SciGlow | All Science News In One Place
SciGlow is a newsletter of science stories from the major research labs. Headlines link to in-depth articles and editorials. SciGlow keeps scientists and others up-to-date on current research.
Recent advances in solar cell technology use polycrystalline perovskite films as the active layer, with an increase to efficiency of as much as 24.2%. Hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites are especially successful, and they have been used in optoelectronic devices including solar cells, photodetectors, light-emitting diodes and lasers. But the surface of hybrid perovskites is prone to … Read more
Nuclear power plants can withstand most inclement weather and do not emit harmful greenhouse gases. However, trafficking of the nuclear materials to furnish them with fuel remains a serious issue as security technology continues to be developed. Two physicists working out of the University of Florida and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Paul Johns and Juan … Read more
Exoplanets revolving around distant stars are coming quickly into focus with advanced technology like the Kepler space telescope. Gaining a full understanding of those systems is difficult, because the initial positions and velocities of the exoplanets are unknown. Determining whether the system dynamics are quasi-periodic or chaotic is cumbersome, expensive and computationally demanding. In this … Read more
The human ranging style is unique among hominoids. The Mbendjele BaYaka people move from camp to camp every few months, and thus have a large lifetime range of approximately 800 square meters. Human foragers collect food and take it back to their camp to process and share. Furthermore, the Mbendjele BaYaka have created a trail … Read more
It was the most serious release of radioactive material since Fukushima 2011, but the public took little notice of it: In September 2017, a slightly radioactive cloud moved across Europe. Now, a study has been published, analyzing more than 1300 measurements from all over Europe and other regions of the world to find out the … Read more
Scientists from Inra, CEA, CNRS, CNES and several international Universities1 have quantified – over 2010-2017 – the time changes in the carbon stocks of aboveground vegetation biomass in the tropics. One main result is that over the studied time period, these stocks are almost constant: gains in biomass carbon stocks in some regions of the … Read more
By combining thin organic layers with thick layers of hybrid perovskite, researchers at Kyushu University in Japan have developed micrometer-thick organic light-emitting diodes that could improve the affordability and viewing angles of high-performance displays and televisions in the near future. Organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) use layers of organic molecules to efficiently convert electricity into light. … Read more
A new study spearheaded by Earth scientists at the University of Cologne’s Institute of Geology and Mineralogy has constrained the age of the Moon to approximately 50 million years after the formation of the solar system. After the formation of the solar system, 4.56 billion years ago, the Moon formed approximately 4.51 billion years ago. … Read more
A new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison physicists mimicked solar winds in the lab, confirming how they develop and providing an Earth-bound model for the future study of solar physics. Our sun is essentially a big ball of hot plasma – an energetic state of matter made up of ionized gas. As the sun spins, … Read more
NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite, or TESS, has discovered three new worlds that are among the smallest, nearest exoplanets known to date. The planets orbit a star just 73 light years away and include a small, rocky super-Earth and two sub-Neptunes – planets about half the size of our own icy giant. The sub-Neptune furthest … Read more