Lifeboat Foundation

Using the power of nano to solar power our homes at night.

MIT researchers have built a new experimental solar cell which could greatly enhance power efficiency. The “Shockley-Queisser’ limit is the estimated maximum efficiency of a solar cell, which is commonly about 32%; that means almost 70% of energy is wasted in the form of heat.

One way to reduce energy loss is by stacking cells. However if sunlight could be turned into heat and then be re-emitted as light, the solar cells could utilize more energy. Solar cells work best with visible light which occurs midway of the radiation spectrum. As a result the radiations with shorter and greater wavelengths usually go to waste.

Continue reading “Nanotechnology could enable use of Solar Energy at night” »

This is a big deal.

Growing enough food to feed 9 billion people by 2050 will require huge amounts of energy and water. Using nanoparticles to boost plant growth and yield could save resources and reduce water pollution.

Non-diffracting Bessel vortex beams exhibit diverse propagation regimes in glass that can be observed with a novel imaging strategy.

High-power femtosecond pulses have become a key tool in processing of transparent materials (e.g., glass and sapphire) for the present and the next generation of consumer electronics.¹ Associated major industrial challenges include high-quality and high-speed cutting of screen glass for smartphones, camera windows, or drilling of through-vias (vertical interconnect access) in interposers for the circuitry of 3D electronic chips. Ultrafast laser pulses (on picosecond or femtosecond timescales) allow for structuring transparent materials with high levels of accuracy. When the laser pulses propagate into the transparent dielectrics, they usually undergo high distortions.² These distortions arise because of the nonlinear Kerr self-focusing effect and because of the interaction of the pulse with the plasma, which the pulses generate in the material. The propagation is therefore highly nonlinear and prevents uniform energy deposition along the beam propagation.

Continue reading “High-power, diffraction-free femtosecond vortex for laser materials processing” »

3D Stem Cells — definitely makes sense given the organ, skin graffe, etc. produce on 3D printers in today’s labs.

JERUSALEM – Israeli 3D printer firm Nano Dimension has successfully lab-tested a 3D bioprinter for stem cells, paving the way for the potential printing of large tissues and organs, the company said on Wednesday.

While 3D printers are used already to create stem cells for research, Nano Dimension said the trial, conducted with Israeli biotech firm Accellta Ltd, showed its adapted printer could make large volumes of high resolution cells quickly.

Continue reading “Israeli firms develop high-speed 3D printer for stem cells” »

Treatment with sex hormones recovers serious genetic diseases cells, this is the first demonstration that the lengthening of telomeres is possible in humans with the use of a medication,” says the researcher.

Estudo demostrou que há como estimular a enzima telomerase por meio de hormônios sexuais, tanto masculinos quanto femininos.

Por Redação — Editorias: Ciências, Ciências Biológicas, Ciências da Saúde.

Continue reading “Tratamento com hormônios sexuais recupera células de doenças genéticas graves” »

This algae-based biodegradable water bottle could change the water bottle industry forever!

Interesting…

First, we take ‘Time’, as we know it’s one of those things that we take for granted—time moves forward and never backward. But did you ever stop to wonder why it moves in one direction, as opposed to the other?

The question continues to stump physicists. After all, there are certain physical processes that are actually time-reversible—they look the same no matter which way you run them.

Continue reading “New Research Suggests Dark Energy Might be the Reason Time Runs Forward” »

Kathryn Zurek realized a decade ago that we may be searching in the wrong places for clues to one of the universe’s greatest unsolved mysteries: dark matter. Despite making up an estimated 85 percent of the total mass of the universe, we haven’t yet figured out what it’s made of.

Now, Zurek, a theoretical physicist at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), says thanks to extraordinary improvements in experimental sensitivity, “We increasingly know where not to look.” In 2006, during grad school, Zurek began to explore the concept of a new “Hidden Valley” model for physics that could hold all of the answers to dark matter.

“I noticed that from a model-builder’s point of view that dark matter was extraordinarily undeveloped,” she said. It seemed as though scientists were figuratively hunting in the dark for answers. “People were focused on models of just two classes of dark matter candidates, rather than a much broader array of possibilities.”

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