solar power
gregladen | April 7, 2017I just read an interesting piece on the widely influential VOX, by David Roberts, called “A beginner’s guide to the debate over 100% renewable energy.” It is worth a read, but I have some problems with it, and felt compelled to rant. No offense intended to David Roberts, but I run into certain malconstructed arguments so often that I feel compelled to promote a more careful thinking out of them, or at least, how they are presented. Roberts' argument is not malconstructed, but the assumptions leading up to his key points include falsehoods.
I’m not going to explicitly disagree with the…
gregladen | April 28, 2014Solar energy is one of the best and most easily implemented options to reduce our use of fossil Carbon based fuels. Never mind that the sun is only up and strong for part of the day, and is often covered by clouds. If you put a few square meters of solar panels on the roof of a residential or commercial building, you get clean and free (after the investment into the system) electricity thereafter. Clearly, this is an underutilized technology. In recent years there has been a precipitous drop in the cost of implementing solar energy, so it is now economically kinda dumb to not put solar…
milhayser | February 23, 2014Researchers observed tiny voids forming in silicon used for solar panels; these voids provide physical evidence of the Staebler-Wronski effect, "which reduces the solar cell efficiency by up to 15 percent within the first 1000 hours."
Using an online avatar with a skin color other than your own makes you less racist in real life; playing a hero makes you less cruel, and playing a villain less benevolent.
Old mouse muscles exhibit "elevated levels of activity in a biological cascade called the p38 MAP kinase pathway" which prevents stem cells from dividing and repairing muscle damage. By…
kbonham | November 16, 2010The last lecture of the Science in the News Fall lecture series is tonight at 7pm in the Armenise amphitheater.
Star Power: New Ways to Harvest Energy From Our Sun
I heard great reviews from people who were at the practice talk, so if you're in the Boston area and interested in alternative energy, come on by. If you're not in the area, don't fret, we'll be posting them online (eventually) too.
Check out the lecture on the Light Amplified by Stimulated Emission of Radiation from week two:
2010 Fall Lecture 5.1 - The Laser Turns 50 from Science in the News on Vimeo.
Part 2: Using Lasers to…