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Categories: Energy: Alternative Fuels, Paleontology: Fossils

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Using a new method based upon comparing DNA mutation rates between parents and offspring, evolutionary biologists have revealed the average age of mothers versus fathers over the past 250,000 years, including the discovery that the age gap is shrinking, with women's average age at conception increasing from 23.2 years to 26.4 years, on average, in the past 5,000 years.

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Chemists have discovered more isn't always better when it comes to packing charge-acceptor molecules on the surface of semiconducting nanocrystals.

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A new kind of solar panel has achieved 9% efficiency in converting water into hydrogen and oxygen--mimicking a crucial step in natural photosynthesis. Outdoors, it represents a major leap in the technology, nearly 10 times more efficient than solar water-splitting experiments of its kind.

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Chemical engineers have invented a solar-powered artificial leaf, built on a novel electrode which is transparent and porous, capable of harvesting water from the air for conversion into hydrogen fuel. The semiconductor-based technology is scalable and easy to prepare.

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The launch represents the first in-situ test of the technology to harvest solar energy in space and transmit it to Earth.

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Scientists have found a way to improve the operational stability of perovskite solar cells, a crucial step towards their commercialization.

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Researchers uncover the long-hidden process that helps explain why the Sun's corona can be vastly hotter than the solar surface that emits it.

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As the supersonic solar wind surges towards Earth, its interaction with our planet's magnetic field creates a shock to deflect its flow, and a foreshock filled with electromagnetic waves. How these waves can propagate to the other side of the shock has long remained a mystery.

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Microraptor was an opportunistic predator, feeding on fish, birds, lizards -- and now small mammals. The discovery of a rare fossil reveals the creature was a generalist carnivore in the ancient ecosystem of dinosaurs.

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Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) are a promising, economical, next-generation solar cell technology for scalable clean energy and wearable electronics. But the energy conversion loss due to the recombination of photogenerated charge carriers in OPVs has hindered further enhancement of their power conversion efficiency (PCE). Recently, researchers from City University of Hong Kong (CityU) overcame this obstacle by inventing a novel device-engineering strategy to successfully suppress the energy conversion loss, resulting in record-breaking efficiency.

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A new pathway to creating durable, efficient perovskite photovoltaics at industrial scale has been demonstrated through the first effective use of lead acetate as a precursor in making formamidinium-caesium perovskite solar cells.

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Europasaurus is a long-necked, herbivorous dinosaur that lived in the Late Jurassic, about 154 million years ago, on a small island in modern-day Germany. Recently, scientists examined fossil braincase material of Europasaurus with the aid of micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). The digital reconstruction of the inner ear of Europasaurus gave the researchers new insights not only into its hearing ability, but also into its reproductive and social behavior.

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Scientists have discovered that the atmosphere contained far less CO2 than previously thought when forests emerged on our planet, the new study has important implications for understanding how land plants affect the climate.

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Researchers report a new world record for tandem solar cells consisting of a silicon bottom cell and a perovskite top cell. The new tandem solar cell converts 32.5 percent of the incident solar radiation into electrical energy.

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An international research team examines a rich fossil bed in the renowned Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park in Nevada's Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, where many 50-foot-long ichthyosaurs (Shonisaurus popularis) lay petrified in stone. The study offers a plausible explanation as to how at least 37 of these marine reptiles came to meet their ends in the same locality -- a question that has vexed paleontologists for more than half a century. The research presents evidence that these ichthyosaurs died at the site in large numbers because they were migrating to this area to give birth for many generations across hundreds of thousands of years.

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Fossilized microbial skins can give us a glimpse of how the climate was in the deep geological past. By discovering the 'missing link' between such fossil skins and the skins of living bacteria, researchers have greatly improved the accuracy of climate reconstructions and predictions.

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Researchers have discovered an important in-situ protonation process that the photodynamics and separation of charge carriers in a photocatalyst, leading to efficient hydrogen generation from water using visible solar light. The process is enabled in an interstitial phosphorus doped carbon nitride structure, with only earth-abundant non-metallic elements, for its cost-effectiveness and high potential for practical applications.

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Though plants can serve as a source of food, oxygen and décor, they're not often considered to be a good source of electricity. But by collecting electrons naturally transported within plant cells, scientists can generate electricity as part of a 'green,' biological solar cell. Now, researchers have used a succulent plant to create a living 'bio-solar cell' that runs on photosynthesis.

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Discoveries at a major new fossil site in Morocco suggest giant arthropods -- relatives of modern creatures including shrimps, insects and spiders -- dominated the seas 470 million years ago.

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Analysis of teeth of extinct lemurs has revealed fascinating clues to the evolution of humans, a new study has found.