Tech

The world's soils could store an extra 8 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases, helping to limit the impacts of climate change, research suggests.

Adopting the latest technologies and sustainable land use practices on a global scale could allow more emissions to be stored in farmland and natural wild spaces, the study shows.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn., April 6, 2016 -- Researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have found a potential path to further improve solar cell efficiency by understanding the competition among halogen atoms during the synthesis of sunlight-absorbing crystals.

Berkeley, CA --State renewables portfolio standards, known as RPS policies, have contributed to more than half of all renewable electricity growth in the United States since 2000. Most state RPS requirements will continue to rise through at least 2020, if not beyond, and collectively these policies will require substantial further growth in U.S. renewable electricity supplies. These findings are part of a new annual status report on state RPS policies, from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

Solar cells made of artificial metallic crystalline structures called perovskites have shown great promise in recent years. Now Stanford University scientists have found that applying pressure can change the properties of these inexpensive materials and how they respond to light.

"Our results suggest that we can increase the voltages of perovskite solar cells by applying external pressure," said Hemamala Karunadasa, an assistant professor of chemistry at Stanford. "We also observed a dramatic increase in the electronic conductivity of these promising materials at high pressures."

As renewable energy sources grow, so does the demand for new ways to store the resulting energy at low-cost and in environmentally friendly ways. Now scientists report in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters a first-of-its-kind development toward that goal: a rechargeable battery driven by bacteria.

COLLEGE STATION -- An enzyme responsible for making hydrocarbons has been discovered by Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientists studying a common green microalga called Botryococcus braunii.

The study, published in the current issue of the journal Nature Communications, could enable scientists to use the enzyme in a plant to make large amounts of fuel-grade oil, according to Dr. Tim Devarenne, AgriLife Research biochemist in College Station and lead scientist on the team.

EPFL and UNIGE scientists have developed a microchip using graphene that could help wireless telecommunications share data at a rate that is ten times faster than currently possible. The results are published today in Nature Communications.

"Our graphene based microchip is an essential building block for faster wireless telecommunications in frequency bands that current mobile devices cannot access," says EPFL scientist Michele Tamagnone.

Graphene acts like polarized sunglasses

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (April 6, 2016) -- A pioneering technique significantly reduces phantom limb pain--chronic pain emanating from the site of amputated limbs--according to findings presented at the Society of Interventional Radiology's 2016 Annual Scientific Meeting.

The study indicates that interventional radiologists applying cryoablation therapy, a minimally invasive targeted treatment using cold blasts, show promise in improving the quality of life for patients suffering phantom limb pain.

Public health interventions that require individuals to invest fewer individual personal and psychological resources are likely to be most effective and equitable; such "low-agency" approaches should therefore be central to public health action on diet and obesity, according to Jean Adams and colleagues from the Centre for Diet and Activity Research and MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, UK.

Scientists at the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have been able to pinpoint for the first time what happens during a key manufacturing process of silicon solar cells.

A finely tuned carbon nanotube thin film has the potential to act as a thermoelectric power generator that captures and uses waste heat, according to researchers at the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).

BOSTON (April 5, 2016)-- Children are far from meeting national guidelines for physical activity, and girls are at greatest risk of falling short of recommendations according to a study measuring the physical activity of 453 schoolchildren in Massachusetts during a one-week period. Led by researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine and the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, the study examined children's activity patterns during school-time and out-of-school, compared to national recommendations.

IMPERIAL VALLEY, CA - As vegetable growers face a lack of skilled farm labor and higher production costs, they are searching for effective, lower-cost mechanical means of getting their products to market. In a study in the February 2016 issue of HortTechnology, researchers looked at the feasibility of using automated thinners in romaine lettuce production. Their results showed that automated thinning increased plant size and uniformity, and "makes it possible for growers to increase plant population and crop yield by optimizing in-row spacing."

Many phenomena in physics, though well-known, are not necessarily widely understood. That's the case with thermoelectricity, which harnesses waste heat by coupling heat flux and electric current. However, understanding such phenomena is important in order to leave the door open for discovering novel manifestations of them. Thus, even today physicists working in the area of thermoelectricity continue to ask fundamental questions about the underlying physical process.

UPTON, NY--Using a highly controlled deposition technique, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have synthesized ultrathin films containing multiple samples of a copper-oxide compound to study the compound's electronic behavior at near absolute zero, or minus 459 degrees Fahrenheit.