Solar cells act something like leaves, capturing sunlight and turning it into energy - unfortunately the manufacturing of solar cells, unlike trees, is something of an environmental disaster. From rare earth metals to all kinds of other materials due to substrates and cells, solar panels have to function for decades before they break even, as far as any ecological savings are considered.
 
If only solar cells could instead be made from trees.

Georgia Tech and Purdue researchers say they have done it; they have developed efficient solar cells using natural substrates derived from trees. Just as importantly, by fabricating them on cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) substrates, the solar cells can be quickly recycled in water at the end of their life cycle.

Carbon dioxide created by the widespread burning of fossil fuels is the key factor in climate change, so researchers are looking for new ways to generate cleaner power. 

Researchers from the University of Georgia have shown they can take the carbon dioxide trapped in the atmosphere and turn it into industrial products - a roadmap to biofuels made directly from the carbon dioxide in the air. 

A new study led by Ria Chhabra, a student at Clark High School in Plano, Texas, set out to see if organic food is healthier than conventional food - and it was. In fruit flies. With some conditions.

Chhabra sought to conduct the experiments after hearing her parents discuss whether it's worth it to buy organic foods. Southern Methodist University biologist Johannes H. Bauer, principal investigator for the study, mentored Chhabra by helping guide and design her research experiments. The research focus of Bauer's fruit fly lab is nutrition and its relationship to longevity, health and diabetes. 

Though every election has high-profile female candidates and elected officials, a new paper conducted by American University Women and Politics Institute director Jennifer L. Lawless and Richard L. Fox of Loyola Marymount University says that young women are less likely than young men ever to have considered running for office, to express interest in a candidacy at some point in the future, or to consider elective office a desirable profession.  

Two manuscripts related to the ancestral wheat genomes of Triticum urartu and Aegilops tauschii  provide an unprecedented glimpse into the adaptation and domestication of wheat throughout the ages and shedding light on the biology of the world's primary staple crop. 

If 41 percent of the human genome is covered by longer DNA patents that often cover whole genes, and so many genes share similar sequences within their genetic structure that if all of the "short sequence" patents were allowed in aggregate they could account for 100 percent of the genome, then you don't own your genes.