SCIENCE UPDATES

1.Producing Flexible CIGS Solar Cells With Record Efficiency
ScienceDaily (Sep. 23, 2011) — The technology yielding flexible solar cells with an 18.7% record efficiency developed by scientists at Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, has now been published in Nature Materials. Key to the breakthrough is the control of the energy band gap grading in the copper indium gallium (di)selenide semiconductor, also known as CIGS, the layer that absorbs light and converts it into electricity. The Empa team achieved this by controlling the vapor flux of elements during different stages of the evaporation process for growing the CIGS layer. 
2. Novel Technique Reveals Both Gene Number and Protein Expression Simultaneously
ScienceDaily (Sep. 23, 2011) — Researchers have discovered a method for simultaneously visualizing gene number and protein expression in individual cells. The fluorescence microscopy technique could permit a detailed analysis of the relationship between gene status and expression of the corresponding protein in cells and tissues, and bring a clearer understanding of cancer and other complex diseases, according to researchers who led the study.
3.  Amazing Electrical Properties in Polymers Discovered
ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2011) — Crystals and ceramics pale when compared to a material researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory discovered that has 10 times their piezoelectric effect, making it suitable for perhaps hundreds of everyday uses. 
4.Reports of Mental Health Disability Increase in United States
 ScienceDaily (Sep. 23, 2011) — The prevalence of self-reported mental health disabilities increased in the U.S. among non-elderly adults during the last decade, according to a study by Ramin Mojtabai, MD, PhD, of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. At the same time, the study found the prevalence of disability attributed to other chronic conditions decreased, while the prevalence of significant mental distress remained unchanged.

WAS EINSTIEN WRONG ABOUT SPEED OF ELECTRICITY

The University of Surrey’s Jim al- Khalili will eat his boxer shorts on television if scientists from CERN prove Albert Einstein wrong, the professor of physics wrote in the London-based Times.


CERN, the European Council for Nuclear Research, this week revealed research that casts doubt on Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity and its central tenet that nothing exceeds the speed of light, the newspaper reported.

Al-Khalili said it is more likely that there is an error in the data from CERN’s experiment which is said to show that neutrinos, ghostly subatomic particles, have broken the speed of light.

“I would be so excited that the humiliation of eating my shorts in public would be a small price to pay,” al-Khalili wrote in the newspaper. 

To contact the reporter on this story: Sarah Jones in London at sjones35@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew Rummer at arummer@bloomberg.net