The ubiquity of smart devices—not just phones and watches, but lights, refrigerators, doorbells and more, all constantly recording and transmitting data—is creating massive volumes of digital information that drain energy and slow data transmission speeds. With the rising use of artificial intelligence in industries ranging from health care and finance to transportation and manufacturing, addressing the issue is becoming more pressing.

A research team led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst aims to address the problem wi...

New observations reveal how solar flares really ignite—and why they can be so powerful. Solar Orbiter has captured the clearest evidence yet that a solar flare grows through a cascading “magnetic avalanche.” Small, weak magnetic disturbances rapidly multiplied, triggering stronger and stronger explosions that accelerated particles to extreme speeds. The process produced streams of glowing plasma blobs that rained through the Sun’s atmosphere long after the flare itself.

Much like a snow avalanche that starts with a small shift before cascading downhill, new observations show that solar flares begin with subtle magnetic disturbances that rapidly intensify...

A simple blood test can help detect cancer in patients with non-specific symptoms such as fatigue, pain or weight loss. This is according to a Swedish study from Karolinska Institutet, Danderyd Hospital and others, published in Nature Communications.

When patients seek care for non-specific symptoms such as fatigue, pain or weight loss, it is often difficult to determine whether the cause is cancer, another serious condition or something completely harmless.

In a new study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Danderyd Hospital, together with Örebro University, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and SciLifeLab at Uppsala University, have investigated whet...

Osaka Metropolitan University scientists have created a molecule that naturally forms p/n junctions, structures that are vital for converting sunlight into electricity. Their findings offer a promising shortcut to producing more efficient organic thin-film solar cells. Their study is published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.

How organic solar cells work
Solar cells convert sunlight directly into electricity. Within each cell, two semiconductors—p-type and n-type—form a p/n junction, where the photovoltaic effect performs the conversion.

Organic thin-film solar cells use carbon-based semiconductors instead of the traditional silicon, making them lightweight, flexible, and economic...