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A team of scientists have made a new discovery about naturally occurring magnetic materials, which in turn could lead to the development of nanoscale energy sources used to power next generation electronic devices. Researchers from Japan’s Okayama University and UC Riverside’s Bourns College of Engineering worked together to study the gumboot chiton, a type of mollusk that produces teeth made of the magnetic mineral magnetite, in hopes of better understanding its genetic process.

The new design stores heat generated by excess electricity from solar or wind power in large tanks of white-hot molten silicon, and then converts the light from the glowing metal back into electricity when it’s needed. The researchers estimate that such a system would be much more affordable than lithium-ion batteries, which have been proposed as a viable, though expensive, method to store renewable energy. They also estimate that the system would cost about half as much as pumped hydroelectric storage—the cheapest form of grid-scale energy storage so far.

Delivering solar- or wind-generated power on demand, the system, which uses molten silicon, should be cheaper than other leading options.

Instead, the body of the Lamborghini Terzo Millennio concept car, made from exotic carbon nanotubes, would be used as a supercapacitor. Supercapacitors store and release energy in a manner different from that employed by batteries. They have certain advantages, but also serious disadvantages.

It could be years, if ever, before scientists from MIT and Lamborghini, which is part of the Volkswagen Group ( VLKAF ), can overcome the downsides. But the effort would be worth it, said Mauricio Reggiani, Lamborghini’s head of research and development.

“At the moment, we are really optimistic,” he said.

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Someday recycled urine and exhaled breath could feed specially engineered yeast to make plastics and other useful chemicals on long space missions.

A Chicago-based entrepreneur says many industrial power users can save money, get more electricity, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by using the energy they already consume more efficiently. It’s called recycling energy — capturing waste heat and turning it into power.

This new household appliance turns it into energy.

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Chiral surfaces, which have differing responses for left- and right-handed circularly polarized (LCP and RCP) light, can be useful in optical experimentation. Metamaterials, which can be made into circular polarizers, are promising for creating chiral surfaces. Scientists at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Rolla, MO) and the Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne, IL) have now created a chiral metamaterial-absorbing surface that has a large circular dichroism (CD) over the 1.3–1.8 μm spectral region. The chiral absorber could be useful for optical filters, thermal energy harvesting, optical communications, and chiral imaging.

A chiral optical metasurface selectively absorbs either left- or right-handed circularly polarized light; it could be useful in imagers and other optical systems.

Scientists analyzed the gamma rays emitted during the NPDGamma Experiment and found parity-violating asymmetry, which is a specific change in behavior in the force between a neutron and a proton. They measured a 30 parts per billion preference for gamma rays to be emitted antiparallel to the neutron spin when neutrons are captured by protons in liquid hydrogen. After observing that more gammas go down than up, the experiment resolved for the first time a mirror-asymmetric component or handedness of the weak force. Credit: Andy Sproles/Oak Ridge National Laboratory, U.S. Dept. of Energy.

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For the first time ever, an international team of researchers imaged the microscopic state of negative capacitance. This novel result provides researchers with fundamental, atomistic insight into the physics of negative capacitance, which could have far-reaching consequences for energy-efficient electronics.