President Zaphod Beeblebrox

Chinese Researchers Report Record for Cheap Iron Battery Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Sciences say they have built a record-lasting all-iron flow battery. A flow battery stores electricity in liquid chemicals that are pumped through the device, rather than inside solid electrodes as lithium-ion batteries do. In this case, both liquids are based on iron, which is cheap, abundant, and not flammable in water. The team reports more than 6,000 charge-discharge cycles in the lab without measurable capacity loss, a record for this type of battery. This is just a lab result, but it could one day matter for storing renewable energy from wind and solar at low cost. Image: Different electrolyte mixtures for the iron flow battery. Source: Wei et al, Advanced Energy Materials (2026): e06734.

Academic Fraud Moves on to Patents A research team with lead at Northwestern University in the United States reports a new type of academic fraud: fake patents. They have found multiple companies which sell credits on UK registered designs to academics, mostly in India, who can use them to boost promotion scores and institutional rankings. UK registered designs are not technically patents. They protect appearance, not function, and are not checked for novelty before registration, which makes them fast and cheap to obtain. The companies sold these off for prices corresponding to roughly $20 to $400 per authorship. Many of the fake patents had long, technical-sounding titles, multiple academic applicants, recycled images, and implausible products, including an alleged artificial intelligence skin-cancer device that appears to be a modified Glock pistol model (see image). Patents, like peer reviewed publications, look impressive in CVs, and many institutions reward them. I have seen this with my own eyes – after my host institution offered a bonus for patent applications (not registrations!), my PhD-advisor promptly applied for a patent to convert garbage into energy with higher dimensional black hole relics (which, for all we know, don’t exist). True story. Image: Illustration of the alleged “ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE POWERED SKIN CANCER INSPECTION DEVICE WITH DESIGN THINKING”.

Jag tilldelades nyss Nordstjärneorden. Detta är inte bara en ära för mig, utan för hela Indiens 1,4 miljarder människor. Det är också en hyllning till alla våra vänner i Sverige som har stärkt relationerna mellan Indien och Sverige och lagt en stark grund. Må vänskapen mellan våra nationer fortsätta att växa. @SwedishPM

Mothers are special #mothersday ❤️

My mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan Harris, came to this country at 19 years old to pursue an education and a life of purpose. Everything my sister and I became began with the love she raised us with and the sacrifices she made. Today, I am thinking of her and wishing a happy Mother's Day to all of the mothers, stepmoms, grandmothers, godmothers, and aunties who shape, inspire, and love us.

Absolutely

Get into your Bible. I'm a mental health therapist, and I charge two hundred bucks an hour. That is average for my profession. People often come to me for anxiety and depression For my Christian clients, the ultimate reason their depression or anxiety goes away isn't because of me, but because by the end of therapy, they are reading their bibles and applying Christian values to their lives. Daily. Read your dusty Bible and your mental health issues will improve.

Standing with the Iranian people in Washington DC

True currency is steadfast friendship

This this this

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Third

💌 For Valentine’s Day, we are sharing a rare letter from George Washington offering marriage advice to his step-granddaughter, Elizabeth Parke Custis. His reflections on love, compatibility, and companionship reveal a tender side of Washington—and the values that shaped his own marriage to Martha.

🪦 Learn about why we lay a wreath at George Washington’s Tomb. You can see wreath layings at the Tomb on special occasions like Washington’s birthday and every day during regular visitation hours: bit.ly/4qePQLV

🌅 Sip, stroll, and savor history! 🍷 Tickets are now on sale for the Spring Wine Festival, May 15–17! This year’s lineup features incredible VA wineries like Barboursville Vineyards, Creek's Edge Winery, and Gray Ghost Vineyards—just to name a few. 🏛️ Explore the Mansion after hours 🎶 Relax with live music 🥂 Sample wines from 20+ Virginia wineries 📅 Tickets go fast—grab yours now at bit.ly/4qxkFup

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Microsoft Makes Breakthrough with “Forever” Storage Microsoft’s research team just announced they’ve managed to read and write data in glass, where it could last for more than ten thousand years. They don’t do this by etching the surface, but instead they write with a laser inside the bulk of the glass in all three dimensions. The laser subtly changes the atomic configuration, so that either the refractive index of the glass is somewhat different or that the propagation of light depends on the polarization, which is called birefringence. To read the information, they just illuminate the glass with LED light in the visible range and scan it with a microscope. They can then identify particular positions by focusing the light in different layers from multiple different directions. This gives them a full 3d reconstruction of the data. The reading and writing in this medium is for now neither fast nor easy, so this is unlikely to hit the consumer market any time soon, but it could become a practical method of archiving data, possibly through cloud access. Figure: Microsoft Research Project Silica Team, Nature 650, 606 (2026)

New particle accelerators can turn nuclear waste into electricity, and cut the radioactive lifetime by 99.7% by converting radioactive isotopes via neutron bombardment This could recycle the entire US commercial used nuclear fuel stockpile in 30 years interestingengineering.com/energy/us-tech…

A story of hope and victory to start your weekend!

सर्वस्व समर्पण उस चेतना की अभिव्यक्ति है, जिसमें राष्ट्र और मानवता सर्वोपरि होती है। अंत्योदय के प्रणेता पंडित दीनदयाल उपाध्याय जी ने भी इसी भावना से देश के जन-जन को सशक्त बनाने के लिए अपना जीवन समर्पित कर दिया। यस्येमे हिमवन्तो महित्वा यस्य समुद्रं रसया सहाहुः। यस्येमाः प्रदिशो यस्य बाहू कस्मै देवाय हविषा विधेम॥