It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, January 30, 2025
New nondestructive method for identifying original batteries using magnetic sensors
Tsukuba, Japan—Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are widely used in smartphones, PCs, and electric vehicles, making them indispensable in our daily lives. However, recently, fires and other accidents have occurred in relation to the use of so-called compatible batteries as an alternative to original equipment manufacturer (OEM) batteries. With the widespread use of LIBs, their shapes have become standardized; therefore, distinguishing OEM batteries from the non-original ones based on their appearance has become challenging. Although marks, certification displays, QR codes, IC chips, etc., are used to identify OEM products, they can be copied. Hence, developing identification methods based on electrical characteristics and internal structures is essential.
Researchers at University of Tsukuba previously developed a method for detecting fuel cell failuress using magnetic sensors. In this study, they applied this method and developed a system for identifying LIBs based on the differences in the current path caused by the internal structure of these batteries. This method involves attaching a magnetic sensor to the exterior of an LIB and measuring the magnetic field generated by the current during charging and discharging. This simple method can identify single cells and multiple batteries connected in series.
The researchers will attempt to establish a system for identifying the battery within an actual battery module. Furthermore, they will also seek to develop a system that can identify batteries even in cases of deterioration and identical structures.
Original Paper
Title of original paper: Evaluation of lithium-ion batteries with different structures using magnetic field measurement for onboard battery identification
Journal: Green Energy and Intelligent Transportation
Can bigger groups foster stronger cooperation? New research from the RIKEN Center for Brain Science (CBS), published in Communications Psychology on December 23, challenges conventional wisdom that larger group size reduces cooperation by showing that fluid connections and innate prosocial instincts enable humans to thrive in larger social circles.
Humans are inherently social creatures and heavily rely on teamwork to succeed. This ability to collaborate is deeply rooted in how our brains function. Notably, the size of an animal’s brain often correlates with the size of its social groups. Humans, with our relatively large brains, can form larger and more complex groups than can other animals. Traditionally, however, scientists believed that as groups grow in size, cooperation becomes more difficult. In large groups, losing one connection may not seem significant, and interacting with everyone sufficiently to build trust becomes challenging. Earlier studies reinforced this belief, suggesting that cooperation tends to diminish in larger groups.
A recent study led by Rei Akaishi at RIKEN CBS has turned this assumption on its head, demonstrating that larger groups can actually foster greater cooperation. The researchers conducted an experiment with 83 participants who played the “prisoner’s dilemma” game — a scenario in which players choose between cooperating for mutual benefit or acting selfishly. Group sizes ranged from two to six people, and participants were allowed to leave groups they found undesirable or remove uncooperative members. Throughout the game, participant brain activity was monitored using functional magnetic resonance imaging.
The results were unexpected: people in larger groups cooperated more frequently, with 57% of all decisions being cooperative. The tendency to cooperate increased as group size grew. While group size itself did not directly promote cooperative behavior, it influenced how people managed memory and made decisions during social interactions. Even when participants struggled to clearly recall past interactions, they often defaulted to prosocial behaviors, relying on their general inclinations to trust or cooperate. This suggests that when memory becomes unclear, people prioritize cooperation over caution, enabling smoother group dynamics.
Brain scans offered further insights into the decision-making process. Specific brain regions, such as the fusiform gyrus and precuneus, processed memories of past interactions, while the nucleus accumbens connected these memories to feelings of reward. The prefrontal cortex played a critical role in weighing these memories against personal tendencies, guiding decisions about whether a participant should cooperate with someone who might have previously betrayed them. When memories were less reliable, the brain appeared to naturally encourage cooperation, perhaps as a way to maintain group harmony.
These findings offer a fresh perspective on how humans build trust and interact within groups. Rather than relying solely on stable, long-term relationships. The study highlights the benefits of flexible and fluid social connections for fostering cooperation. This insight is particularly relevant in today’s world, where digital platforms and online communities thrive on dynamic, ever-evolving relationships.
“In practical terms, our findings could help improve teamwork in schools, workplaces, and online environments,” says Akaishi. Allowing people to freely form and adjust connections, rather than adhering to rigid group structures, could lead to better collaboration. For organizations, embracing this natural flexibility in system design may enhance overall group dynamics.
The research also sheds light on how humans evolved to cooperate in large societies. By leveraging memory and adaptability, humans have developed the capacity to work together effectively, even under uncertain circumstances. “We plan to further explore these findings in real-world settings, such as schools or companies, to better understand how factors like culture, leadership, and individual personalities influence group behavior,” says Akaishi. “Our work aims to provide practical strategies for creating more harmonious and productive communities.”
Imagine logging into your cryptocurrency exchange platform one morning only to find the website down, your funds gone, and no one to answer your questions. This nightmare has been a harsh reality for thousands of traders, with nearly 500 cryptocurrency exchanges having already failed. A new study from the University of Vaasa, Finland, sheds light on the risk factors in cryptocurrency exchanges.
In his study, published in the valued Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions & Money, Assistant Professor Niranjan Sapkota analyses data from 845 cryptocurrency exchanges to investigate why nearly half of these exchanges have collapsed since 2014 and how to predict such defaults. He identifies several key indicators including transparency, centralisation, territorial access, fee structures, coin listings, referral schemes, etc., offering valuable insights into mitigating risks in this evolving market.
When transparency becomes a double-edged sword
Centralised exchanges in developed, transparent, and well-regulated countries, such as United States and Singapore are often perceived as the safest. According to the study, they are surprisingly fragile. This fragility arises from pressures such as stringent regulations, high compliance costs, and advanced infrastructures that fraudsters can exploit for illicit activities. In contrast, developing nations, where cryptocurrency adoption remains under policy debate, face fewer such challenges.
– Even more strikingly, exchanges that allow U.S. customers to trade experience higher probability of default compared to those that restrict U.S. clients, Sapkota adds.
All in all, centralised exchanges, which manage wallet custody on behalf of users similar to how traditional banks manage accounts, have a higher risk of default than decentralised exchanges (DEXs), where users retain self-custody of their assets and conduct transactions directly on the blockchain. DEXs have a 31.2% lower probability of failure compared to centralised platforms, as their distributed structure mitigates risks related to fraud, operational mismanagement, and liquidity crises.
Warning signs: high fees, limited coin listings and poor ratings
According to the study, high withdrawal fees often signal financial instability. Defaulted exchanges charged withdrawal fees on average 1.5 times higher than operational ones.
Furthermore, exchanges offering a wide variety of cryptocurrencies and maintaining high user ratings are more likely to survive. A diverse range of cryptocurrencies attracts a larger user base and ensures steady revenue streams whereas high user ratings typically reflect strong operational practices. The study also indicated that exchanges with referral incentives are less likely to default.
– So, next time a friend shares a legitimate crypto exchange referral link, don’t dismiss it as mere bonus hunting, says Dr. Sapkota.
Robust results for creating a safer crypto ecosystem
This cutting-edge research bridges a critical knowledge gap in the emerging field of cryptocurrency exchange risk, offering the knowledge needed to approach the market with greater confidence, and actionable solutions for more secure blockchain-based digital asset trading platforms.
The study also highlights the effectiveness of traditional statistical methods, such as logit and probit models, in predicting cryptocurrency exchange bankruptcies, achieving an accuracy rate of approximately 81%. Cutting-edge machine learning techniques, including Random Forest, Support Vector Machine, and Stacked Ensemble, validate these findings.
– Policy makers can leverage these findings to design policies that protect users and strengthen market stability. Investors and traders can learn to spot critical red flags – such as poor ratings, excessive withdrawal fees, limited coin offerings, centralised exchanges, and U.S. client access – to avoid unreliable platforms and safeguard investments, Sapkota explains the applications of his research.
Further information
Sapkota, N. (2025) The Crypto Collapse Chronicles: Decoding Cryptocurrency Exchange Defaults. Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions & Money. Vol. 99, article 102093.
A star and a black hole orbit each other closely: mass from the star is captured by the black hole. As a consequence of this, a pair of jets launch away from the black hole.
Credit: Science Communication Lab for MPIK/H.E.S.S.
The production and acceleration of the highest energetic cosmic rays (charged particles) are still one of the biggest mysteries in astroparticle physics.
Very efficient acceleration of cosmic particles seems to happen in the jets of microquasars. However, up until now this was only observed in rare high-mass-microquasar systems.
Researcher have now for the first time found evidence of particle acceleration in the much more abundant low mass-systems, with significant implications for the estimated contribution of microquasars as a group to the cosmic ray content of our Galaxy
Our home planet is bombarded with particles from outer space all the time. And while we are mostly familiar with the rocky meteorites originating from within our solar system that create fascinating shooting stars in the night sky, it’s the smallest particles that help scientists to understand the nature of the universe. Subatomic particles such as electrons or protons arriving from interstellar space and beyond are one of the fastest particles known in the universe and known as cosmic rays.
The origins and the acceleration mechanisms of the most energetic of these cosmic particles remains one of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics. Fast-moving matter outflows (or “jets”) launched from black holes would be an ideal site for particle acceleration, but the details on how and under which conditions acceleration processes can occur are unclear. The most powerful jets inside our Galaxy occur in microquasars: systems composed by a stellar-mass black hole and a “normal” star. The pair orbit each other, and, once they are close enough, the black hole starts to slowly swallow its companion. As a consequence of this, jets are launched from the region close to the black hole.
In the past couple of years there has been growing evidence that microquasar jets are efficient particle accelerators. It is however unclear how much they contribute, as a group, to the total amount of cosmic rays in the Galaxy. The answer to this question requires understanding if all microquasars are able to accelerate particles or only a lucky few.
Microquasars are usually classified depending on the mass of the star in the system into either “low-mass” or “high-mass” systems, with lower-mass systems being much more abundant. However, up until now evidence of particle acceleration was only found for the high-mass systems. For example, the microquasar SS 433, which was recently revealed to be one of the most powerful particle accelerators in the Galaxy, contains a star with mass approximately ten times that of the Sun. Consequently, it was generally believed that low-mass microquasars were not powerful enough to produce gamma-rays. Dr. Laura Olivera-Nieto from the Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik in Heidelberg, Germany (MPIK) and Dr. Guillem MartÃ-Devesa from the Università di Trieste, Italy have now made a discovery that shakes this paradigm. They used 16 years of data from the Large Area Telescope detector onboard NASA’s satellite Fermi to reveal a faint gamma-ray signal consistent with the position of GRS 1915+105, a microquasar with a star smaller than the Sun. The gamma-ray signal is measured to have energies higher than 10 GeV, indicating that the system could accelerate particles to even higher energies.
The observations favor a scenario in which protons are accelerated in the jets, after which they escape and interact with nearby gas to produce gamma-ray photons. In the paper, published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, they also use data from the Nobeyama 45-meter radio telescope in Japan, which indicates that there is enough gas material around the source for this scenario.
This result shows that even microquasars hosting a low-mass star are capable of particle acceleration. Because this is the most numerous class, this finding has significant implications for the estimated contribution of microquasars as a group to the cosmic ray content of our Galaxy. However, more detections and multi-wavelength studies will be required in order to further narrow down why some systems accelerate particles efficiently but not all.
Persistent GeV Counterpart to the Microquasar GRS 1915+105
Article Publication Date
28-Jan-2025
Global Young Academy members and alumni publish Nature article exploring academic success in 121 countries
Researchers from the Global Young Academy (GYA) Scientific Excellence working group have published an article in the journal Nature examining the criteria used to measure success in academia
28 January 2025 – Researchers from the Global Young Academy (GYA) Scientific Excellence working group have published an article in the journal Nature examining the criteria used to measure success in academia.
Having carried out a first truly global analysis of 532 policies adopted by institutions or government agencies from 121 countries on the promotion to the post of (full) professor, the authors found that publication and citation metrics are not uncommon, but surprisingly, policies affecting approximately three-quarters of researchers around the globe do not contain an explicit reference to citations. Rather, mentoring, administrative responsibilities, as well as contributions to the field or scientific community frequently play a role.
Unlike previous studies that focused on the prominence of criteria, the findings from this publication result from an approach that looked for both commonalities and differences, as well as the clustering of criteria within given policies.
This approach revealed four characteristic profiles of assessment – those considering (1) output metrics, (2) visibility & engagement, (3) career development, and (4) outcomes & impact.
GYA alumnus Martin Dominik (University of St Andrews, United Kingdom) an initiator of the study, points out that “Research institutions around the world are not identical and interchangeable, criteria differ, and anyone interested in a job in academia should be well aware of specificities.”
The pervasiveness of evaluation metrics means that universities are under pressure by rankings that set their own criteria. Still, some adopted assessment criteria are quite contrary to what an institution wants to achieve and some particularly reward bad practices, including fraud and anti-social behavior within the research community.
Many differences were found between countries, with simple publication and citation metrics being particularly popular in upper middle-income countries, aspiring to close the gap to stronger economies. Such metrics have a clear appeal due to providing an easy and straightforward way to measure progress or success. But these lose purpose on failing to align with goals that adequately serve society in the specific environment.
Moreover, many popular metrics come with systemic disadvantages for less-developed countries and researchers working there. Focusing on those as measures of success results in engaging in a competition that cannot be won and staying behind forever, rather than embracing opportunities based on specific strengths that enable leaping ahead.
Building assessment around normative career paths ignores that candidates faced different challenges under different circumstances and within different environments. Such an approach also creates substantial obstacles to inter-sectoral mobility across academia, industry, government, and not-for-profit organisations.
Evaluation practices that are shaped by a universal “excellence” narrative not only fail to support the specific goals of institutions, but moreover restrict academic diversity and reinforce Global North-South inequalities.
GYA Co-Chair Yensi Flores Bueso (University College Cork/University of Washington, Ireland/United States), concludes “I hope that this work provides a foundation to rethink policies so that they foster equity, inclusivity, and research integrity as fundamental pillars of our research culture, and that consequently science can serve as a common good for humanity as a whole.”
About the Global Young Academy The vision of the GYA is science for all; science for the future, and its mission is to give a voice to young scientists and researchers around the world. The GYA, founded in 2010, is an independent science academy of 200 outstanding early- to mid-career researchers from six continents who are selected from across disciplines based on their academic excellence and commitment to engage with society. GYA members serve five-year terms, and the GYA presently counts members and alumni from around 100 countries. The GYA administrative Office is publicly funded and hosted at the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.
Contact person for the media:James.Curtiss@globalyoungacademy.net
