Category: Innovation

In the dark depths of Earth’s ocean floors, a spontaneous chemical reaction is quietly producing oxygen, without the need for life. This discovery challenges the long-standing belief that photosynthesizing organisms are necessary to create the oxygen we breathe.

Biogeochemist Andrew Sweetman from the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) and his team stumbled upon this finding while measuring seafloor oxygen levels to assess the impact of deep-sea mining.

In the Pacific Ocean, black, rounded rocks are scattered across the seafloor at depths of over 4,000 meters (13,000 feet). Surprisingly, the scientists observed increasing oxygen levels in these areas.

“When we first got this data, we thought the sensors were faulty, because every study ever done in the deep sea has only seen oxygen being consumed rather than produced. We would come home and recalibrate the sensors but over the course of 10 years, these strange oxygen readings kept showing up,” explains Sweetman.

Sweetman and the team decided to test it using a different type of sensor and were amazed when it came back with the same results.

To explore the mystery, the researchers collected some of these nodule rocks in the lab to see if they were the source of this ‘dark oxygen’ production.

These nodules are natural deposits of rare-earth metals like cobalt, manganese, and nickel, mixed in a polymetallic blend. These exact metals are used in batteries, and it turns out the rocks may be acting similarly on the ocean floor.

The researchers found that single polymetallic nodules produced voltages of up to 0.95 V. When clustered together, they can easily reach the 1.5 V required to split oxygen from water in an electrolysis reaction.

“It appears that we discovered a natural ‘geobattery,'” says Northwestern University chemist Franz Geiger. “These geobatteries are the basis for a possible explanation of the ocean’s dark oxygen production.”

While there is still much to investigate, such as the scale of oxygen production by these nodules, this discovery offers a potential explanation for the persistence of ocean ‘dead zones’ long after deep-sea mining has ceased.

In 2016 and 2017, marine biologists discovered that sites mined in the 1980s still lacked even bacteria, while unmined regions flourished. The persistence of these ‘dead zones’ remains unknown, but this new discovery could be the reason for the dead zones in what would otherwise be such high faunal diversity areas.

Additionally, the discovery of ‘dark oxygen’ production raises new questions about the origins of oxygen-breathing life on Earth, which had previously been attributed to ancient microbial cyanobacteria.

“We now know that there is oxygen produced in the deep sea, where there is no light,” said Sweetman. “I think we, therefore, need to revisit questions like: Where could aerobic life have begun?”

This research was published in Nature Geoscience.

Scientists have developed a cost-effective method to recycle certain electronic waste using whey protein. This approach allows for easy gold recovery from circuit boards, costing 50 times less than the value of the recovered gold—figures that appeal to large-scale businesses. Traditional e-waste recycling methods can’t match these savings, making this method potentially scalable.

Professor Raffaele Mezzenga from ETH Zurich discovered that whey protein, a byproduct of dairy manufacturing, can create sponges that attract ionized gold. Electronic waste contains valuable metals like copper, cobalt, and gold, used extensively in electronics for their conductive properties.

Mohammad Peydayesh, Mezzenga’s colleague, first denatured whey proteins under acidic conditions and high temperatures, forming protein nanofibrils in a gel. After drying the gel, they created a sponge from these fibrils. To extract gold, they soaked 20 salvaged motherboards in an acid bath until the metals dissolved into ionized compounds. The sponge then attracted these ions, and a heat treatment aggregated the gold into 22-carat flakes for easy removal.

They extracted 450 milligrams of gold, worth about $38.70 at current market value, though the nuggets contained around 9% copper. Further smelting could purify the gold, reducing its weight slightly.

The true financial value lies in the bottom line—50 times the cost of energy and materials. The scientists plan to market this technology quickly and explore if other food waste byproducts can be used to make the protein fibril sponge.

E-waste is a growing global problem, requiring energy-intensive machinery for recycling. The benefits of recycling these materials include preventing long-term landfill waste, the loss of the precious metals to said landfills, and reducing the demand for new mining operations.

Pedestrian deaths by car surged 19 percent from 2019 to 2022, with three-quarters of fatalities occurring after dark, according to AAA. In response, automotive technology supplier Magna, a mobility technology company, is addressing this issue with thermal technology, now installed on 1.2 million vehicles and counting.

Originally named “Night Vision” and introduced on the 2005 BMW 7 Series, Magna’s thermal sensing product can see the road ahead up to four times farther than typical headlights. Currently available on 40 different vehicle models across 13 manufacturers—this technology aims to reduce pedestrian and cyclist deaths.

How It Works
A microbolometer, or an uncooled thermal sensor, which began as military technology in the late 1970s, was declassified after the 1991 Gulf War. Thermal imaging has since been adopted by many industries such as municipal firefighting services to see through smoke and is now widely used in the security sector.

Magna’s latest generation of thermal technology offers improved road coverage, enhanced detection capabilities, and a clearer image through fog, smoke, snow squalls, or complete darkness. Unlike visible light, thermal cameras are unaffected by headlights or sun glare, making them a robust solution against distracted driving. Its ability to see through smoke or fog and can also help avoid disasters like when fog caused a 158-car pileup in Louisiana last year.

An infrared video camera mounted in front of the vehicle detects temperature differences as small as 1/10th of a degree, creating a highly detailed thermal image of the road. Using convolutional neural networks, the software generates three-dimensional data for image classification and object recognition.

The system can detect animals, pedestrians, cyclists, buses, and more up to 100 meters and beyond and alert the drivers of the hazards.

Magna’s camera, once too large to fit in a trunk, is now the size of a golf ball and set to get even smaller. The next-gen thermal sensing technology, debuting next year, will include 360-degree visual range for better visibility in all directions, addressing back-over accidents and extending detection to up to three football fields, thus increasing stopping time and potentially saving more lives.

Here is an interesting video demonstrating this feature:

Scientists have discovered a way to repair brain cells affected by Timothy syndrome, a rare genetic disorder.

A study published in the journal Nature found that a drug called antisense oligonucleotide enabled human neurons to develop normally despite carrying a mutation due to Timothy syndrome. “It’s the beginning of a new era for many of these diseases that we first thought were untreatable,” said Dr. Huda Zoghbi, a professor at Baylor College of Medicine, to NPR.

Timothy syndrome is caused by a mutation of a single gene in a person’s DNA. The new drug uses an antisense nucleotide, a small piece of synthetic genetic material, to alter the proteins made by a cell, according to NPR.
The antisense nucleotide for Timothy syndrome was designed to replace a defective protein with a healthy version, effectively counteracting the mutation responsible for the disorder. This approach could potentially be used to treat other genetic disorders, including those that cause schizophrenia, epilepsy, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorder.