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    Improving Light Absorption in Perovskite/Si Tandem Solar Cells

    October 25, 2022, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    1. (a) A schematic of the PDMS layer containing SGA phosphors and SiO2 nanoparticles, (b) photographs of the PDMS layer with SGA phosphors and SiO2 nanoparticles under ambient light and UV light (λ = 365 nm), (c) a schematic of perovskite/Si tandem solar cell with the PDMS layer containing SGA phosphors and SiO2 nanoparticles, and (d) a cross-sectional SEM image of the perovskite–Si solar cell.

    A research team, affiliated with UNIST has succeeded in achieving a power conversion efficiency (PEC) of 23.50% in a perovskite-silicon tandem solar cell built with a special textured anti-reflective coating (ARC) polymeric film. According to the research team, the PCE of the device with the ARC film was sustained for 120 hours, maintaining 91% of its initial value.

    This breakthrough has b...

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    Why NASA is trying to Crash Land on Mars

    October 25, 2022, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    This prototype base for SHIELD – a collapsible Mars lander that would enable a spacecraft to intentionally crash land on the Red Planet, absorbing the impact – was tested in a drop tower at JPL on Aug. 12 to replicate the impact it would encounter landing on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

    NASA has successfully touched down on Mars nine times, relying on cutting-edge parachutes, massive airbags, and jetpacks to set spacecraft safely on the surface. Now engineers are testing whether or not the easiest way to get to the Martian surface is to crash.

    Rather than slow a spacecraft’s high-speed descent, an experimental lander design called SHIELD (Simplified High Impact Energy Landing Device) would use an accordion-like, collapsible base that acts like the crumple zone of a car and abs...

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    Manipulating Stress Response in Cells could help Slow Down Aging

    October 21, 2022, Categories  Uncategorized

    Glucose extends lifespan in aged worms independently of the DAF-16
    (FOXO). Differentially regulated genes downstream of the insulin/insulin-like
    growth factor signalling (IIS) (a), daf-16 (b), hsf-1 independently (ind.) of heat shock
    (HS) (c, d) in animals fed on the normal diet (ND) or high-glucose diet (HGD) from
    5-day old (HGD-5). e Lifespan assays of daf-16(lof) animals fed on the ND or HGD-5
    (ND, n = 502; HGD-5, n = 536 including biological replicates). f, g Representative
    images of DAF-16::GFP localisation in 1- (D1) and 5-day old (D5) worms on 16 h ND,
    HGD (filled circles) or 1 h heat shock (filled circles) at 37 °C (n = 60 for each condition including biological replicates). Scale bars represent 100 μm (f) and 25 μm
    (g). Highlighted worms with dashed lines are WT animals...
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    New Computing Architecture: Deep Learning with Light

    October 21, 2022, Categories  Physics, Technology/Electronics

    Artist’s rendering of a smart transceiver. The dark blue device has golden pathways and rectangles, which represent the wires that connect the smart transceiver chip to a circuit board. A light blue square covered with thin lines rises from the middle, to represent the smart transceiver chip. The thin lines represent an array of fibers that move light from lasers in and out of the chip.
    Caption:This rendering shows a novel piece of hardware, called a smart transceiver, that uses technology known as silicon photonics to dramatically accelerate one of the most memory-intensive steps of running a machine-learning model. This can enable an edge device, like a smart home speaker, to perform computations with more than a hundred-fold improvement in energy efficiency.
    Credits:Image: Alex Sludds. Edited by MIT New

    A new method uses optics to accelerate machine-learning computations on smart speakers and other low-power connected devices. The technique may enable self-driving cars to make decisions in realtime while only using a fraction of the energy that is currently demanded by their power-hungry on-board computers.

    Ask a smart home device for the weather forecast, and it...

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