World’s Most Efficient Solar Cell and Other Future Tech
It’s #FunFriday! And we’ve got the latest future tech from
the science and technology industry around the world. Let’s get started.
World’s Most
Efficient Solar Cell
From running on solar energy for 4 straight days to
computers that produce water and electricity as byproducts, the world is really
betting big on solar technology. Looking at the bigger scheme of things, it is
the only type of technology that allows spacecraft to reach the far edges of
the solar system.
Australian researchers have developed the world’s most
efficient solar cells till date, achieving an energy efficient of 40% - 15%
higher than regular solar panels. The research was funded by the Australian
Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) and supported by the Australia–US Institute for
Advanced Photovoltaics (AUSIAPV).
“We used commercial solar cells, but in a new way, so these
efficiency improvements are readily accessible to the solar industry. This is
the highest efficiency ever reported for sunlight conversion into electricity,”
says Professor Martin Green, “The new results are based on the use of focused
sunlight, and are particularly relevant to photovoltaic power towers being
developed in Australia.”
World’s Biggest
Desalination Plant in Israel
Many probably don’t know that Israel houses the world’s
largest desalination plant, and provides for 20% of Israel’s household water. Costing
nearly $500 million to build, it will sell water to the Israeli Water Authority
for $0.58/1000 liters.
According to NextBigFuture: “The new plant in Israel, called
Sorek, was finished in late 2013 but is just now ramping up to its full
capacity; it will produce 627,000 cubic meters of water daily, providing
evidence that such large desalination facilities are practical. Desalination
accounts for 40 percent of Israel’s water supply. Late in 2016, when additional
plants will be running, some 50 percent of the country’s water is expected to
come from desalination.”
Mirrored Organisms
Closer to Reality
In a paper titled "A synthetic molecular system capable
of mirror-image genetic replication and transcription", Chinese
researchers at the Tsinghua University in Beijing have managed to make a polymerase
enzyme that converts DNA into RNA – paving the way for reverse biochemistry in
the lab.
“The overwhelmingly homochiral nature of life has left a
puzzle as to whether mirror-image biological systems based on a chirally
inverted version of molecular machinery could also have existed. This work
shows that two key steps in the central dogma of molecular biology, the
template-directed polymerization of DNA and transcription into RNA, can be
catalyzed by a chemically synthesized D-amino acid polymerase on an L-DNA
template,” the website states.
They are very optimistic about the results. “The
establishment of such molecular systems with an opposite handedness highlights
the potential to exploit enzymatically produced mirror-image biomolecules as
research and therapeutic tools.”
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