At the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), scientists have been exploring the mineral perovskite as a cheaper, more efficient replacement for silicon in photovoltaic cells. In one test, researchers combined perovskite with carbon nanotubes and shot a laser at the new material. They should have seen a blip of electricity from the combination. Instead, the...
Category: TRENDS IN HI-TECH SCIENCE
Post
STUDY FINDS DOZENS OF NEW CHEMICAL POLLUTANTS IN HUMANS
A University of California at San Francisco study of pregnant women has found 55 chemicals in their bodies that have never before been reported in people and another 42 whose origin or purposes are unknown. The same chemicals were found in the women’s children after they were born. Using a mass spectrometer, the researchers found:...
Post
SOFTWARE DESIGNS BIGGER, BETTER DNA ROBOTS IN MINUTES
Robots made of DNA crawled off the pages of science fiction and into bioengineers’ labs in 2017. The idea is intriguing; little machines made of a few strands of human DNA can “walk around” in the person’s body, taking samples or delivering drugs without causing damage that a mechanical device might, and then harmlessly biodegrade...
Post
SCIENTISTS FIND KEY TO BIGGER BRAIN
What’s the difference between the brain of an ape and a human? The answer: two days. At Cambridge University, researchers grew cerebral organoids – pea-size mini-brains that mimic certain functions of the real things – from human, ape, and chimpanzee neurons. They compared day-by-day development of the mini-brains among the three, especially the point at...
Post
HARVESTING MORE THAN BEER FROM A BREWERY
When brewers make beer, the good stuff doesn’t only go into the bottles. The spent barley or other grains, once drained of their flavor, still hold up to 30 percent protein and as much as 70 percent fiber. Some makes its way to animal feedlots; most is carted to a dump. Researchers at Virginia Polytechnic...
Post
A BLOOD TEST TO DIAGNOSE DEPRESSION
Medically speaking, depression is a messy illness: diagnosis is often subjective, especially in its early stages, and the pharmaceuticals used to treat it – often in hit-or-miss fashion – can have bizarre side effects, including deepening the depression instead of easing it. With a new blood test that can diagnose depression with better than 70-percent...
Post
NEW ENERGY DEPARTMENT PROJECT MODELS ELECTRICITY’S FUTURE
The U.S. Department of Energy has unveiled its new Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) project, which, it says, “represents a substantial scale-up in experimentation capability from existing research platforms, allowing for research at the 20-megawatt level.” ARIES will explore the impact of new devices being attached to the electric grid, including renewable energy...
Post
SPECIAL REPORT: THE EMERGING HYDROGEN ECONOMY
HYDROGEN’S NEW PLACE IN THE RENEWABLE ENERGY MIX. After decades of solar and wind energy dominating conversations about renewable energy, hydrogen is having a moment – especially now that corporations and governments are publicly committing to reducing their fossil-fuel emissions to meet precise targets by specific dates. General Motors has announced a deal to supply...
Post
BREAKTHROUGH IN MASSLESS BATTERIES
What if your electric car didn’t have a battery but was a battery? Turning a car chassis into a battery would save space inside for more people and cargo, save weight, and probably even cut cost. Engineers have been trying for years to turn structural components into energy storage cells. But past attempts have yielded...
Post
OLD MACDONALD HAS A NEW AUTONOMOUS TRACTOR
Self-driving vehicles aren’t confined to roadways. They’re making their way into farm fields to make growing crops more efficient with less human labor. Companies such as Case, CNH, and Kubota, among others, are fielding tractors that can identify and automatically attach themselves to specific pieces of equipment; follow pre-mapped paths to designated fields; and drive...