Using plastics to harvest the energy of the sun just got a significant boost in efficiency thanks to a discovery made at the Center for Polymers and Organic Solids at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Nobel laureate Alan Heeger, professor of physics at UC Santa Barbara, worked with Kwanghee Lee of Korea and a team of other scientists to create a new “tandem” organic solar cell with increased efficiency. The discovery marks a step forward in materials science.

A team of researchers at Umeå University in Sweden have discovered a unique mechanism by which the same signal molecule determines the formation of the both the lens of the eye and the olfactory cells of the nose.

Smell and sight are two sensory systems that are crucial to our ability to perceive the world around us. The ability to sense smells is established by the development of the olfactory mucous membrane. The ability to see is similarly dependent on the formation of the lens in the eyes.

Estrogen, which binds estrogen receptor alpha (ER-alpha), is a risk factor for breast cancer development. However, one-third of new breast cancers lack detectable ER-alpha. These ER-alpha–negative cancers are more aggressive and have a worse prognosis than do ER-alpha–positive breast cancers, and have been thought to be estrogen independent.

In a new study, Joyce Slingerland and colleagues from the University of Miami shed further light on the mechanisms regulating ER-alpha expression levels during breast cancer.

That title alone should get this article on the front page of technology papers everywhere, but the comparisons are valid.

Though people feel they have rich visual experiences, researchers have found that the average person is only aware of about four things at a time. This short term capability varies from person to person but an individual’s capacity for short-term memory is a strong predictor of IQ and scholastic achievement. People with high IQs can think about more things at once.

For example, a four-gigabyte iPhone, the popular new Apple cell phone, might be able to hold about 1,000 four-minute songs, but far fewer if the songs were all 20 minutes in length, explained University of Oregon psychology professors Edward Awh and Edward Vogel.

Scientists studying one of nature’s simplest organisms have helped to unravel the structure of a key molecule that controls pain in humans.

Chronic pain, unlike the acute pain associated with trauma, has no apparent physiological benefit, often being referred to as the ‘disease of pain’. Complete and lasting relief of chronic pain is rare and often the clinical goal is pain management through one or more medications.

But now researchers at The University of Manchester have examined microscopic amoeboid organisms commonly called slime moulds in a bid to gain greater insight into these pain molecules, known as ‘P2X receptors’.

Dr. Giovanna Tinetti ( read her interview with Scientific Blogging's Douglas Blane here ) of the European Space Agency and UCL’s Department of Physics & Astronomy has discovered that a planet passing in front of its ‘sun’ absorbs starlight in a way that can only be explained by the presence of water vapour in its atmosphere. This is the first time that astronomers have been able to confirm that water is present on an extra-solar planet.

‘Extra-solar’ planets are those outside our Solar System and more than 200 have been discovered orbiting stars close to our own Sun.