Super powerful batteries: Here’s the difficulty in designing of batteries: You can either have high power or high energy, but not both.
For example, radio broadcasting over a long distance requires capacitors that quickly release energy, but store a very small amount, while playing the radio requires batteries that can hold a lot of energy but release it at a very slow rate.
A team of engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign invented a microbattery that can offer both power and charge. They have confirmed that it can allow devices as small as cell phones to jump start cars and recharge in an instant.
Acute Stress: Stressed about finals yet? Maybe about your upcoming presentation? This may, ironically, alleviate some of the tension. Researchers have found that acute and intermittent stress can actually be good for the brain! While chronic stress is commonly known to cause memory loss, headaches and other physical problems that we want to avoid, mild dosages of stress put on our brain can actually lead to improved cognitive abilities.
The mechanism is not known yet, but it was shown that a certain signal called FGF2 was stimulated. This interested researchers because FGF2 is typically associated with depression.
However, stay aware that an intense dosage of stress can be hurtful and may lead to conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s still under question how much and for how long your body can handle stress as a beneficial factor.
