Tech
"When eco-friendly, inexpensive, versatile, and efficient solar cells are developed, all thermal and nuclear power plants will disappear, and solar cells installed over the ocean or in outer space will power our world," says Professor Dong-Seon Lee of the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in Korea. His highly optimistic view of the future mirrors the visions of many researchers involved in the effort to improve solar cells.
WASHINGTON, October 26, 2020 -- The continued increase in COVID-19 infection around the world has led scientists from many different fields, including biomedicine, epidemiology, virology, fluid dynamics, aerosol physics, and public policy, to study the dynamics of airborne transmission.
In Physics of Fluids, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Mississippi used a model to understand airborne transmission that is designed to be accessible to a wide range of people, including nonscientists.
Actin is among the most abundant proteins in cells, and it has many jobs--from giving the cell its very shape and structure to managing networks of proteins crucial to numerous cellular functions. Without it, the fragile fundamental unit of life would crumble.
A simple process for depositing silicon oxide onto silicon wafers could be a great step forward for making silicon-based solar cells. Researchers at KAUST have used a method called plasma processing in a chamber filled with carbon dioxide gas.
The semiconducting element silicon is the material of choice for around 90 percent of solar cell production. When the silicon is doped with selected impurities, the energy from sunlight can kick electrons into generating a flow of electric current.
Increasingly, biologists are turning to computational modeling to make sense of complex systems. In neuroscience, researchers are adapting the kinds of algorithms used to forecast the weather or filter spam from your email to seek insight into how the brain's neural networks process information.
SAN ANTONIO -- Oct. 26, 2020 -- A new study authored by Southwest Research Insti-tute planetary scientist Dr. Tracy Becker discusses several new views of the asteroid 16 Psyche, including the first ultraviolet observations. The study, which was published today in The Planetary Science Journal and presented at the virtual meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences, paints a clearer view of the asteroid than was previously available.
Boulder, Colo., USA: Microplastics (plastics While microplastics in groundwater likely affect human health, only a handful of studies have examined the abundance and movement of microplastics in groundwater. This gap means the potential for adverse health effects remains largely unknown.
Boulder, Colorado, USA: The San Andreas fault, which runs along the western coast of North America and crosses dense population centers like Los Angeles, California, is one of the most-studied faults in North America because of its significant hazard risk. Based on its roughly 150-year recurrence interval for magnitude 7.5 earthquakes and the fact that it's been over 300 years since that's happened, the southern San Andreas fault has long been called "overdue" for such an earthquake. For decades, geologists have been wondering why it has been so long since a major rupture has occurred.
The designers of solar cells know their creations must contend with a wide range of temperatures and all sorts of weather conditions -- conditions that can impact their efficiency and useful lifetime.
BOSTON - A new artificial intelligence-based score considers multiple factors to predict the prognosis of individual patients with COVID-19 seen at urgent care clinics or emergency departments. The tool, which was created by investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), can be used to rapidly and automatically determine which patients are most likely to develop complications and need to be hospitalized.
"Wound healing is one of the most complex biological processes," write Professor Kazumitsu Sugiura and Dr Kenta Saito from Fujita Health University, Japan, in their article recently published in Nature's Scientific Reports. As countless researchers in the field have noted, several automated coordinated biological activities take place during wound healing, from stopping the bleeding to cleaning out pathogens and debris to growing back and strengthening tissue.
What role do the lymphatic vessels play in the metastasis of cancer cells? Scientists from the German Cancer Research Center and the Mannheim Medical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg developed a method to investigate this question in mice. The aim of the work was to identify new ways to block the dangerous colonization and spread of tumor cells. The researchers discovered that an antibody against a signaling molecule of the vascular system causes the lymphatic vessels in the tumor to die, suppresses metastasis and thus prolongs the survival of the mice.
A fish school is a striking demonstration of synchronicity. Yet centuries of study have left a basic question unanswered: do fish save energy by swimming in schools? Now, scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior (MPI-AB), the University of Konstanz, and Peking University have provided an answer that has long been suspected but never conclusively supported by experiments: yes.
Through an effort to characterize the color receptors in the eyes of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, University of Minnesota researchers discovered the spectrum of light it can see deviates significantly from what was previously recorded.
What do you have on your 2020 Bingo Card? Wildfire, heat wave, global pandemic, or flooding? If it's flooding, then it's a good bet it will happen in many places in the U.S. sometime during the year.
People who live in areas designated as river flood zones often seek to raise their homes. Now a team of Penn State researchers suggests that considering uncertainties can improve decisions.