Solar Cells That Face Almost any Direction and Keep Themselves Clean

In recent years, a complicated discussion over which direction solar cells should face — south or west — has likely left customers uncertain about the best way to orient their panels. Now researchers are attempting to resolve this issue by developing solar cells that can harvest light from almost any angle, and the panels self-clean to boot. Their report appears in the journal ACS Nano.

Commercial solar panels work best when sunlight hits them at a certain angle. Initially, experts had suggested that solar panels face south to collect the most energy from the sun. But an influential 2013 report by Pecan Street, an energy-research organization, advised that systems tilt westward to maximize efficiency. Further analysis has found that determining the ideal angle is more complicated — in essence, it depends on where you live. And even if customers get the positioning correct, they’re still losing out on prime sunlight because most residential systems can’t move or adjust to the sun’s track across the sky. Jr-Hau He, Kun-Yu Lai and colleagues wanted to address this shortcoming.

Graphene proves a perfect fit for wearable devices

Cheap, flexible, wireless graphene communication devices such as mobile phones and healthcare monitors can be directly printed into clothing and even skin, University of Manchester academics have demonstrated.

In a breakthrough paper in Scientific Reports, the researchers show how graphene could be crucial to wearable electronic applications because it is highly-conductive and ultra-flexible.

The research could pave the way for smart, battery-free healthcare and fitness monitoring, phones, internet-ready devices and chargers to be incorporated into clothing and ‘smart skin’ applications – printed graphene sensors integrated with other 2D materials stuck onto a patient’s skin to monitor temperature, strain and moisture levels.

Technique could set new course for extracting uranium from seawater

An ultra-high-resolution technique used for the first time to study polymer fibers that trap uranium in seawater may cause researchers to rethink the best methods to harvest this potential fuel for nuclear reactors.

The work of a team led by Carter Abney, a Wigner Fellow at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, shows that the polymeric adsorbent materials that bind uranium behave nothing like scientists had believed. The results, gained through collaboration with the University of Chicago and detailed in a paper published in Energy & Environmental Science, highlight data made possible with X-ray Absorption Fine Structure spectroscopy performed at the Advanced Photon Source. The APS is a DOE Office of Science User Facility at Argonne National Laboratory.

“Despite the low concentration of uranium and the presence of many other metals extracted from seawater, we were able to investigate the local atomic environment around uranium and better understand how it is bound by the polymer fibers,” Abney said.

Scientists blueprint tiny cellular 'nanomachine'

Scientists have drawn up molecular blueprints of a tiny cellular 'nanomachine', whose evolution is an extraordinary feat of nature, by using one of the brightest X-ray sources on Earth.

The scientists produced the structural map of this nanomachine - diacylglycerol kinase - by using a "hit and run" crystallography technique. In doing so, they have been able to understand how the tiny enzyme performs critical cellular duties - answering questions that have been on the table for over 50 years about this 'paradigmatic protein'.

Kinases are key players in metabolism, cell signalling, protein regulation, cellular transport, secretory processes, and many other cellular pathways that allow us to function healthily. They coordinate the transfer of energy from certain molecules to specific substrates, affecting their activity, reactivity, and ability to bind other molecules.

National Science Foundation and Others Award $37M in Co-Robot Funding

The development of co-robots in the U.S. has just received an injection in the arm.

This week the National Science Foundation (NSF)—in partnership with the DOD, DARPA, NASA, the NIH, and the USDA—announced a $37 million slew of awards to bolster the development of robots meant to work cooperatively with humans.

“Our engineers and scientists are creating a world where robotic systems serve as trusted co-workers, co-inhabitants, co-explorers and co-defenders,” saidPramod Khargonekar, NSF's assistant director for engineering. “The National Robotics Initiative serves the national good by encouraging collaboration among academic, industry, nonprofit and other organizations -- and by speeding the creation of the fundamental science and engineering knowledge base used by researchers, applications developers and industry.”

According to the NSF, the awards run the gamut of the development cycle, from fundamental research to prototyping and testing. Some examples of projects include improving brain-controlled prosthetic devices, designing robots for search and rescue efforts, and robots that can assist with healthcare tasks.

High-pressure Reactor

Supercritical Fluid Technologies has introduced a new, high-pressure reactor specifically designed for small batch reaction chemistry. The HPR-Micro Reactor is a suitable high-pressure reactor for early, exploratory research. It is especially well-suited for research, process development and screening applications when reagents, catalysts or other essential materials are expensive or available in very limited supply. The HPR-Micro Reactor comes standard with a 10-mL Iconel 718 reactor vessel for operation up to 10,000 psi (689 Bar/68.9 MPa), inlet and outlet valves and a pressure gauge. Optional 25- and 50-mL vessels are available. Depending upon the temperature option selected, operation from -40 C to 150 C is possible. The vessel closures are the hand tight type where no wrenches are needed. The reactor is equipped with magnetically coupled stirring for optimal mixing. All high-pressure components are ASME compliant designed and overall assembly is protected by a rupture disc assembly for safe operation. The Micro Reactor is compact and can fit into a fume hood. The Micro Reactor can be easily removed from the mounting stand and brought to a glove box for reactant and reagent loading under an inert atmosphere. Multiple inlet ports are included for addition of solvents, reagents, or gases. An optional Reagent Injection Manifold increases versatility by providing a means to add a precise amount of reagent at anytime during course of the reaction. Standard addition quantities include 2.0, 1.0 and 0.5 mL.

Google and Ford May Team up on Self-Driving Cars

Google and Ford Motor Co. are reportedly in talks to build self-driving cars together, according to Automotive Newsand Yahoo Autos, both of which cite sources familiar with the plans.

If a deal is struck, the outlets expect the partnership to be announced at the upcoming International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which is scheduled from Jan. 6-9, 2016.

Though spokespeople from both Google and Ford did not comment on the speculation, Google confirmed it’s talking with various automakers for implementing its self-driving system in vehicles.

Already, Google has a fleet of self-driving cars out on the roads. The fleet has logged over 1.3 million autonomous miles.

Webb Telescope Reaches Halfway Point on Mirror Construction

Inside NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s clean room, a robotic arm lifted and placed nine hexagonal-shapes, each measuring just over 4.2 ft across and weighing approximately 88 lbs, on a telescope structure.

On Monday, NASA reached a halfway point in the James Webb Space Telescope’s primary mirror construction by installing the ninth flight mirror of the planned 18 mirror array. Once completed, the segments will work as a single 21.3-ft mirror. Completion of the primary mirror is expected in early 2016.

“The years of planning and practicing is really paying dividends and the progress is really rewarding for everyone to see,” said Lee Feinberg, NASA’s Optical Telescope Element Manager.

With a planned launch from French Guiana in October 2018, the James Webb Space Telescope will be a premier observatory for the ensuing decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide.