2026

Can batteries last a lifetime? The science behind battery longevity

Martins Obialor

Most people notice the batteries in their devices subtly aging. A phone that once lasted a whole day now struggles to survive until evening. A laptop that once powered through a long workday now requires a charger by noon. These small inconveniences raise the question: are we truly designing batteries to last?   Battery lifetime is often discussed from the perspective of convenience, yet its implications extend far beyond that. Shorter battery lifetimes contribute to broader concerns surrounding sustainability, landfill accumulation, resource consumption and the financial cost of replacing devices and batteries.  Despite these everyday experiences with aging devices, the battery industry continues to report […]

A day in the life of an EEG researcher: Brainwaves and bionic mermaids

Sarah Haggett

  So, what is EEG anyway? How does it work?  EEG stands for electroencephalogram (no wonder we say EEG instead!). When broken down from its Greek origins, (electro-, encephalo-, and -gram), electroencephalogram literally means electricity-brain-written record. Brain activity is a result of electrical and chemical signaling, and these signals can be recorded with specialized equipment (and then stored as data, in research, on a computer).  Your brain is only 2% of your […]

The fly that rewrote biology: How Drosophila melanogaster became the tiny giant of science

Tiara Mulder

There is a good chance your first introduction to fruit flies was not in a textbook, a laboratory or a Nobel Prize-winning discovery. It was probably beside a banana. A piece of fruit sits on the counter one day too long, and suddenly a tiny cloud of flies appears. To most people, fruit flies are simply an inconvenience. To scientists, […]