Slow wi-fi is a source of irritation that nearly everyone experiences. Wireless devices in the home consume ever more data, and it’s only growing, and congesting the wi-fi network. Researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology have come up with a surprising solution: a wireless network based on harmless infrared rays. The capacity is not only huge (more than 40Gbit/s per ray) but also there is no need to share since every device gets its own ray of light. This was the subject for which TU/e researcher Joanne Oh received her PhD degree with the ‘cum laude’ distinction last week.

One of the main obstacles in the production of hydrogen through water splitting is that hydrogen peroxide is also formed, which affects the efficiency stability of the reaction and the stability of the production. Dutch and Israelian researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology and the Weizmann Institute have succeeded in controlling the spin of electrons in the reaction and thereby almost fully suppress the production of hydrogen peroxide. They published these findings this week in the Journal of the American Society. The efficient production of hydrogen paves the way towards water splitting by solar energy.

Steel production generates some hundred million tons of steel slag worldwide each year. This giant mountain of leftovers is largely dumped. TU/e professor of building materials, Jos Brouwers, will be working with industrial partners to investigate whether he can make cement out of it. If he succeeds, more CO2 emissions can be cut than is produced yearly by all the traffic in the Netherlands.Steel slag is produced by the conversion of raw iron into steel – around 125 million tons of it per year. Much of that is dumped and only a small portion used, in embankments. That’s a shame, professor Jos Brouwers says, because the mineralogical composition very closely resembles that of cement. It contains the same components, but in different ratios. And it is public knowledge that the cement industry emits a very high amount of CO2: five percent of the global total. A cement substitute with no extra CO2 emissions would, therefore, be most welcome.

It is a major part of what separates us from the animals, the ability to verbalize our thoughts and understand the verbalizations of others. However, this evolutionary miracle is not exclusive to human beings – other species like dolphins and birds communicate regularly. Humans, however, have taken communication to such an advanced degree that we can verbalize even the most minute detail, and our brains are wired to understand them. Not only are we capable of multiple languages, we also have the capacity for non-verbal sign language. In fact, a recent study out of the University of Rochester focusing on sign language has reached a new conclusion on how the brain is wired for language.