Electric vehicles (EVs) are crucial for sustainable transport, but their environmental benefit depends heavily on when they charge. Charging during periods when the grid relies on fossil fuels can significantly increase their carbon footprint. New research from Multimedia University reveals that "carbon-aware" charging strategies can unlock substantial emission reductions simply by optimizing charging times.

The study, led by Md Sabbir Hossen and Gobbi Ramasamy from Multimedia University, quantifies the real-world carbon emission reduction potential of smart EV charging. Researchers reconstructed hourly residential charging data and combined it with time-varying grid carbon intensity from the Malaysian Peninsula power system. They then evaluated a reinforcement learning-based carbon-aware smart charging strategy, comparing its performance against both uncontrolled charging and an intelligent but carbon-unaware charging approach, all while delivering identical total energy.

The Power of Carbon Awareness

The findings are compelling: while intelligent charging without carbon awareness failed to reduce total carbon emissions, the carbon-aware strategy achieved a statistically significant reduction of approximately 1.62%. This crucial difference comes from proactively shifting charging demand away from periods when grid electricity is most carbon-intensive. Specifically, evening peak hours were found to be approximately 18% more carbon-intensive than off-peak periods, making targeted load shifting highly effective.

Non-line-of-sight (NLOS) imaging enables recovery of hidden scenes but is constrained by a speed-resolution trade-off in conventional scanning systems. We propose a scanning-free approach based on laser reflective tomography, using a diffuse relay surface as a natural beam expander and requiring only single-point detection. This method achieves twofold higher resolution and 91-fold faster imaging, and enables 3.3 km long-range reconstruction with 3 cm resolution in just 3 minutes.

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are often linked with oxidative damage. However, they are essential for cell signalling. A new study highlights their crucial role in plant development and morphogenesis. Using the liverwort Marchantia polymorpha, researchers found that disrupting the two genes responsible for producing ROS molecules led to disrupted plant growth and formation of disordered cellular masses. The study reveals a fundamental mechanism connecting cell division, tissue structure, and plant development.

The academic significance of this study has been highly recognized internationally, as evidenced by the simultaneous publication of a highlighted Dispatch article in the same journal by Professor Christine Foyer (University of Edinburgh, UK), a world-leading authority in plant reactive oxygen research.

Plant development: RBOH genes

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982226004641

Nanomedicines often acquire a protein corona in the bloodstream before reaching the brain. A new Perspective in Science Bulletin argues that this evolving layer should be engineered as a programmable interface that can guide recognition, transcytosis and release across the blood-brain barrier.

A research group at the UCO has developed two methods for applying graphene to metal surfaces using plasma at atmospheric pressure