108. Solar Efficiency Record Broken, Lumber Grown in the Lab, Dissolving Pacemaker Improved
Summary: Scientists just broke the record for the highest efficiency solar cell | Interesting Engineering (01:46) A team of researchers at the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has created a solar cell with a record efficiency of 39.5 percent.This is the highest efficiency solar cell of any type, measured using standard 1-sun conditions. Under lighting conditions equivalent to that of the sun The solar cell was also tested for its potential in space, especially for powering communications satellites, which are powered by solar cells and require high cell efficiency. Under such conditions, it has a 34.2 percent efficiency. Principal investigator Myles Steiner, talks on the new solar cell:“The new cell is more efficient and has a simpler design that may be useful for a variety of new applications, such as highly area-constrained applications or low-radiation space applications." The novel solar cell is built on an architecture known as inverted metamorphic multijunction (IMM) cells. gallium indium phosphide on top, gallium arsenide in the center, gallium indium arsenide on the bottom. Has three components that generate electric current in response to light. Each component is built with a different material: These materials specialize in various light wavelengths, this allows the cell to capture more energy from the whole light spectrum. The researchers created these “quantum wells” with the middle layer. Represents the minimum energy that is required to excite an electron up to a state in the conduction band where it can participate in conduction By sandwiching a conductive layer between two other materials with a wider band gap, they were able to get the electrons confined to two dimensions, which allowed the material to capture more light in return. A band gap is the distance between the valence band of electrons and the conduction band. This solar cell's middle layer comprised up to 300 quantum wells, which greatly increased the total efficiency Before the novel cell can become widespread, the researchers will need to reduce the expenses and find potential new uses. First Patient Injected With Experimental Cancer-Killing Virus in New Clinical Trial | Science Alert (07:18) An experimental cancer-killing virus has been administered to a human patient for the first time, with hopes the testing will ultimately reveal evidence of a new means of successfully fighting cancer tumors in people's bodies.The drug candidate, called CF33-hNIS (aka Vaxinia) The drug is an oncolytic virus, which is a genetically modified virus designed to selectively infect and kill cancer cells while sparing healthy ones.A modified smallpox virus Works by entering cells and duplicating itself. Eventually, the infected cell bursts, releasing thousands of new virus particles that act as antigens, stimulating the immune system to attack nearby cancer cells. Previous research in animal models has shown the drug can harness the immune system in this way to hunt and destroy cancer cells, but up until now no testing has been done in humans.The first phase of the trial focuses on the safety and tolerability of the drug. The intervention is expected to enroll 100 participants in total, each being an adult patient with metastatic or advanced solid tumors who has previously tried at least two prior lines of standard treatment.These individuals will receive low doses of the experimental treatment via direct injection or intravenously. If early results are successful and CF33-hNIS is deemed safe and well tolerated, additional tests will investigate how the drug pairs with pembrolizumab, an existing antibody treatment already used in cancer immunotherapy. If the drug does turn out to be safe and well-tolerated, we could be looking at a powerful new tool for fighting tumors, and a game-changer. According to surgical oncologist Susanne Warner, said back in 2020 “Our oncolytic virus trains the immune system to target a
