IBM Researchers have developed a new type of solar cell which more efficiently converts sunlight into electricity (9.6% vs 6.7%).
Semiconductor made of the elements copper, zinc, tin, and sulfur (abundant & cheap) as well as selenium (rare yet relatively cheap).
Pros:
Uses cheaper materials than other "thin film" solar cells.
Ink-based manufacturing process solves many quality issues previously encountered with solar cells.
Cons:
The ultimate hurdle preventing mass-production of efficient solar cells is high cost and inadequate supply of the rare semiconductor components (e.g. selenium, indium, gallium).
Future Research:
If most/all of these elements could be replaced with a more common element such as sulfur without dampening semiconductor efficiency, the commercial success of solar cell technology would be soon-to-come.
Color receptor organization in the retina chickens exceeds that of mammals and most other retinas observed in nature.
But why is that? One explanation:
Millions of years ago, during the evolution of birds and mammals, our ancestors were primarily nocturnal, adapting night-vision receptors called rods for survival from the threat of larger predators.
Birds on the other hand, widely believed to be descendants of dinosaurs, were able to survive during the daytime and further develop their light-sensing receptors called cones.
Humans have retina cones sensitive only to red, blue, and green wavelengths.
Birds share these and have other receptors to detect violet and ultraviolet (UV) wavelengths, and another specialized receptor believed to detect motion.
Relevance:
Could lead to new understandings of inherent problems in human eyes and ideas on how to fix them.
A midday nap could refresh the mind and actually make you smarter.
A simple experiment showed that young adults who took a nap in the early afternoon after a rigorous study session improved their learning capacity in the early evening during another study sesh compared to those who didn’t nap and got worse at learning.
"It's as though the e-mail inbox in your hippocampus is full and, until you sleep and clear out those fact emails, you're not going to receive any more mail. It's just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder," said Matthew Walker, assistant professor of psychology and lead investigator at UC Berkeley.
Many would argue that napping for such a short period of time doesn’t actually help because you never enter REM sleep.
However, this study backs the notion that Stage 2 non-REM sleep, which occurs after deep sleep (non-REM) but before the dream state (REM), is vital for memory capacity.
After all, we spend 50% of the night in this Stage 2 transition stage so it makes perfect sense that it plays a crucial role in a healthy mindset.
Many vaccines today are composed of live viruses modified to trigger an immune response without causing the symptoms of an actual infection.
Drawback to this 'live-attenuated' vaccine method:
Refrigeration (4°-8°C) is necessary for the vaccine's effectiveness.
Costs hundreds of millions of dollars in the developed world.
Nearly impossible to maintain in delivering vaccines to the developing world where immunizations are most needed
A new process developed by British scientists (jolly-good old chaps) can keep unrefrigerated vaccines stable for 4 months, even at tropical temperatures.
If proven to be economically feasible (the key with any new technology), vaccines against tuberculosis, malaria, bird flu, and maybe even HIV could be delivered to those most at risk for contracting the spreading these diseases.
Few power forwards in the NBA have both the physique (6'10", 250 lbs.) and the skill (21 ppg, 9 rpg) to match Amare. However, with a history of injury problems and a poor defensive effort most nights, the good comes with the bad. 'Stat' is making $17 million this season and has 1 more season left on his contract with the Suns. But (big but) he has the option to 'opt-out' of his current contract and seek a larger payday. This is trouble for the Suns who's current salary is a shade over $63 million with big contracts to Steve Nash ($13 million), Jason Richardson ($13 million), Leandro Barbosa ($6.6 million), and Stoudemire. With a projected drop in the NBA's salary cap to $50-$55 million next season the Suns are looking to dump some of these bigger contracts while still remaining playoff contenders. Nash signed a 2 year contract extension and is playing the best basketball of his career (at the tender age of 36) so he'll be staying. While still playing well, J-Rich is hardly worth the $ Barbosa has been plagued with injuries all season while Goran Dragic has proved himself an excellent back-up to Nash as point guard.
Despite Stoudemire's defensive shortcomings, there is no one in the league at PF who is as valuable as Stat on offense. In my opinion, it would be wise for the Suns (who are back to playing at the top level of the western conference) to keep Stoudemire, thereby guaranteeing the Suns being a top offensive team next year (barring any injuries), and trading Richardson and Barbosa (both potential all-stars) for role players who can shoot 3's, run out on the fast-break, and play tough defense.
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has been able to extract oil from algal ponds at $2 per gallon and says they will soon be able to implement large-scale refinement of that oil into jet fuel for less than $3 per gallon.
This project stemmed from the US military being the nation's single largest energy consumer at 60-75 million barrels of oil per year.
Google is developing software which combines current technologies which would allow for foreign language translations over the phone in real time.
There is already Google Translate for translating written text, and a voice recognition system for conducting web searches from spoken commands, so it's only a matter of time before a combination of the two is optimized to create a 'phone interpreter'.
A giant leap for universal communication or a death wish for foreign language? Only time will tell.
