Electricity
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Solar farms and agriculture are competing for land. UCLA Scientists have now tested a way to combine the two by placing semi-transparent solar cells on the glass roofs of greenhouses, finding that they actually improve the growth of plants inside.
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Georgia Tech scientists have discovered a new quantum state in a quirky material. In a phenomenon never before seen in anything else, the team found that applying a magnetic field increased the material’s electrical conductivity by a billion percent.
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Scientists have demonstrated a more advanced lightning rod than a humble metal stick. Beaming a high-powered laser into the sky was shown to deflect lightning bolts, enabling laser lightning rods that protect a wider area from dangerous strikes.
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Perovskite and silicon are proving to be a formidable duo in the world of solar cells, and now they’ve hit a new record efficiency. A team at Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB) have developed solar cells with an efficiency of over 32%.
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By tinkering with fine details within wood, engineers in Sweden have come up with an interesting new way of harvesting electricity that leverages natural processes that already take place in drying wood.
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Scientists working on cheap and easy-to-make electrical generators have landed upon a design that makes use of store-bought double-sided tape, and which they say can perform on par with more complex systems when it comes to producing electricity.
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A new solar cell packs a record voltage and (arguably) a record efficiency for its kind. The tandem solar cell uses two layers of perovskite that tap into different wavelengths of light, plus a special surface treatment reduces wasted energy.
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Scientists experimenting with novel materials have made a breakthrough that could shape a new generation of electronic devices, combining two characteristics in a way they say defies a theoretical explanation.
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New research shows that swarms of insects like bees and locusts can actually produce atmospheric electric charges. By measuring the extent of this influence, the team found that large swarms could produce as much charge as a storm cloud.
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Korean engineers have demonstrated a new system that uses infrared lasers to beam power over distances as far as 100 ft (30 m), which could eventually lead to technology that automatically charges your phone as soon as you walk into a room.
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Researchers at EPFL have discovered a material that seems to be able to “remember” all of its past encounters with stimuli, such as electrical currents. The compound could come in handy for better data storage and processing.
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The best bits of thunderstorms often happen above the clouds. Scientists have now described in detail the most powerful “gigantic jet” of lightning ever observed, which blasted energy equivalent to 60 regular lightning bolts upwards into space.
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