Improved Solar Cell Power Production: "Solar ‘towers’ beat panels by up to 20x"

It seems, based on this story by ScienceBlog, that 3D Solar structures offer more efficiency than normal flat ones, especially in higher latitudes.

That story is based on Solar Energy Generation in Three Dimensions, by Marco Bernardi, Nicola Ferralis, Jin H. Wan, Rachelle Villalon, Jeffrey C. Grossman.

Solar Energy Generation in Three Dimensions abstract here, full PDF here.

From Journal Nature: Satellites expose 8,000 years of civilization

http://www.nature.com/news/satellites-expose-8-000-years-of-civilization-1.10257

I started in the hard sciences, and I still have a lot of passion for Astronomy & Physics, though my degree is in Anthropology.

So stories like this, that combine Satellites, Technology, and Anthropology always draw my attention, I have been waiting in anticipation for advancements like this to bring new types of data to light.

This Nature article quotes Jason Ur, as saying, “Traditional archaeology goes straight to the biggest features — the palaces or cities.

I am not sure if that is really true in the first place, reality is you go were something has been found, or that you believe something can be found, and you have the funding to pursue.

Additionally, in Archaeology, you need a significant sample of data, in order to draw many conclusions, and working in a large site is more time and resource efficient.

Part of the reason I am excited by this article, it actually provides a large amount of data in itself, and it also points to additional areas to study, on the ground, with traditional techniques.

Colossal Squid

I saw the summaries of this BBC story, about the eyes of Giant Squid, some time ago, looked at it closely for the first time today, no puns intended.

I had not realized before this that the Giant Squid is not the largest.

That privilege belongs to the Colossal Squid as far as we know.

This is best site I have found, http://squid.tepapa.govt.nz/ it was referenced at link below.

This site, http://blog.tepapa.govt.nz/2008/04/30/hooks-and-suckers/ shows good pictures of the hooks or claws from on the arms of the Colossal Squid.

I find cephalopods among the most interesting and intriguing of sea creatures, my favorites are the Cuttlefish.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-sea_gigantism

NEO (Near Earth Orbit) and Planetary Defense. I so want to say Deathstar.

http://www.planetarydefense.info/index.html

But this is a serious resource for people working on the detection and possible deflection of objects that might impact Earth.

See also  http://www.nss.org/resources/library/planetarydefense/WhitePaper-2009PlanetaryDefenseConference.pdf

New Insights into Primitive Cells

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/01/researchers-resurrect-lost-proteins-to-understand-molecular-machines.ars

The Bio Sciences are my weakest by far, so I am not going to try and give any highlights, just suggest people click on the Ars link above.

Science keeps opening doors into the past, so exciting!

"Discovery of a ‘Dark State’ Could Mean a Brighter Future for Solar Energy"

Using "organic plastic semiconductor material" a group led by  Xiaoyang Zhu is looking to double Solar Cell efficiency.

The maximum theoretical efficiency of the silicon solar cell in use today is approximately 31 percent, because much of the sun's energy hitting the cell is too high to be turned into usable electricity. That energy, in the form of "hot electrons," is instead lost as heat. Capturing hot electrons could potentially increase the efficiency of solar-to-electric power conversion to as high as 66 percent.

Source and full story at http://www.utexas.edu/news/2011/12/15/dark_state/

Angela Zhang wins 100k for creating cancer-killing nanoparticle

She’s just been awarded the $100,000 Grand Prize in the Individual category of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology. Her project was entitled “Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells.”

 Rest of the Story

Congratulations Angela Zhang!

Honor Among Rats, if not Thieves

Well they are talking about Empathy, but that wouldn't be as snappy a title.  I was surprised that Rats display this behavior for, I assume, non related Rats.  I would have expected them to be Psychopathic or Sociopathic by human terms.

This snippet from ars:

Now, new research in Science suggests that rats are capable of empathy. The study tested how rats responded when their fellow rats were trapped, and found that they would not only spend time and energy deliberately helping their trapped companions, but they would even share food after liberating them.

Sources:

• Primary:  http://www.sciencemag.org/content/334/6061/1427
• Story source above:  http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/12/rats-show-empathy-will-come-to-the-aid-of-other-rats.ars

Two rotating spheres separated by thousands of kilograms of liquid sodium aim to mimic Earth's interior

Ten years in the making, the US$2-million project is nearly ready for its inaugural run. Early next year, the sphere will begin whirling around while loaded with 13,000 kilograms of molten sodium heated to around 105 °C. Researchers hope that the churning, electrically conducting fluid will generate a self-sustaining electromagnetic field that can be poked, prodded and coaxed for clues about Earth's dynamo, which is generated by the movement of liquid iron in the outer core. If it works, it will be the first time that an experiment that mirrors the configuration of Earth's interior has managed to recreate such a phenomenon.

           Source & rest of story: http://www.nature.com/news/dynamo-maker-ready-to-roll-1.9582

NASA Announcing Kepler Discoveries at Science Conference

Source:  http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2011/nov/HQ_M11-243_Kepler.html

 

 

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. -- NASA will host a news briefing at 8 a.m. PST, Monday, Dec. 5, to announce new discoveries by the Kepler mission. The briefing, during the Kepler Science Conference, will be in building 152 at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif.

Kepler is the first NASA mission capable of finding Earth-size planets in or near the "habitable zone," the region in a planetary system where liquid water can exist on the surface of an orbiting planet. Kepler is detecting planets and possible candidates with a wide range of sizes and orbital distances to help scientists better understand our place in the galaxy.
A live stream of the Kepler Science Conference will be available at:  http://connect.arc.nasa.gov/kepler

Kepler Science Conference: http://kepler.nasa.gov/Science/ForScientists/keplerconference

Kepler Mission:  http://www.nasa.gov/kepler

NASA: "Lightning-made Waves in Earth's Atmosphere Leak Into Space"

Full story at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/lightning-waves.html

"Now, NASA's Vector Electric Field Instrument (VEFI) aboard the U.S. Air Force's Communications/Navigation Outage Forecast System (C/NOFS) satellite has detected Schumann resonance from space. This comes as a surprise, since current models of Schumann resonance predict these waves should be caged at lower altitude, between the ground and a layer of Earth's atmosphere called the ionosphere."

For more information on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumann_resonances

Spiders vs Ants, sort of like Ninjas vs Pirates

As many of the readers here probably already know from personal study, Spiders tend to have problems with Ants, researchers have discovered that Golden Orb Spinner Spiders use a chemical irritant in their webs to deter Ants.

Article is from the Australian Geographic.

MIT discovery could lead to all-optical chips!

From Mass High Tech:

Ross, along with fellow materials science and engineering professor Lionel Kimerling and former students Lei Bi ’11 and Juejun Hu Ph.D. ’09, figured out that the fairly common gemstone garnet had the properties they needed to make the optical “diode for light” as it is both transparent and magnetic. The release cites Ross saying, “The whole system could be made using standard microchip manufacturing machinery.”

This is an impressive discovery in my opinion.  Here is Journal Nature Abstract.

This is deserving of Nobel Prize consideration in my opinion. Considering the fact that the system can be made with standard microchip manufacturing, it is an elegant and efficient solution as well.

Open Source Physics receives SPORE Award

Science Prize for Online Resources in Education (SPORE)

Open Source Physics (OPS) wins SPORE award.

Links to OPS summary and full article at Science.

Open Source Physics in their own words:

Computational Resources for Teaching
The OSP Collection provides curriculum resources that engage students in physics, computation, and computer modeling. Computational physics and computer modeling provide students with new ways to understand, describe, explain, and predict physical phenomena.

Kilobots, am I the only one who thinks Daleks?

From http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/ssr/projects/progSA/kilobot.html :

To enable the possibility of large Kilobot collectives where the number of robots is an order of magnitude larger than the largest that exist today, each robot is made with only $14 worth of parts and takes 5 minutes to assemble. Furthermore, the robot design allows a single user to easily oversee the operation of a large Kilobot collective, such as programming, powering on, and charging all robots

NASA in Final Preparations for Nov. 8 Asteroid Flyby, inside Moon's orbit

Details at NASA

Here is snippet from NASA:

The trajectory of asteroid 2005 YU55 is well understood. At the point of closest approach, it will be no closer than 201,700 miles (324,600 kilometers) or 0.85 the distance from the moon to Earth.

"Our galaxy's gas" from ars

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/11/somethings-out-between-the-stars-but-we-dont-know-what-it-is.ars

Interesting article about the diffuse gas bands astronomers have found, the most recent one in the galactic center.

Unknown chemistry composition so far, sounds interesting.  Perhaps there is a connection to abiogenesis?

NASA, Google award $1.35M prize for ultra-cool, mega-efficient electric aircraft

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/nasa-google-award-135m-prize-ultra-cool-mega-

200+ MPG!  Beats a Prius by a lot.

Cassini Solstice Mission

This is simply cool, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/ I could spend hours playing on that site.

Note you can look through the raw images, you might even find something before anyone else does.

Are Cephalopods the Craftiest Critter?

Video by Roger Hanlon, produced by Flora Lichtman from Sciencefriday

In my opinion, Cephalopods are certainly the coolest animals extant, extant is a concise way to say "currently living".   Cephalopods include Octopus,  Squid,  Cuttlefish, and Nautiloidea.  Cuttlefish are my favorite, they seem to me to be the most sophisticated of the Cephalopods.
 
The Cuttlefish ability to camouflage is so advanced they can virtually disappear.  The also can put on displays that shame electronic devices.



As this short clip from Nova demonstrates.

Though Nautiloidea, such as Nautilus and Allonautilus, are a passion of a Mentor of mine Peter D. Ward.  Article here coauthored by him about the Allonautilus.

In a future post, I will show some of the connections between the study of Stones (Lithic) and Cephalopods.