16-year-old Wins $75,000 for Her Award-Winning Discovery That Could Help Revolutionize Biomedical Implants

Grace Sun, credit – Society for ScienceFirst prize in the USA’s largest and most prestigious science fair has gone to a 16-year-old girl who found new ways to optimize the components of biomedical implants, promising a future of safer, faster, and longer-lasting versions of these critical devices.It’s not the work of science fiction; bioelectronic implants like the pacemaker have been around for decades, but also suffer from compatibility issues interfacing with the human body.On Friday, Grace Sun from Lexington, Kentukcy, pocketed $75,000 and was recognized among 2,000 of the nation and the world’s top STEM students as having produced the “number one project.”The award was given through the Society for Science’s Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, one of the largest and most prestigious in the world.Sun’s work focused on improving the capabilities of organic electrochemical transistors or OECTs, which like other devices made of silicon, are soft, flexible, and present the possibility of more complex implants for use in the brain or the heart.“They have performance issues right now,” Sun told Business Insider of the devices. “They have instability in the body. You don’t want some sort of implanted bioelectronic to degrade in your body.”Sensitive OECTs could detect proteins or nucleic acids in sweat, blood, or other...

Read More........→July 29, 2025

Lizard Island on Australia's Great Barrier Reef faces alarming coral loss following 2024 bleaching

Sydney, (IANS) Lizard Island on Australia's Great Barrier Reef has suffered one of the world's worst coral die-offs, with 92 per cent of surveyed corals lost after the 2024 bleaching event, new research has revealed.Researchers used drone imagery to assess the Fourth Global Coral Bleaching Event in 2024 at Lizard Island, where 96 per cent of corals were bleached and mortality averaged 92 per cent, with some sites losing over 99 per cent of corals, according to a statement released recently by Australia's Griffith University."This marks one of the highest coral mortality rates ever documented globally," said the study's lead researcher Vincent Raoult from Griffith University's School of Environment. Raoult described the mortality as "unprecedented," especially given that Lizard Island experienced less heat stress than other parts of the Great Barrier Reef.Drone technology enabled precise mapping of the widespread bleaching, said Jane Williamson from the Macquarie University in Sydney, also the study's senior author, who stressed the urgent need for climate action, warning that repeated heatwaves could irreversibly damage coral reefs, Xinhua news agency reported.Lizard Island's reefs remain fragile after years of repeated damage, such as bleaching, cyclones, and Crown-of-Thorns outbreaks, and scientists will monitor them through 2026...

Read More........→July 22, 2025

The Third Eye: Moving from Information Age to ‘Age of Intelligence’

New Delhi, (IANS): The success of Information Technology revolution caused the transition of the world from the Industrial Age to the Age of Information but the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expediting another transformational shift- from the Information Age to the Age of Intelligence propelled by the basic fact that ‘all intelligence is information but all information is not intelligence’.This shift is compelled by the reality that there was no competitive gain from having information that everybody else also had and that it is the ownership of ‘exclusive knowledge’ called Intelligence that gave one advantage over the others.AI applications are becoming a means of generating and accessing such knowledge largely through Data Analytics. Any information of intelligence value has to be ‘reliable’ but also ‘futuristic’ in the sense that it indicates the ‘opportunities’ and ‘risks’ lying ahead and thus opens the pathway to gainful action. To the extent a system of algorithms can be put in place to produce ‘insights’ during the analysis of data, this came closer to bridging the gap between ‘Artificial’ and ‘Human’ intelligence. Fundamentally, however, AI was an ‘assistant’ for and not a ‘substitute’ for human intelligence.Someone rightly said that Artificial Intelligence backed by Large Language Models(LLMs) can become the...

Read More........→July 17, 2025

Mercury Emissions Fall 70% Over the Last Four Decades Thanks to UN Treaty, Coal Phase-Out

A coal power plant in India – credit RawpixelA study examining mercury concentrations in the leaves of alpine plants has revealed that humanity has reduced worldwide exposure to this most toxic of heavy metals substantially.Controlled via a UN treaty called the Minamata Convention on Mercury Emissions, mercury (Hg) enters the atmosphere through a variety of natural and anthropogenic avenues.Artisanal and small-scale gold mining, coal burning, and cement and nonferrous metals production all release several thousands tons of mercury into the atmosphere every year.Much like carbon dioxide, the oceans also emit mercury—between 400-1,300 metric tons per year. Terrestrial sources include volcanic eruptions and other geothermal features, the weathering of mercury-containing rocks, soil erosion, and wildfires, and contribute around the same amount as the oceans.Anthropogenic sources, however, contribute as much as the land and oceans together; or at least they once did.A team of Chinese scientists from schools in Tianjin, Beijing, Tibet, and Nanjing has found that Hg concentrations in the atmosphere reduced by 70% since a peak in the year 2000. For the next 20 years, the levels continually dropped, corresponding with a reduced reliance on coal for power and the implementation of the Minamata Convention in 2013.The scientists were able to...

Read More........→July 14, 2025

Japan, Korea develop prototype nuclear batteries

The uranium battery concept (Image: JAEA)The Japan Atomic Energy Agency has developed what it says is the world's first "uranium rechargeable battery" and that tests have verified its performance in charging and discharging. Meanwhile, South Korean researchers have developed a prototype betavoltaic battery powered by the carbon-14 isotope.The uranium storage battery utilises depleted uranium (DU) as the negative electrode active material and iron as the positive one, the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) said. The single-cell voltage of the prototype uranium rechargeable battery is 1.3 volts, which is close to that of a common alkaline battery (1.5 volts).The battery was charged and discharged 10 times, and the performance of the battery was almost unchanged, indicating relatively stable cycling characteristics."To utilise DU as a new resource, the concept of rechargeable batteries using uranium as an active material was proposed in the early 2000s," JAEA noted. "However, no studies were reporting the specific performance of the assembled uranium rechargeable batteries."It added: "If uranium rechargeable batteries are increased in capacity and put to practical use, the large amount of DU stored in Japan will become a new resource for output controls in the electricity supply grid derived from renewable energy, thereby contributing...

Read More........→June 25, 2025