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JoeMerchant writes:

According to the researchers, the new version of Maxwell's demon [1] could have consequences in self-organization and selection processes that occur during biological evolution. For instance, this device could be relevant in the regulation of biological networks in generation, transmission and transduction of signals through cell membranes.

The experimental testing has been conducted in a system of optical tweezers, which enables the manipulation of a molecule each time, in this case a DNA molecule. With the right force on this structure, it is possible to unfold it, but if the force is small enough, the unfolded state becomes rare, so it finds the precise moment it was looking for. When the molecule is in a rare state, it has more energy and it is possible to use it. "The rarer the episode, the harder for us to find it, but the more energy we can get from it," notes Ribezzi.

Meanwhile, the University of Zurich is playing with Peltier devices in kitchen scale to claim free cooling that you can measure without expensive equipment:

The researchers have now shown for the first time that this kind of thermal oscillating circuit can also be operated "passively", i.e. with no external power supply. Thermal oscillations still occurred and, after a while, heat flowed directly from the colder copper to a warmer heat bath with a temperature of 22°C, without being temporarily transformed into another form of energy. Despite this, the authors were also able to show that the process does not actually contradict any laws of physics. To prove it, they considered the change in entropy of the whole system and showed that it increased with time—fully in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics.

Cool.

[1] [Editor's Comment] Maxwell's demon is a machine proposed by James Clerk Maxwell in 1867. The hypothetical machine would use thermal fluctuations to obtain energy, apparently violating the second principle of thermodynamics.

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