Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSC) are easier to manufacture than silicon-based solid-state photovoltaic cells but not as efficient. Some new research may make carbon nanotubes a more efficient alternative for platinum electrodes in dye-sensitized solar cells, making them more viable overall.

Wikipedia is crowdsourced knowledge and therefore discourages people from writing about themselves. As a result, 60 percent of Wikipedia articles about companies contain factual errors, according to research published in Public Relations Journal.

Marcia W. DiStaso, Ph.D., assistant professor of public relations at Penn State University, surveyed 1,284 public relations people from the Public Relations Society of America's (PRSA). Results of the survey indicate a gap exists between public relations companies and Wikipedia concerning the proper protocol for editing entries.

Whether you are concerned about Mayans, a worldwide infrastructure collapse or an exploding supervolcano, science has some good news for your doomsday preparation - sunlight and a twist of lime are an inexpensive and effective way to quickly improve the quality of your drinking water.

Researchers have found that adding lime juice to water while using a solar disinfection method removed detectable levels of harmful bacteria such as Escherichia coli (E. coli) significantly faster than solar disinfection alone. 

It was back in 2005 that inventor  Boris Volfson was granted a US patent for a device which has been erroneously summarised by some as a 'Flying Saucer'. But which is more accurately described as a Space Vehicle Propelled by the Pressure of Inflationary Vacuum State. Although the patent explained at length how  “A levitating, rotating, superconducting disk“ might be able to develop a temporary egg-shaped space-time anomaly sufficient to allow a passenger vehicle to travel faster than light, the exact physics behind the crucial component known as the ‘Phonon Maser’ may have remained opaque to many readers.

It's called Knowledge and it's a short story by John Frizell in Nature. Did you know that Nature publishes short stories, one at the back of every issue? They do!

No human could have grasped the squid's name. Human eyes could not distinguish the differences in shades of colour or register the intervals at which they changed to define the unique pattern that was his name. The squid was concentrating hard because he was holding two conversations at once, one deliberately misleading, the other closer to the truth, as he glided through the deep ocean, his mantle pulsing gently, powering him with puffs of water.

Proteins are large, organic - in the science sense of organic, not the food marketing sense -  molecules that help us to convert food into energy, supply oxygen to our blood and muscles and drive our immune systems. 

Proteins consist of one or more polypeptides, chains of amino acids held together by peptide bonds. If a protein in water is heated to temperatures approaching the boiling point of water, these chains will lose their structure and the protein will denature (unfold). 

Evolution has various mechanisms and one of them is natural selection. While most religious people have no disagreement with science overall, Biblical literalists contend man cannot have changed or evolved.  Some confusion about evolution is understandable - evolution is darn complex - and the disagreement with evolution does not fall strongly into any demographic except the religious. In America, we hear more about 'the religious right' but primarily we hear about them from the secular left - while noting that 39% of Republicans don't accept evolution they fail to mention 30% of Democrats don't either.

We created clocks and calendars to give people a common way to communicate about the future and the past and about when to have dinner.  But time is, as they say, relative.  A clock on top of a mountain moves differently than one at sea level - that's gravitational time dilation. NIST researchers have even been able to show that tall people age differently than short ones. And if you lived your life in a car traveling 20 miles per hour, you would age slower than people who just walk around. Time is not only relative in physics, it is relative in culture.  We feel like time moves faster the older we get.

We seem to not be able to “explain” certain aspects like the nature of time, and not for lack of trying. Especially: We cannot explain a single subjective feeling in ways that satisfy many – not subjective sounding of sound, not the redness of the color red, not why pain “really” hurts. In spite of all the science we threw at them, something unexplained seems left about how feeling feels. Do we simply commit another ‘regress-error’ here?

Regress Error versus Recursion

People with Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) have an obsession relating to their body image, where they believe that they have a defect in their appearance.

BDD is estimated to affect one to two per cent of the population. Individuals with BDD engage with time-consuming compulsive behaviors such as mirror-checking, applying make-up to camouflage and seeking reassurance about their appearance.