Solar-Powered System Converts Plastic and Greenhouse Gases into Sustainable Fuels

Solar-powered reactor for converting plastic and greenhouse gases into sustainable fuels
Solar-powered reactor for converting plastic and greenhouse gases into sustainable fuels
Credit: Reisner Lab

Researchers have developed a system that can transform plastic waste and greenhouse gases into sustainable fuels and other valuable products – using just the energy from the Sun.

The researchers, from the University of Cambridge, developed the system, which can convert two waste streams into two chemical products at the same time – the first time this has been achieved in a solar-powered reactor.

The reactor converts the carbon dioxide (CO2) and plastics into different products that are useful in a range of industries...

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James Webb Telescope reveals Milky Way-like Galaxies in Young Universe

Comparison of same galaxy imaged by Hubble Space Telescope and by James Webb Space Telescope
The power of JWST to map galaxies at high resolution and at longer infrared wavelengths than Hubble allows it look through dust and unveil the underlying structure and mass of distant galaxies. This can be seen in these two images of the galaxy EGS23205, seen as it was about 11 billion years ago. In the HST image (left, taken in the near-infrared filter), the galaxy is little more than a disk-shaped smudge obscured by dust and impacted by the glare of young stars, but in the corresponding JWST mid-infrared image (taken this past summer), it’s a beautiful spiral galaxy with a clear stellar bar. Credit: NASA/CEERS/University of Texas at Austin

New images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) reveal for the first time galaxies with stellar bars — elongated features of stars stre...

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Scientists develop a Cancer Vaccine to Simultaneously Kill and Prevent Brain Cancer

Scientists develop a cancer vaccine to simultaneously kill and prevent brain cancer
Scientists developed a bifunctional therapeutic strategy by transforming living tumor cells into a therapeutic. Shah’s team engineered living tumor cells using the gene editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 and repurposed them to release tumor cell killing agent. In addition, the engineered tumor cells were designed to express factors that would make them easy for the immune system to spot, tag and remember, priming the immune system for a long-term anti-tumor response. The team tested their repurposed CRISPR-enhanced and reverse-engineered therapeutic tumor cells (ThTC) in different mice strains including the one that bore bone marrow, liver and thymus cells derived from humans, mimicking the human immune microenvironment...
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Electronic Bridge allows Rapid Energy Sharing between Semiconductors

Artistic depiction of electron transfer driven by an ultrashort laser pulse, across an interface between two atomically-thin materials.
Artistic depiction of electron transfer driven by an ultrashort laser pulse, across an interface between two atomically-thin materials. This transfer is facilitated by an interlayer ‘bridge’ state that electrons are able to access due to lattice vibrations in both materials. (Credit: Gregory M. Stewart/SLAC)

As semiconductor devices become ever smaller, researchers are exploring two-dimensional (2D) materials for potential applications in transistors and optoelectronics. Controlling the flow of electricity and heat through these materials is key to their functionality, but first we need to understand the details of those behaviors at atomic scales.

Now, researchers have discovered that electrons play a surprising role in how energy is transferred between layers of 2D semiconductor m...

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