Solar Company Claims They Made the Most Efficient Solar Panels

First Solar is a company that claims to have turned up to twenty-two-point-one percent of sunlight energy into electricity with some trial cells created with cadmium telluride. Ninety-five percent of the global solar power market excludes this technology. So far, First Solar cells for commercial use boast a conversion efficiency of up to sixteen-point-four percent.

Compared to silicon solar panels, cadmium telluride cells’ maximum conversion efficiency is above thirty percent. Being the only main producer of cadmium telluride solar panels in the US, First Solar has been extremely busy trying to bring its technologies closer to the limit mentioned above.

Cadmium telluride solar panels could be more efficient than silicon-based ones that make up to ninety percent of the solar power market now.

Offering a very thin-film cell technology, cadmium telluride operates very close to its efficiency limit, especially, when installed in hot, humid regions. These thin-film cells are less expensive to come up with too; although, they have been less recognized in the past few years.

First Solar does not do rooftop solar panels installations. Instead, it has made solar farms that are considered the largest worldwide. Some of these include the Californian Topaz and Desert Sunlight projects that produce up to 550 megawatts.

A cadmium telluride thin-film cell is cheaper to make with few resources, and a simpler production process is needed to create the amount of power that the traditional silicon technology creates. Principally, this should reduce the cost of electricity.

But in reality, and according to GTM Research, in the coming year, the cost of silicon panels will reduce to zero-point-three-six dollars per watt. As for the First Solar’s 2013 production cost figures, its cost per watt was at zero-point-five-seven dollars.

For More Info Visit The Company’s Website

Internet of Things is Likely to Boom in 2020

Internet

Mehmet Hatipoglu

The Internet of Things (LoT) is likely to boom in 2020 when more than fifty billion devices are possibly connected to it. But will this complex ecosystem grow and thrive? Are there companies that will lead others? Big corporations are not yet dominant in this intricate system. Furthermore, challenges and opportunities that new players would face within LoT are still unknown.

All the same, there are five things to expect:

1. Fragmentation- When a new ecosystem (like Lot) is about to evolve, most participants have a tendency to give end-to-end solutions. They fragment the market into multiple distinct sections. This was seen when IBM, Digital Equipment, and ICU (International Computers Ltd.) joined the early software development ecosystem.

2. Partnerships- There is a risk of failure if a particular small-scale player in the LoT system decides to pursue just one platform. On the contrary, if they participate in a few platforms, they could strain their resources. So forming partnerships with large firms for quick recognition will probably make sense to new players.

3. Giants outside LoT might become Giants in LoT- Samsung, Alphabet, and Apple companies are not LoT players yet because of their general recognition they might enter and lead. This, however, does not kick out start-up businesses as they serve customers better than larger incumbent companies.

4. Infrastructure is a priority- LoT is ever monitoring the surroundings and conveying data across networks. Hence, builders of infrastructure will either create low-energy devices or better connectivity devices. SIGFOX, PTC, ARM, and Qualcomm are already doing this.

5. Application Program Interfaces (APIs)- These were not there in the days of early software development. A platform vendor who will provide APIs to track customer behaviors will get ahead of rivals.

Feature photo: blog.csiro.au

The Largest Floating Solar Farm In The World

News

Mehmet Hatipoglu

In a little while, the UK will have the biggest floating solar farm on earth. The project is in the southwest of London, and it consists of twenty-three thousand solar panels that are floated on a dam. It is intended to produce renewable energy that will be used to run the neighboring water treatment plants. Costing eight-point-three million dollars, the project has been in the development phase for the past more than five years, and it is almost over.

This will be the world’s largest floating solar project, and it is run by Thames Water. The local water treatment plants that will benefit from this are expected to start supplying pure drinking water to ten million residents of the greater London area and south-east of England. Even if the floating solar farm with over twenty-thousand solar panels is huge, it will have very minimal environmental impact. This is because it occupies only six percent of the Queen Elizabeth II man-made reservoir found at Walton-on-Thames, Heathrow. Hence, regular local wildlife species like water birds and a few fish will still have a lot of free areas to rove.

The very first solar floating farm was launched in the UK in 2014, it had only 800 panels and consumed fewer pounds than this mega renewable energy project will cost ultimately. Upon completion, this is expected to be the largest solar farm, yet the project managers believe that there will be other more influential projects after a while. As Angus Berry, the head of energy at Thames Water said, other similar solar farms are underway. But he also acknowledges that they are pioneering and paving a way for others in the UK and globally.

Scientist Harnessed Rust, Turning It into Solar Cells For Store Energy For Night Use

News

Mehmet Hatipoglu

How can solar energy be collected and stored on days when there is no sun? The strange answer is rust according to Stanford University scientists who find that it can allow a battery to hold a larger amount of solar power.

Nicholas Melosah and William Chueh the assistant professors involved used rust* and got it to turn water into oxygen and hydrogen and hold the energy for night time use. Photons turn to electrons and allow the water splitting. When the oxygen and hydrogen combine again, power is created and are minus the effects of fossil fuels.

The research discovered that energy is stored more efficiently in metal oxide solar cells as opposed to silicon solar panels. The former heats and becomes more effective while silicon solar cells heat and lose efficiency.

Chueh explained that it was the cheaper and easy to obtain metal oxides that produced electricity better than had been believed. The temperature was important when it came to the tests and titanium oxide, rust and other substances were tried out to determine which was most efficient. The higher the temperature, the faster and more mobile the electrons were.

The good news is that there is no need to use external sources for heating the solar cells, as engineering was able to do it all. Andrey Poletayev explained that solar radiation can be concentrated by using magnifying lenses and parabolic mirrors.

Chueh believes there can now be full-time solar energy storage and also store gases that can travel through pipelines without releasing extra carbon.

*Rust: A reddish- or yellowish-brown flaking coating of iron oxide that is formed on iron or steel by oxidation, especially in the presence of moisture.

Story Via; news.stanford.edu

Scientists Just Made a Major Discovery in Personalized Cancer Treatment

News

Mehmet Hatipoglu

At the UCL, University College London, scientists came too close to discovering the ultimate cancer immunotherapy treatment.

The popularity of cancer immunotherapy treatment rose in the past few years when a couple of companies made their drugs. Good examples include Bristo-Myers Squibb -0.45% (made Opdivo) and Merck MRK -0.04% (made Keytruda). The latter healed Jimmy Carter’s cancer towards the end of last year.

One thing that makes immune-oncology drugs better than chemotherapy is that they direct the patient’s immune cells (T-cells) to aim categorically and damage cancerous cells. However, these cures are not always accurate enough to destroy all types of cancers. This is simply because cancer cells are very different, and their mutations can change as the disease advances.

Funded partly by the Cancer Research UK, the scientists claim that they have found a method of identifying antigens on tumors. These antigens are normally in cancer cells regardless of whether they are mutated. From a set of patients, researchers found immune responsive cells that could identify and aim at the antigens.

Their cancer immune-oncology will work as a match where a patient’s cancer cells will be fought by their T-cells.

Before this brilliant discovery is utilized, so that new cures are developed, a lot of work must be done. Being a tailor-made method of curing cancer, it is very expensive, which is a major concern.

So far Novartis NVS -1.03% and Juno 7.47% are working on their own T-cell based immunotherapy methods. This entails removing a sick person’s immune cells and re-constructing them to be potent cancer fighters. But this has only worked for people with blood cancers.

Danish Authorities Accused of Keeping Quiet Over a Large Scale Environmental Disaster

News

Mehmet Hatipoglu

There are accusations levelled at the Danish authorities that they are covering up a large-scale environmental disaster. On March 3^rd, thousands of tonnes of liquid fertiliser leaked in Frederica Harbour and, as a result, Palm oil from a nearby vat caught fire.

According to a Danish newspaper, the leak was not announced for several weeks, despite the risk of fish being killed if the toxic substance reached the sea. Metroxpress were informed by South Jutland Police spokesperson Peter Ballsgaard that there was no knowledge as to how the incident happened, or how it spread so quickly, but did reveal that some had entered the harbour area.

There was the need to evacuate homes and businesses within a 1km radius, in order to let firefighters’ work on the fire. They had to worth through the night and following day to fully extinguish it. It has been described as an “environmental catastrophe” by the Danish Society for Nature Conservation who added that there had never before been an incident to large.

It was 22 days later that the report was published and passed to the environmental agencies of Denmark, and for them to pass the report onto the public. 100 people were bought in to deal with the aftermath and collected foam, palm oil and water.

Buildings had to be cleaned and as a result Eva Kjer Hansen announced her resignation. It is considered that she is the person responsible for misleading parliament and if she is not replaced, there may need to be new elections.

WATCH THE VIDEO

Story Via; independent.co.uk

House Science Chair Continues His War on Global Warming

News

Mehmet Hatipoglu

Harassment seems to be the way that Lamar Smith challenges those who disagree with his views that climate change is not a problem. He has already subpoenaed NOAA head Kathryn Sullivan and followed this up complaints that he is not receiving the documents he requested promptly. He wants to see all communications containing words such as “change” “Paris” “climate” and “UN” as well as those containing the name and location of the President.

The Union of Concerned Scientists fears what this may lead to and have told him his requests are aggressive and overly broad. There are concerns that he is trying to limit the work of many of the federal scientists. They site the request for documents with the words “buoy” and “temperature” as few items of correspondence will not contain one of these words. The actions he is taking are seen to be unjustified as well as unprecedented and has an adverse impact on many of the scientists who are taken away from the work they are supposed to be doing to sieve through documents.

It is not understood why this path is being taken, rather than other scientists being asked to conduct their research – and why is it the chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology committee that is carrying out the harassment. Some believe, it could be connected to the fact that the fossil fuel industry gives $600,000 to Smith’s campaign fund.

Worldwide Smartphone Sales Grew 9.7 Percent in Fourth Quarter of 2015

Mobile

Mehmet Hatipoglu

There is still a high demand for smart phones, but not in the same way that they were required before. The rate in which the amount sold is rising has begun to slow down and is at the same level that it was in 2008.

Emerging markets are looking for low-cost phones, but there is still a high demand for top of the range phones in other parts of the world. Research director at Gartner Anshul Gupta claims that it is the low pricing by the Chinese market that has allowed those who would not normally have considered a smartphone the chance to own one.

He believes that there are 85% of people in the Pacific/Asia market upgrading to a smartphone from a basic or middle of the road one. There is also the price consideration as a result of the US dollar finding other currencies are being devalued against it and as a result, Indonesia and India are becoming the base of choice for many sellers. This would also help with certain taxes.

Last year only Huawei and Samsung increased sales out of the top 5, and Apple found that its sales went down – a 4.4% drop in iPhone sales was recorded. Even Samsung will face issues however as they need to have a top of the range phone that can further limit the sales of the iPhone.

Android has been the winner as a result of the latest figures according to director of Gartner Roberta Cozza.

A Global Warming Slowdown Has Come And Gone

News

Mehmet Hatipoglu

There is still a disagreement as to what the outcome of the slowdown of global warming has been and although there has been a paper published by some prominent scientists criticising colleagues who are not showing enthusiasm when it comes to the fact that for the last 13 years there has been a slow-down in the rate.

Michael Mann of Penn State believes that there should be more made of the fact that the slow-down happened. Despite the fact that there have been drops in temperature, the years 2014 and 2015 have seen records broken when it comes to the heat. The reason given for the slow-down has been mainly because the Pacific cycle slowed down and the depths of the ocean received more heat than normal as a result of trade winds being particularly fierce.

There is no praise for mankind because of the slow-down, and due to the way people are interpreting data, questions are being asked about the effect this slow-down has had. One study led by Thomas Karl of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claims that past records are flawed, and once they had been set straight, the level of slow-down was much less noticeable.

Lamar Smith has got involved and is demanding that scientists make their emails available and despite the fact that he is the Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, the way in which the requests have been made has had them cited to be a witch hunt.

Story Via; News.Discovery.com

Amazon Thinks Fire OS Users Do Not Need Privacy at All

Gadgets

Mehmet Hatipoglu

These days’ number one news is; the battle between Apple and FBI about the iPhone that belongs the shooting suspect in San Bernardino.

Many think that Apple should help FBI to hack the device, but lots of Apple user or Android user do not agree with this hack. No matter, people agree or not on this issue, all two sites want that authorities catch the people responsible for this attack, but many don’t want any access to their cell phone device. Even many of us don’t have any critical information that concerns a threat to the society in our phones but still we want to keep them to ourself.

But Amazon thinks otherwise, a couple of days ago the company quietly dropped the encryption support for Fire OS devices. Later they added, devices will have the feature soon. For now, Amazon will encrypt your data on external servers, but locally the data in your Fire OS devices would not be protected, your information will be on a plain page. So, do not put any information data of yours in a Fire OS device. This last update makes Amazon devices like a child toy.

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