will use, but the intention is clear: The World Cup will be a stress test for Google's AI in the high-pressure environment of professional soccer. For the fan, the proposition is more tangible and, in some ways, more ambitious. Google's search engine will be reconfigured to act like a fellow fan, with AI-generated answers for real-time queries, analysis of key plays and in-depth statistics. It will also allow fans to create songs, memes, cartoons, and other visual content to encourage social media interaction during and after each match....
Battery recycler Redwood Materials kicked off the trend last year with a new energy-storage division and a project that attached old EV packs to a Crusoe data center in Nevada. Then Ford said it was repurposing some of its battery-manufacturing capacity to make grid-scale batteries. And now GM is announcing its own ' arguably more ambitious ' plans for an energy-storage system (ESS). GM unveiled on Tuesday two new phases in its attack on the energy-storage market. The biggest swing by far is GM's new partnership with energy-storage startup Peak Energy. For that partnership, GM is developing an entirely new sodium-ion battery chemistry tailored for grid-scale deployments. 'The way we're getting into the market is the easy way, through ESS,' Kurt Kelty, vice president of battery and sustainability at GM, told TechCrunch. 'The performance characteristics are just what is needed in that market.' GM wouldn't share with TechCrunch how much money it is investing in this energy-storage effort. But we do know the company has committed $900 million to commercialize new battery chemistries, an investment that includes a new battery-development center....
