Tech
Certain perovskite compounds are seen as a great hope for better and, above all, even cheaper solar cells. Their crystal lattice is formed by organic methylammonium cations (MA+) surrounded by heavy metal atoms (lead or tin) and atoms like iodine. The best perovskite solar cells today are realized with lead. In just ten years of research, the efficiency of these solar cells in the laboratory has been increased from 4 percent (2009) to over 25 percent (2019). However, lead is toxic and must not enter the food chain.
In the warmer and brighter shallow waters of Kāne'ohe Bay, O'ahu, the Hawaiian rice coral (Montipora capitata) hosts more heat-tolerant symbiotic microalgae in their tissues compared to corals in deeper waters. This pattern was demonstrated in a recent study by scientists at the University of Hawai'i (UH) at Mānoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST), and they suggest that while this can help corals weather a heat wave, it may have a price--lower nutrition when the heat wave has passed and seawater temperatures cool down.
A UNSW study published today in Nature Communications presents an exciting step towards domain-wall nanoelectronics: a novel form of future electronics based on nano-scale conduction paths, and which could allow for extremely dense memory storage.
FLEET researchers at the UNSW School of Materials Science and Engineering have made an important step in solving the technology's primary long-standing challenge of information stability.
Domain walls are 'atomically sharp' topological defects separating regions of uniform polarisation in ferroelectric materials.
Organic self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) have been around for over forty years. The most widely used form is based on thiols, bound to a metal surface. However, although the thiol SAMs are very versatile, they are also chemically unstable. Exposure of these monolayers to air will lead to oxidation and breakdown within a single day. University of Groningen scientists have now created SAMs using buckyballs functionalized with 'tails' of ethylene glycol.
"Yellow streaks in sunset sky, wind and daylong rain is nigh". This old world-widely weather proverb originates from aged fishermen by finding recognizable colors and shapes in clouds at sunset to predict an incoming storm. Nowadays, state-of-the-art satellites observations for tropical cyclone clouds structures, as well as the evolution of surrounding weather systems, are utilized to assist weather forecasters to make decisions.
Harvesting sunlight, researchers of the Center for Integrated Nanostructure Physics, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS, South Korea) published in Materials Today a new strategy to transform carbon dioxide (CO2) into oxygen (O2) and pure carbon monoxide (CO) without side-products in water. This artificial photosynthesis method could bring new solutions to environmental pollution and global warming.
Osaka, Japan - A team including researchers from Osaka University has produced a new molecular emitter for organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). Using rational chemical design with U-shaped synthetic building blocks, the scientists were able to arrange the electron donors and acceptors into a large ring called a "macrocycle." The wheel-shaped molecule could potentially be used not only in OLEDs but also in tiny, energy-efficient chemical sensors in the future.
Australia's devastating drought is having a critical impact on the iconic platypus, a globally unique mammal, with increasing reports of rivers drying up and platypuses becoming stranded.
Platypuses were once considered widespread across the eastern Australian mainland and Tasmania, although not a lot is known about their distribution or abundance because of the species' secretive and nocturnal nature.
A team of scientists from the Research and Education Center "Functional Nanomaterials" of Kant Baltic State University works on the development of new prospective nanomaterials. Together with foreign colleagues they have recently discovered a method for synthesizing titanium oxide (Ti2O3) thin films. Some of the new materials are considerably different from their bulk analogs and show the required conductivity within a wider range of temperatures. In the future they may be used to create effective catalysts that would not depend on temperature.
Arctic sea ice cannot "quickly bounce back" if climate change causes it to melt, new research suggests.
A team of scientists led by the University of Exeter used the shells of quahog clams, which can live for hundreds of years, and climate models to discover how Arctic sea ice has changed over the last 1,000 years.
They found sea ice coverage shifts over timescales of decades to centuries - so shrinking ice cannot be expected to return rapidly if climate change is slowed or reversed.
January 21, 2020 - Washington, DC - A new study recently published in Nutrients, a peer-reviewed medical journal of human nutrition, highlights the importance of grains as part of a healthy infant diet - and the potential risks of excluding them.
The discovery last year of the first nickel oxide material that shows clear signs of superconductivity set off a race by scientists around the world to find out more. The crystal structure of the material is similar to copper oxides, or cuprates, which hold the world record for conducting electricity with no loss at relatively high temperatures and normal pressures. But do its electrons behave in the same way?
River flow is reduced in areas where forests have been planted and does not recover over time, a new study has shown. Rivers in some regions can completely disappear within a decade. This highlights the need to consider the impact on regional water availability, as well as the wider climate benefit, of tree-planting plans.
Tokyo, Japan - Researchers at the University of Tokyo and Kozo Keikaku Engineering Inc. have introduced a method for enhancing the power of existing algorithms to forecast the future of unknown time series. By combining the predictions of many suboptimal forecasts, they were able to construct a consensus prediction that tended to outperform existing methods. This research may help provide early warnings for floods, economic shocks, or changes in the weather.
Historical biodiversity data is being obtained from museum specimens, literature, classic monographs and old photographs, yet those sources can be damaged, lost or not completely adequate. That brings us to the need of finding additional, even if non-traditional, sources.
Biodiversity observations are made not only by researchers, but also by citizens, though rather often these data are poorly documented or not publicly accessible. Nowadays, this type of data can be found mostly with online citizen science projects resources.