Feed aggregator

• Mycelium might power electronics someday, if it stops biodegrading before the job is done
• The split-gill mushroom’s extracellular matrix may be the key to future green batteries
• Scientists dream of compostable batteries, but controlling fungal behavior remains a major challenge

Researchers from Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, are exploring the potential of fungal mycelium to create a compact, biodegradable battery.

Their goal is to use mycelium to produce “fungal paper” for battery electrodes - a concept that, according to researcher Ashutosh Sinha, remains in the experimental phase.

“We want to produce a compact, biodegradable battery whose electrodes consist of a living 'fungal paper,’” Sinha states, emphasizing that this vision is still a dream for now.

The dream of biodegradable batteries

The idea of a biodegradable battery made from living materials is ambitious. The team is working with the mycelium of the split-gill mushroom, a fungus known for its unique mechanical and biological properties.

This fungus is naturally biodegradable and, when combined with its extracellular matrix, produces a material with promising potential for sustainable applications in technology.

The aim is to develop a system that decomposes without releasing harmful waste - unlike conventional electronic devices - by using the natural properties of the material.

Empa researchers are now examining how the tensile strength of mycelium and its sensitivity to moisture can be applied in components like biodegradable sensors and batteries.

Working with living materials brings notable challenges. Mycelium’s biodegradable nature is both an advantage and a limitation.

On one hand, it could significantly reduce the environmental impact of batteries. On the other, its tendency to degrade raises concerns about its longevity and reliability in electronic devices.

Living materials also respond to their environments, making it difficult to predict or control their behavior consistently.

“Biodegradable materials always react to their environment. We want to find applications where this interaction is not a hindrance but maybe even an advantage,” said Empa’s Gustav Nyström.

The idea of a compact, biodegradable battery with fungal paper electrodes remains conceptual, and one of the biggest challenges will be refining the material to meet performance standards required in modern electronics.

Nevertheless, it represents a promising step toward more sustainable and environmentally conscious electronics.

You might also like

• Ten years of OSSRA: what a decade of data tells us about the state of open source security
• A third of enterprises have been breached despite increased cybersecurity investment
• GlobalX airline is helping Trump deportations hit by cyberattack

• A Greek couple thought it would be fun to use ChatGPT as a fortune-teller and have it "read" coffee grounds in their cups
• ChatGPT claimed the husband was cheating with someone whose name starts with E
• The wife is now filing for divorce over the AI tasseography response

A woman in Greece is divorcing her husband after ChatGPT played fortune teller and claimed her husband was cheating on her. According to a Greek City Times report, the couple asked the AI chatbot to look at a photo of the grounds left behind in her husband's cup of Greek coffee and practice tasseography, the ancient art of divining present secrets or future fates based on patterns left behind in tea leaves or coffee.

After looking at the residue at the bottom of their cups, ChatGPT had some shockingly specific things to say. According to the report, the AI claimed to see that the husband was secretly fantasizing about a woman whose name started with an “E” and was fated to begin an affair with her. In case that wasn't enough, ChatGPT's response to the woman’s own cup was to claim that the affair had already started.

Some people take fortune-telling seriously, but usually only from humans practicing divination. But what the husband saw as a quirky, funny moment, his wife saw as a serious and accurate description of reality. She told her husband to leave, announced to her children that she was ending her marriage, and served him with legal papers three days later.

Oracular AI

As a legal matter, it's hard to say how a judge will view this. There's no real precedent for citing a “robot oracle” as evidence of infidelity in a court of law anywhere (though there is one about declaring a house is haunted before you sell it in New York State). But what’s fascinating isn’t the legalities so much as what it says about culture.

Tasseography isn’t some novelty party trick; it's thousands of years old and practiced across coffee and tea-drinking cultures from Turkey to China and beyond. The idea that symbols and swirls in a cup could reveal your fate is a perfect example of how people see stories in randomness, whether a constellation or coffee residue.

That some people want to outsource mystic rituals to AI feels almost predetermined. This reported Greek marital strife is arguably a good reason not to do so, or at least not to call it wisdom. And it's not like ChatGPT actually knows how to read coffee grounds. It wasn’t trained on tasseography. What it can do is make educated guesses based on the patterns it sees in an image and what people have said about similar shapes or symbols on the internet. In other words, making stuff up in a convincing tone, just like a human would.

It turns out that a convincing tone is all it takes for some people. And it's not like this is the first instance. Tarot card reading with ChatGPT was an early demonstration of how flexible the AI could be in its activities. The same goes for making astrology charts and palm reading. But if you stop treating it like entertainment and like a real psychic answer, it can cause real emotional damage.

Then again, if your spouse is willing to believe an AI chatbot claiming psychic powers over your own contradictions, the issue might not be about the technology. So go ahead and ask ChatGPT to read your coffee grounds if you want a laugh. But maybe don't act like you're in a mashup of Black Mirror meets My Big Fat Greek Wedding and run out the door. Sometimes, your coffee is just coffee. And the swirl at the bottom of the cup is not the ghost of a digital Cassandra.

You might also like

• ChatGPT crosses a new AI threshold by beating the Turing test
• AI took a huge leap in IQ, and now a quarter of Gen Z thinks AI is conscious
• ChatGPT model matchup - I pitted OpenAI's o3, o4-mini, GPT-4o, and GPT-4.5 AI models against each other and the results surprised me

The outage in Colorado comes amid increasing scrutiny on the nation's main aviation agency following outages at Newark Liberty International Airport in recent weeks.

(Image credit: David Zalubowski)

TikTok hasn't published a list of its advertisers, a requirement that lets users spot scam advertisements.

If approved, the move would be the first time Guard troops at the national level have been asked to assist in the removal of migrants in the U.S. without legal status.

(Image credit: Scott Olson)

While it's common for U.S. presidents to visit churches, only a few have made official visits to mosques.

(Image credit: Brendan Smialowski)

Enjoy the summer days without the fatigue with these 5 tips gathered by our experts.

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 439 for May 16.

Hints and answers for Connections for May 16, No. 705.

Here are hints and the answer for today's Wordle No. 1,427 for May 16.

Meta shared multiple announcements for Global Accessibility Awareness Day.

The Trump Administration has a new plan for delivering aid to Palestinians in Gaza. Israel has blocked all food, fuel and medicine for more than ten weeks, accusing Hamas of stealing aid meant for civilians. The U.S. says their plan will address those concerns, but experts worry the plan could set a bad precedent. We learn more.

Collagen and collagen peptides are highly recommended supplements for improving the look, feel and elasticity of your skin. But which one is right for you?

Affordability, availability and speed are all available to Colorado Springs residents when it comes to picking a new ISP. These are our top choices for the area.

Nintendo's First West Coast Store is a Warp Pipe to Whimsy and Delightful Gamer Decor.

Mineral sunscreens are a chemical-free way to protect your skin from harmful sun rays. We found the best options for a range of skin types and budgets.

The popular cryptocurrency exchange will reimburse you for stolen crypto, but you'll need to secure your personal information.

The partnership lets you browse and buy from one interface -- which is convenient, but be cautious.

A pair of U.K. scholars discovered the mislabled document in Harvard Law School's digital archives. The university bought it for just $27.50 in 1946. It turned out to be an authentic copy dating to 1300.

(Image credit: Lorin Granger)

Max will become HBO Max again this summer, Warner Bros. Discovery said this week — two years after the name change that hasn't stuck. Here's what to know about the rebrand (and some others of note).

(Image credit: Jakub Porzycki)