#Light-Powered Contact lenses In a patent granted this month, Google shows off plans to build contact lenses that are powered by
If this voltage is generated by sunlight in a solar cell, then you could store solar energy by generating hydrogen gas.
Firstly, it produces under sun light illumination a photovoltage of almost 0. 5 volts and very high photocurrent densities of up to 38 ma/cm2;
almost all sun light reaches the photoactive chalcopyrite, leading to the observed high photocurrent density and photovoltage comparable with those of a conventional device-grade thin-film solar cell.
"More than 80%of the incident visible sunlight was converted photoelectrically by this composite system into electric current available for the hydrogen generation,
Since before Newton held a prism to a ray of sunlight and saw a spectrum of colour,
#Artificial leaf harnesses sunlight for efficient fuel production Generating and storing renewable energy, such as solar or wind power, is a key barrier to a clean energy economy.
a cost-effective method of producing fuels using only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide, mimicking the natural process of photosynthesis in plants
The photoanode uses sunlight to oxidize water molecules, generating protons and electrons as well as oxygen gas.
converts 10 percent of the energy in sunlight into stored energy in the chemical fuel,
"Our work shows that it is indeed possible to produce fuels from sunlight safely and efficiently in an integrated system with inexpensive components,
HILLS AND POTHOLES Many of these types of flexible electronic devices will rely on thin films of organic materials that catch sunlight
the less efficiently they convert sunlight to electricity; The fix: A new transparent overlay allows light to hit the cells
Their invention shunts away the heat generated by a solar cell under sunlight and cools it in a way that allows it to convert more photons into electricity.
The material is transparent to the visible sunlight that powers solar cells, but captures and emits thermal radiation,
"Solar arrays must face the sun to function, even though that heat is detrimental to efficiency, "Fan said."
"Our thermal overlay allows sunlight to pass through, preserving or even enhancing sunlight absorption, but it also cools the cell by radiating the heat out
and improving the cell efficiency.""A cool way to improve solar efficiency In 2014, the same trio of inventors developed an ultrathin material that radiated infrared heat directly back toward space without warming the atmosphere.
when the sun is beating down. The Stanford team tested their technology on a custom-made solar absorber-a device that mimics the properties of a solar cell without producing electricity-covered with a micron-scale pattern designed to maximize the capability to dump heat
but requires the preservation of the visible spectrum of sunlight for either practical or aesthetic reasons."
resembling little oscillating stars. These starlike excitations are caused by a single magnetic atom put into the layer of superconducting material.
And the area of excitation was shaped like a sixfold electronic"star"with its rays extending along the axis of the crystal lattice of niobium diselenide.
The observed"stars"are more stable and more suitable to creating new topologically protected states.
Developed at A*STAR, the model describes the movement of vibrations called phonons, which are responsible for carrying heat in insulating materials.
such as ultra-sensitive photo detectors to image distant stars, or flexible memory elements which could be used in wearable computers s
The sun is an abundant and practically infinite source of energy, so researchers around the world are racing to create novel approaches to"harvest"clean energy from the sun or transfer that energy to other sources.
This week in the journal Applied Physics Letters("Metamaterial electromagnetic energy harvester with near unity efficiency"),researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada report a novel design for electromagnetic energy harvesting based on
releasing as much energy in a few seconds as the Sun does over its 10 billion year lifetime.
They are thought to be the result of massive stars collapsing into black holes. Their huge luminosity helps astronomers to map out the location of distant galaxies, something the team exploited.
& Astronomy at Stony Brook University, is one outside earths solar system at 100 light years away.
The bright central star has been removed mostly to enable the detection of the exoplanet one million times fainter.
J. Rameau, Udem and C. Marois, NRC Herzberg) The finding could serve as a decoder ring for astronomers to understand how planets formed around our sun
because one of the best ways to learn how our solar system evolved is to look to younger star systems in the earlier phase of development.
which is dedicated to imaging and characterising exoplanets, planets discovered outside of earths solar system. The new planet is called 51 Eridani b. The GPI is a new astronomy instrument operated by an international collaboration headed by Bruce Macintosh, a Professor of Physics in the Kavli Institute at Stanford.
The key to the solar system? What makes 51 Eridani particularly interesting is that it also harbours dust
and the ice grains produced by collisions among asteroids and comets in the Solar system.""Metchev's team conducted a study with data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE TO search for any thermal glow that such dust
who led the WISE study and whose previous work identifying recycled planetary dust, known as debris disks, around close to a hundred other star systems, puts the discovery of the exoplanet in context.
Finding dust around a star is like seeing a large signpost that tells us there might be a planet,
"And more data from the European space agency's Herschel Space observatory reveal that 51 Eridani is surrounded also by a more distant and colder cometary belt, much like the Kuiper belt of comets beyond Neptune in the Solar system."
"The two belts the asteroid and the cometary belt around 51 Eridani fall on either side of the newly discovered planet 51 Eridani b."The overall structure bears striking resemblance to our own Solar system,
therefore seeing what the Solar system resembled at a very young age, around the time when the Earth was still forming."
young planets orbiting bright stars. NASA's Kepler mission indirectly discovers planets by the loss of starlight
when a planet blocks a star.""To detect planets, Kepler sees their shadow; GPI sees their glow,
"The astronomers use adaptive optics to sharpen the image of a star, and then block out the starlight.
the team set out to look for planets orbiting young stars. To date, the astronomers have looked at nearly 100 stars."
"51 Eridani is only 20 million years old, a little more massive than our sun a perfect target,"says James Graham, a professor at UC Berkeley and Project Scientist for GPI.
As far as the cosmic clock is concerned, 20 million years is young for a star,
and this is exactly what made the direct detection of the planet possible, explains Macintosh.""When planets coalesce, material falling into the planet releases energy and heats it up.
Once the astronomers zeroed in on the star, they blocked its light and spotted 51 Eridani b orbiting a little farther away from its parent star than Saturn does from the sun
. Even though the light from the planet is very faint nearly a million times fainter than its star subsequent observations revealed that it is roughly twice the mass of Jupiter.
Other directly-imaged planets are five times the mass of Jupiter or more. In addition to being the faintest planet ever imaged
Previous Jupiter-like exoplanets have shown only faint traces of methane, far different from the heavy methane atmospheres of the gas giants in our solar system.
"All of the exoplanets astronomers have imaged before have atmospheres that look like stars very cool stars, but still stars,"says Macintosh,
who led the construction of GPI and now leads the survey.""This is the first one that really looks like a planet."
"In the atmospheres of the cold giant planets of our solar system carbon is found as methane,
"Since before Newton held a prism to a ray of sunlight and saw a spectrum of colour,
Unlike conventional solar cells that directly absorb sunlight and convert it into electricity, an LSC absorbs the light on a plate embedded with highly efficient light-emitters called lumophores that then re-emit the absorbed light at longer wavelengths, a process known as the Stokes shift.
#Highest efficiency hydrogen production under natural sunlight Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Miyazaki University have produced hydrogen under natural sunlight at an energy conversion efficiency of 24.4,
and it is possible to produce hydrogen under sunlight at a high efficiency with an appropriate system design for each installation,
A sailor will use cues such as the stars or landmarks to determine where their ship is on a map,
Jingchuan Sun, an EM expert in Li's lab, was essential to the success of the work.
"Sun said.""Our lab has expertise and a decade of experience using electron microscopy to study DNA replication,
A Layered Manganese Oxide To Capture Sunlight for Water-Splitting Catalysis"),Assistant professor of Chemical engineering Jose L. Mendoza-Cortes details how this new material efficiently captures sunlight and then,
and it could turn rain water into energy with the help of the sun."But, unlike many other energy sources,
and you do need not a large amount to capture enough sunlight to carry out fuel generation
#Ultrasensitive sensors made from boron-doped graphene Ultrasensitive gas sensors based on the infusion of boron atoms into graphene--a tightly bound matrix of carbon atoms--may soon be possible, according to an international team of researchers
or when the sun goes down remains a challenge, largely due to cost. Now researchers are developing a new battery that could bring the price of storage to more affordable levels.
which protect the organisms from negative effects of sunlight, such as DNA damage. The research also shows that the exact manner in which the photoreceptors bind to the DNA is novel.
In total the team measured outputs across 21 different wavelengths from ultraviolet (characterises younger stars) to the far infrared (characterises younger stars.
or even out of the solar system altogether. Instead of chemical fuel, which is heavy and inefficient, they use an ionic liquid,
From the lab to the stars After creating the DWLS, Escuti looked for potential applications.
his team has provided the astronomers with geometric phase holograms that they have used build advanced coronagraphs--telescopes that can see things close to stars--to study exoplanets beyond our solar system."
"They wanted to redistribute the blazing light of the halo around a star, so that the faint light coming from a planet orbiting that star can be observed with better contrast
--and then analyze the planet's light to learn about its composition and other characteristics,
can be hard to read when the Marine moves between bright sunlight and the shade of a building,
Using the sun instead of fossil fuels to power a desalination plant isn't a totally new idea.
since the sun's rays don't reach that far. But each GENESI node and sensor includes a miniature wind turbine that harvests energy from passing trains.
#Plug Your Toaster Into the Sun Sunport lets you use solar power at homeithout the panels.
but it will have the advantage of being able to continue producing power even after the sun goes down.
The 800 rows follow the sun as it tracks across the heavens, whirring quietly every few minutes as their shadows slip further east.
In contrast, water and sunlight are available in vast abundance. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart and from LMU Munich have created now a material that uses light to produce the versatile energy source hydrogen from water.
What is needed is a substance that directly uses the energy of sunlight to split the hydrogen-oxygen bonds in water.
From the lab bench to practical applications Despite the early success, these materials are still far from being considered for industrial hydrogen generation using water and sunlight.
and hydrogen fuel cells,"said Yugang Sun, a nanoscience scientist in Argonne's Nanoscience and Technology Div."
and offering new conceptual tools that can be applied more broadly in the quest to split water with sunlight.
"Excited electrons When building a sun-capturing electrode, scientists aim to use as much of the solar spectrum as possible to excite electrons in the electrode to move from one state to another,
In contrast to conventional solar photovoltaic cells that produce electricity directly from sunlight, solar thermal generation of energy is developed as a large power plant in
which acres of mirrors precisely reflect sunlight onto a solar receiver. That energy has been used to heat a fluid that in turn drives a turbine to produce electricity.
That 20 percent comes directly from sunlight, which is harvested by a flat solar panel on top of the battery.
#This transparent lithium-ion battery charges itself with sunlight Researchers in Japan have invented a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that can charge itself using sunlight-no solar cell required.
when the battery is exposed to sunlight, it becomes tinted to about 30 percent light transmittance,
they were able to facilitate charging via sunlight or other bright sources of illumination. In testing
when the sun isn't shining. The idea of a lithium-air or lithium-oxygen battery isn't new scientists have known for a while that these types of batteries can hold up to 10 times the charge of today's lithium-ion packs (imagine not having to charge your phone for a whole week.
It works with solar radiation and the cooling is achieved by means of a thermodynamic adsorption-desorption cycle lasting 24 hours.
which plants use the energy in sunlight to synthesize carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. However
"When sunlight is absorbed, photo-excited electron? hole pairs are generated in the silicon and titanium oxide nanowires,
the Berkeley team achieved a solar energy conversion efficiency of up to 0. 38-percent for about 200 hours under simulated sunlight,
and co-authored by Arjun K. Pathak, Mahmud Khan, Karl. A. Gschneidner, Ralph W. Mccallum, Lin Zhou, Kewei Sun, Kevin W. Dennis, Matthew
because of the radiation pressure the tails of comets typically point away from the Sun. Radiation pressure has also been proposed as the propulsion for the solar sails.
under the sunlight, a small portion of solar energy(<1 percent) captured by chlorophyll is emitted as fluorescence.
because it is obscured by the much higher intensity of solar radiation. The group discovered a few wavelengths of light that allow measuring the specific fluorescence signal from photosynthesis. The team's fluorescence measurement system can record radiation at high resolution with a frequency of 5 minutes,
#Molecular cell cycle clock discovered that controls stem cell potency Singapore scientists from A*STAR's Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) have, for the first time,
#Depth-sensing camera gleans 3-D information in bright sunlight as well as darkness Depth-sensing cameras,
the inability to work in bright light, especially sunlight. The key is to gather only the bits of light the camera actually needs.
we're sending a lot more energy to that spot than the energy sent by the sun,
In polar regions of the moon, where the sun is always at a low angle, a vision system that is able to eliminate the glare is essential."
Arraysince before Newton held a prism to a ray of sunlight and saw a spectrum of colour,
#Artificial leaf harnesses sunlight for efficient fuel production Generating and storing renewable energy, such as solar or wind power, is a key barrier to a clean energy economy.
a cost-effective method of producing fuels using only sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide, mimicking the natural process of photosynthesis in plants
The photoanode uses sunlight to oxidize water molecules, generating protons and electrons as well as oxygen gas.
converts 10 percent of the energy in sunlight into stored energy in the chemical fuel,
"Our work shows that it is indeed possible to produce fuels from sunlight safely and efficiently in an integrated system with inexpensive components,
lightweight solar cells track the sun Solar cells capture up to 40 percent more energy when they can track the sun across the sky,
but conventional, motorized trackers are too heavy and bulky for pitched rooftops and vehicle surfaces.
but these roofs would need significant reinforcing to support the weight of conventional sun-tracking systems.
keeping their surfaces more perpendicular to the sun's rays.""The beauty of our design is,
the solar cell would split into tiny segments that would follow the position of the sun in unison."
"Solar cell researchers think of tracking in terms of how much of a solar panel the sun can"see.""When the panel is at an angle,
when the sun's rays are coming in at lower angles, they raise the effective area that is soaking up sunlight.
To explore patterns, the team of engineers worked with paper artist Matthew Shlian, a lecturer in the U-M School of art and Design.
and natural gas using only sunlight. And imagine using those fuels to heat our homes or run our cars without adding any greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
a type of solar power based on the ability of plants to transform sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into sugars.
#Artificial'plants'could fuel the future The developer of a new technology that turns sunlight into liquid fuel,
and natural gas using only sunlight. And imagine using those fuels to heat our homes or run our cars without adding any greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
a type of solar power based on the ability of plants to transform sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into sugars.
Hills and Potholes Many of these types of flexible electronic devices will rely on thin films of organic materials that catch sunlight
the NUS team, led by Associate professor Boon Chuan Low and his postdoctoral fellow Dr Jichao Sun,
the NUS team, led by Associate professor Boon Chuan Low and his postdoctoral fellow Dr Jichao Sun,
#Scientists reveal how stem cells defend against viruses Scientists from the Institute of Molecular and Cell biology (IMCB), a research institute under the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR),
Their invention shunts away the heat generated by a solar cell under sunlight and cools it in a way that allows it to convert more photons into electricity.
The material is transparent to the visible sunlight that powers solar cells, but captures and emits thermal radiation,
"Solar arrays must face the sun to function, even though that heat is detrimental to efficiency, "Fan said."
"Our thermal overlay allows sunlight to pass through, preserving or even enhancing sunlight absorption, but it also cools the cell by radiating the heat out
and improving the cell efficiency.""A cool way to improve solar efficiency In 2014, the same trio of inventors developed an ultrathin material that radiated infrared heat directly back toward space without warming the atmosphere.
when the sun is beating down. The Stanford team tested their technology on a custom-made solar absorber--a device that mimics the properties of a solar cell without producing electricity--covered with a micron-scale pattern designed to maximize the capability to dump heat
but requires the preservation of the visible spectrum of sunlight for either practical or aesthetic reasons."
"Cyanobacteria have adapted to live in ponds that are drenched by sun, blanketed by shade, frozen solid in the winter, not to mention the other organisms with
For instance, when there is a change in temperature due to the car's air-conditioner or heat from the sun,
"explains Wei Sun, a lead author on the paper.""The grown embryoid body is uniform and homogenous,
"continues Wei Sun."However, these don't show the same cell uniformity and homogenous proliferation.""""I think that we've produced a 3-D microenvironment
"concludes Wei Sun."This would promote different cell types developing next to each other --which would lead the way for growing micro-organs from scratch within the lab
Sun Accused of Stealing Planetary Objects from Another Star Technology: Introducing the First Vehicle Powered by Evaporation More Science:
When stars shine they are converting that mass back into energy, as described by Albert Einstein's famous equation E=mc2 (energy=mass x speed of light squared).
additional energy is constantly being generated by stars as they fuse elements like hydrogen and helium together,
such as another star, a planet, or, very occasionally, a telescope mirror.""Astronomers have known that the universe is slowly fading out since the late 1990s.
A Red-hot Young Jupiter Around Distant Star (Infographic) Astronomers have photographed directly a planet not unlike Jupiter orbiting 51 Eridani, a sunlike star 96 light-years from Earth.
The star is young, only 20 million years old (compared with the sun's 4. 6 billion years).
The planet, 51 Eridani b, still glows with the heat of its formation. Scientists used the Gemini Planet Imager, an instrument on the Gemini South telescope in Chile,
The Gemini Planet Imager is designed an instrument specifically for directly imaging exoplanets around distant stars s
a pair of stars in Sagittarius. The team took advantage of an offering for Early Science using the Gemini Planet Imager to study infrared light scattered off dust grains in the disk around the binary system V4046 Sgr.
in our own solar system, says Valerie Rapson of the Rochester Institute of technology, who led the research team.
(or planets) at some 4-12 times the Earth-Sun distance (approximately between Jupiter and Uranus,
if orbiting our Sun). his is perhaps the best such evidence yet for planet formation so close to a binary system,
Analysis of the data also indicates that the dust grains orbiting the star are sorted by particle size,
which plants use the energy in sunlight to synthesize carbohydrates from carbon dioxide and water. However
Yang says. hen sunlight is absorbed, photo-excited electron#hole pairs are generated in the silicon and titanium oxide nanowires,
With this approach, the Berkeley team achieved a solar energy conversion efficiency of up to 0. 38-percent for about 200 hours under simulated sunlight,
It akin to the difference between looking at the stars with a standard telescope versus an observatory-quality refractor telescope, according to Yale chair of neurology, Dr. David Hafler, who worked with Montgomery to bring Cytof to Yale. t allows
The daily vertical migration of marine plankton toward sunlight, is one example, and it the way many microbes find food. f you can design particles that can feel their environment
you will see flashes of light every time the wheel is at the perfect spot for sunlight to hit it.
season and year along with weather events and increased use of intermittent renewable energy from the sun
#Astronomers discover powerful aurora beyond solar system Astronomers have discovered the first aurora ever seen in an object beyond our Solar system.
but from a low-mass star at the boundary between stars and brown dwarfs. The discovery reveals a major difference between the magnetic activity of more-massive stars and that of brown dwarfs and planets,
the scientists said. ll the magnetic activity we see on this object can be explained by powerful auroras,
his indicates that auroral activity replaces solar-like coronal activity on brown dwarfs and smaller objects,
18 light-years from Earth, has characteristics unlike any seen in more-massive stars. Brown dwarfs, sometimes called ailed stars,
are objects more massive than planets, yet too small to trigger the thermonuclear reactions at their cores that power stars.
The astronomers said their observations of LSR J1835+3259 indicate that the coolest stars and brown dwarfs have outer atmospheres that support auroral activity,
rather than the type of magnetic activity seen on more-massive and hotter stars. The discovery also has implications for studying extrasolar planets.
The aurora the scientists observed from LSR J1835+3259 appears powered by a little-understood dynamo process similar to that seen on larger planets in our Solar system.
This process is different from that which causes the Earth auroral displays the planet magnetic field interacting with the solar wind. hat we see on this object appears to be the same phenomenon wee seen on Jupiter, for example,
but thousands of times more powerful, Hallinan said. his suggests that it may be possible to detect this type of activity from extrasolar planets,
many of which are significantly more massive than Jupiter, he added e
#Real-time data for cancer therapy In the battle against cancer, which kills nearly 8 million people worldwide each year,
Meteors (popularly known as hooting stars are the result of small particles, some as small as a grain of sand, entering the Earth atmosphere at high speed.
This is according to the latest edition of Tracking the Sun, an annual PV cost tracking report produced by the Department of energy Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Installed prices for residential and small nonresidential systems completed in 2014 were $0. 40-per-watt (W) lower,
or even particular market segments, as a whole. he report, Tracking the Sun VIII: The Installed Price of Residential and Nonresidential Photovoltaic systems in the United states,
is the eighth edition in Berkeley Lab Tracking the Sun report series. It is collected based on data from more than 400,000 residential and nonresidential PV systems installed between 1998 and 2014 across 42 states,
The latest edition of Tracking the Sun along with a summary slide deck and data file, may be downloaded at trackingthesun. lbl. gov. Source:
whereas waves in natural sunlight vibrate in all directions. Manipulating the polarization of light is essential for the operation of advanced microscopes, cameras and displays;
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