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Category: particle physics – Page 379

Uncrewed surface vehicle makes studying the ocean easy and affordable

“Pamela” is an uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) developed as an entrepreneurial idea at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) for sampling a variety of surface water particles, from microplastic to plankton to salmon lice. The USV is a joint effort by an interdisciplinary team—Andrea Faltynkova, a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Biology, and Artur Zolich, a postdoc at the Department of Engineering Cybernetics.

Faltynkova studies microplastics in the ocean. Microplastics are bits of plastic smaller than 5 mm, which is roughly the size of the end of a pencil. While researchers know that microplastics can have negative effects on marine or freshwater organisms, there’s less known about how they affect human health. But studying microplastics is a challenge because of the nature of the substance itself, she says.

“Microplastics are so heterogeneous. It’s a very large, diverse group of particles. Not only that but they are very unevenly distributed. Microplastic is not like other dissolved pollutants that can be detected even in small quantities of water or soil. If you go and you take a liter from the sea, and there’s no plastic in it, can you conclude that there is no plastic in the sea?” she asked.

Why aren’t neutrinos adding up?

In the two decades since short-baseline neutrino anomalies were first discovered, scientists have come up with several guesses about what might cause discrepancies.

Of all the known elementary particles, neutrinos probably give physicists the most headaches.

These tiny fundamental bits of matter are the second most common particle in the universe yet are anything but ordinary. Since their discovery, they have taunted scientists with bizarre behaviors, some of which physicists have yet to comprehend.

One source of confusion has showed up in the results from short-distance neutrino experiments, in which neutrinos are measured after traveling somewhere between a few meters and a kilometer. When scientists measure neutrinos in these experiments, the results don’t always match their predictions. Sometimes there are too many of certain types of neutrinos, while in others there are too few.

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Building decarbonization: How electric heat pumps could help reduce emissions today and going forward

The electrification of heating systems could play a significant role in building decarbonization. Heat pumps are emerging as a solution.

Iranian scientists have demonstrated a multi-layer silicon nanoparticle (SNP) solar cell based on nanoparticles that are densely stacked inside a dielectric medium. They considered different SNP structures and configurations to tailor these particles as a p–n junction cell.

Ultra-thin silicon nanoparticle solar cell with 11% efficiency

“This is because SNPs are assumed to be the main absorber in the cell. Thus, any distance between them reduces the absorption of incident photons,” the group said.

They considered different SNP structures and configurations to tailor these particles as a p–n junction cell. They said this kind of cell could achieve a theoretical efficiency of around 11%.

Exceeding 100 percent quantum efficiency in the photocurrent of a hybrid inorganic-organic semiconductor

Tiny crystals, known as quantum dots, have enabled an international team to achieve a quantum efficiency exceeding 100 percent in the photocurrent generated in a hybrid inorganic-organic semiconductor.

Perovskites are exciting semiconductors for light-harvesting applications and have already shown some impressive performances in solar cells. But improvements in photo-conversion efficiency are necessary to take this technology to a broader market.

Light comes in packets of energy known as photons. When a semiconductor absorbs a photon, the is transferred to a negatively charged electron and its positively charged counterpart, known as a hole. An can sweep these particles in , thereby allowing a current to flow. This is the basic operation of a solar cell. It might sound simple, but optimizing the quantum efficiency, or getting as many from the incoming photons as possible, has been a long-standing goal.

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