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Apr 7, 2018
1 thought on “The World’s First Floating Space Hotel Is Coming”
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in category: space
Apr 7, 2018
Double perovskites in environmentally friendly solar cells
Posted by Bill Kemp in categories: solar power, sustainability
Researchers have taken a step toward manufacturing solar cells from lead-free perovskites. High-quality films based on double perovskites, which show promising photovoltaic properties, have been developed in collaboration between Linköping University, Sweden, and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Research groups around the world are pursuing the potential of perovskites as one of the most promising materials for the development of cheap, environmentally friendly and efficient solar cells. In just a few years, the power conversion efficiency has increased from a few percent to over 22 percent. The perovskites currently available for use in solar cells, however, contain lead, and Feng Gao, senior lecturer at LiU, was appointed in the autumn of 2017 as Wallenberg Academy Fellow to develop lead-free double perovskites, in which a monovalent metal and a trivalent metal replace the divalent lead.
In the laboratory at the Division of Biomolecular and Organic Electronics, LiU, postdoc researchers Weihua Ning and Feng Wang have successfully manufactured single-layer thin films of densely packed crystals of double perovskites. The films are of extremely high quality and can be used as the active layer in solar cells, in which sunlight is absorbed and charge carriers created.
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Apr 7, 2018
300 Genes Found at The Root of Cancers Could Spur More Personalized Treatments
Posted by Ian Hale in categories: biotech/medical, genetics
A 10-year-long study called the PanCancer Atlas is releasing a trove of genetic data in an effort to help doctors treat a wide variety of cancers more precisely.
The history: Over the past decade, 150 researchers from the US and around the world painstakingly analyzed DNA, RNA, and proteins from tumor samples of more than 11,000 patients with 33 different types of cancer.
The findings: From that data, scientists have identified about 300 genes that drive tumor growth. They also found that just over half the tumors samples analyzed carry genetic mutations that could be targeted by therapies that are already on the market. These findings and others appear in 29 different papers today in the journal Cell.
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Apr 7, 2018
6.2-earthquake strikes off Mindanao in Philippines
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: futurism
Temblor hits at a depth of 61 km (38 miles), about 128 km (80 miles) east of the island’s key city of Davao.
An earthquake of magnitude 6.2 struck off the southern Philippine island of Mindanao on Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage from the quake, which hit at a depth of 61 km (38 miles), about 128 km (80 miles) east of the island’s key city of Davao.
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Apr 7, 2018
The physics that tells us what the Universe is made of
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: particle physics, space
Apr 7, 2018
I Want to Preserve My Brain So My Mind Can Be Uploaded to a Computer in the Future
Posted by Marcos Than Esponda in categories: cryonics, life extension, neuroscience, supercomputing
Apr 7, 2018
New brain cells growing until the day we die, says study
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: neuroscience
Apr 7, 2018
The Most Precise Measurement of Antimatter Yet Deepens the Mystery of Why We Exist
Posted by Genevieve Klien in categories: cosmology, physics
Scientists have made the most precise measurement of antimatter yet, and the results only deepen the mystery of why life, the universe, and everything in it exists.
The new measurements show that, to an incredibly high degree of precision, antimatter and matter behave identically.
Yet those new measurements can’t answer one of the biggest questions in physics: Why, if equal parts matter and antimatter were formed during the Big Bang, is our universe today made up of matter?
Apr 7, 2018
Boeing’s first crewed space flight may be more than just a test
Posted by Genevieve Klien in category: space travel
This week, NASA announced that it has updated its commercial crew contract with Boeing. Specifically, Boeing is one of two contractors that is building a crew vehicle that will eventually be able to carry astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The change surrounds its first test flight — including the option to extend the flight (from two weeks up to six months) and potentially adding a third crewmember. In other words, the first test flight wouldn’t be a test anymore.
This isn’t a huge surprise. Back in January, the GAO released a report that said that human flight certification of Boeing and SpaceX rockets would likely be delayed until the end of 2019. NASA currently has seats for astronauts on Russian Soyuz spacecraft through the fall of 2019. After that, well… Houston, we have a problem.
Russia doesn’t have any more Soyuz seats to offer us for purchase, so that leaves a significant gap between when we will need operational human spaceflight capabilities and when we will have them. The only solution is to use SpaceX and Boeing’s test flights as actual flights, in which we carry humans to and from the ISS, rather than as the test flights they were originally designed to be.
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