A silicon solar cell harvests the energy of the sun as light travels down through light-absorbent silicon. To reduce weight and cost, solar cells are thin, and while silicon absorbs visible light well, it captures less than ...
Optics & Photonics
Oct 19, 2017
0
22
Results from its first run indicate that XENON1T is the most sensitive dark matter detector on Earth. The sensitivity of the detector—an underground sentinel awaiting a collision that would confirm a hypothesis—stems ...
General Physics
Aug 22, 2017
10
24
A new approach to optical imaging makes it possible to quickly and economically monitor multiple molecular interactions in a large area of living tissue—such as an organ or a small animal; technology that could have applications ...
Optics & Photonics
Aug 18, 2017
1
229
Customs officials want to detect contraband. Doctors want to know how quickly a patient is metabolizing a therapeutic drug. And suppliers of organic products, from nutritional supplements to honey, want to know their raw ...
Analytical Chemistry
Jul 6, 2017
0
2
Nature makes the vibrant pigments manufacturers want for foods and cosmetics, but getting them from plants to the products we buy is so difficult that many manufacturers rely on artificial colors. Now, researchers at Rensselaer ...
Biotechnology
Jun 30, 2017
0
128
Ancient proteins may offer clues on how to engineer proteins that can withstand the high temperatures required in industrial applications, according to new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of ...
Biochemistry
Mar 30, 2017
0
492
Organic additives found in road salt alternatives—such as those used in the commercial products GeoMelt and Magic Salt—act as a fertilizer to aquatic ecosystems, promoting the growth of algae and organisms that eat algae, ...
Ecology
Feb 28, 2017
0
301
Durable proteins make life possible in the crushing depths of the ocean, and may have evolved in life below the surface of ice-bound oceanic exo-planets. These proteins stay folded - allowing them to perform their function—under ...
Biochemistry
Feb 10, 2017
0
588
A common species of zooplankton—the smallest animals in the freshwater food web—can evolve genetic tolerance to moderate levels of road salt in as little as two and a half months, according to new research published online ...
Ecology
Jan 6, 2017
0
508
Carbon and nitrogen are central to life on Earth – life cannot exist without them, but an overabundance in the atmosphere imperils the life we have. So how much carbon and nitrogen is there on (and in) planet Earth? And ...
Earth Sciences
Nov 29, 2016
0
14
