Variations in the amount of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere significantly altered global climate throughout the planet's history. Efforts to reconstruct past climates must include this previously overlooked factor, a new University ...
Earth Sciences
Jun 11, 2015
17
1311
A team of biology researchers with members from Australia, the U.S., Czech Republic and the U.K. has found a correlation between eggshell color and thickness and the amount of light that shines on the eggs during incubation. ...
A new material structure developed at MIT generates steam by soaking up the sun.
Energy & Green Tech
Jul 21, 2014
4
0
A new approach to harvesting solar energy, developed by MIT researchers, could improve efficiency by using sunlight to heat a high-temperature material whose infrared radiation would then be collected by a conventional photovoltaic ...
Nanophysics
Jan 19, 2014
3
0
Princeton researchers have found a simple and economic way to nearly triple the efficiency of organic solar cells, the cheap and flexible plastic devices that many scientists believe could be the future of solar power.
Nanomaterials
Dec 6, 2012
26
0
(Phys.org) -- In plants, algae and some types of bacteria and fungi, sunlight is converted to chemical energy in a process we all know as photosynthesis; in that process water and carbon dioxide are also converted to oxygen. ...
Companies that make commercial solar cells are happy if they can achieve 20 percent efficiency when converting sunlight to electricity; an improvement of even 1 percent is seen as major progress. But nature, which has had ...
Nanomaterials
Jul 9, 2012
0
0
(Phys.org) -- As plants began to transition from aquatic habitats to dry land some 500 million years ago, their needs changed. Those primitive ancestors of modern plants were ill-equipped to survive in a dry, sunlight-blasted ...
Biotechnology
May 13, 2012
0
1
Splitting hydrogen and oxygen from water using conventional electrolysis techniques requires considerable amounts of electrical energy. But green plants produce oxygen from water efficiently using a catalytic technique powered ...
Materials Science
Apr 2, 2012
8
0
(PhysOrg.com) -- Although Alta Devices and Semprius make different types of solar panels, both start-ups have been breaking records in the past few days. Santa Clara, Calif.-based Alta Devices announced that its solar panels ...
