Batteries that last five times longer in the offing
A new discovery regarding longer lasting batteries could give smartphones and cars a single charge that can work five times longer than current ones. A team led by Dallas Kyeongjae Cho researcher from the University of Texas discovered new catalyst materials for lithium-air batteries that jumpstart efforts at expanding battery capacity.
“There is huge promise in lithium-air batteries. However, despite the aggressive research being done by groups all over the world, those promises are not being delivered in real life,” said Cho, professor of materials science and engineering. “Our collaboration team have demonstrated that this problem can be solved. Hopefully, this discovery will revitalise research in this area and create momentum for further development,” he added in a paper published in the journal Nature Energy.
Lithium-air (or lithium-oxygen) batteries “breathe” oxygen from the air to power the chemical reactions that release electricity, rather than storing an oxidiser internally like lithium-ion batteries do. Due to this, lithium-air batteries boast an energy density comparable to gasoline — with theoretical energy densities as much as 10 times that of current lithium-ion batteries, giving them tremendous potential for storage of renewable energy, particularly in applications such as mobile devices and electric cars.
In new research, the team focused on the electrolyte catalysts inside the battery, which, when combined with oxygen, create chemical reactions that create battery capacity. The researchers created a new catalyst for the lithium-air battery called “dimethylphenazine” which possesses higher stability and increased voltage efficiency. “The catalyst should enable the lithium-air battery to become a more practical energy storage solution,” Zheng said.
Cho said that practical attempts to increase lithium-air battery capacity so far have resulted in low efficiency and poor rate performance, instability and unwanted chemical reactions. However, it could take five to 10 years before the research translates into new batteries that can be used in consumer devices and electric vehicles.
IANS
Doom review: Heavenly
Modern FPS games differ from classic FPS games in that modern games are cover shooters. You take a few shots, dive into cover, and recover your health and repeat, ad infinitum. Classic FPS games had a kind of flow and rhythm to them. You had to keep moving to stay alive, health wouldn’t regenerate and combat boiled down to one rule: Kill anything that moves.
While you can argue that the modern shooter is the result of over 20 years of evolution, I still love the raw simplicity and breakneck pace of the classic shooter.
Enter Doom, the very definition of a classic shooter. The 1995 originalbrought with it fast-paced, frenetic action and the first glimpses of a real multiplayer mode. The pseudo-3D graphics were mind-boggling at the time and the level design, exceptional. The game managed to keep me glued to my seat as I waded through wave after wave of demon spawn with a big grin plastered on my face.
2004’s Doom 3 took a step-back from all of this. It tried to enhance the horror element of the franchise and bring a more measured pace to the combat. It did succeed, after a fashion, but to many ardent fans, it seemed to have missed the mark.
The latest Doom does something different. It attempts to meld the frenzied pace of the original game with the modern multiplayer sensibilities of today. Does it succeed? Yes and no.
Doom’s single-player is simply glorious. There’s no other word for it. You wake up with your hands chained to the sides of a sarcophagus of sorts. You rip off the chains, stick your finger into the single eye-socket of anunwilling and smash its skull on the side of your sarcophagus. You hop out, grab a gun, blow a few heads off and pick up your enshrined, green suit of armour on the way out.
You will then spend the next 6-8 hours shooting, punching and dismembering the denizens of hell with joyous, reckless abandon. That reckless part isn’t entirely true since dismembering is very closely related to your health. Read on to learn more.
Enabling this pace are a couple of mechanics. First, you gain health by glory-killing monsters. Second, you gain ammo by subjecting demons to the working end of a chainsaw. Your health and ammo are both limited and the only way to survive is to keep fighting. In any other game, these mechanics may have ended badly. In Doom, they fit right into the flow of combat.
Glory killing involves “staggering” monsters (they’ll turn blue when staggered), giving you a window of opportunity to catch them off guard and smash them to bits with your bare hands. We’re not exaggerating. You literally smash the monsters to bits. Rip an arm off and use it to smash the monster’s face in, rip out a claw and gouge out the monster’s eye, literally punch the heart out of an imp, the list is endless.
From start to finish you’re double-jumping, circle-strafing, glory-killing and chainsawing demon spawn and it never gets old.
There are a bunch of secrets to be uncovered and Doom dolls and classic levels to find. But take my advice and just avoid all of that in your first play through. The secrets will sometimes yield a horde of ammo and maybe a new weapon or upgrade, but stumbling across them is the best way to go across finding them.
Specifically hunting for secrets feels like a chore in a game that’s all about the frenzy and flow of combat. Sure, you need to find upgrades for your weapons and you do need ammo and health, but your initial play through should yield all weapons and enough upgrades regardless.
You can easily pop back into any level (at a higher difficulty if you wish) at a later time and rummage about for secrets should you choose to do so. There’s no need to find everything in the first run.
If you’re going to be hunting demons, you’re going to be needing guns, and big ones at that. Doom doesn’t disappoint. As a veteran, the assortment of weapons will be very familiar to you. Pistol, shotgun, super shotgun, machine gun, chaingun, link gun, and yes, even the BFG, they’re all there.
Each weapon has an alternate fire-mode that you can pick based on your play style (I fell in love with the turret mode for the chaingun). Want precision? Equip a scope. Want to blow some stuff up? Get a mounted grenade launcher. The choices abound.
The chainsaw is the star here, though. It’s a visceral, brutal killing machine that can saw through baddies in a heartbeat. The likes of the Hell Knight (a.k.a. the Baron of Hell) or the Mancubus don’t stand a chance in front of the mighty chainsaw.
Holding you back from truly unleashing the chainsaw’s raw power is a fuel mechanic. Fuel is limited to a number of cells and each type of demon requires a certain number of cells to finish off. If you don’t have enough fuel, you won’t even damage the demon. Countering that however, is the fact that a chainsawed enemy will yield a monumental amount of ammo.
The chainsaw now moves on from a weapon to be used as a last resort to a strategic choice to be made in the frenzy of combat.
If you’re playing Doom for the plot, there’s something seriously wrong with you. The developers are aware of that as well and certainly do their best to keep the plot as brief as possible. As brief as the plot is, it might just be a tad too brief. There isn’t much story here, but I would have certainly appreciated a more fleshed out ending.
You’ve all played Half-Life by now and must remember the ending conversation with the G-Man. It’s a very short conversation, but the import of that conversation weighed heavily. Without spoiling anything, Doom’s ending is a similar monologue, but without the impact.
Rating 8/10
System Requirements
| Minimum Requirements | Recommended Specifications | |
| Operating System | Windows 7/8.1/10 (64-bit versions) | Windows 7/8.1/10 (64-bit versions) |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-2400/AMD FX-8320 or better | Intel Core i7-3770/AMD FX-8350 or better |
| RAM | 8 GB RAM | 8 GB RAM |
| GPU | NVIDIA GTX 670 2GB/AMD Radeon HD 7870 2GB or better | NVIDIA GTX 970 4GB/AMD Radeon R9 290 4GB or better |
| Storage | 55 GB free HDD space | 55 GB free HDD space |
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