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Scientists develop near-invisible solar cells that could turn windows into power generators
Imagine a car whose windows and sunroof can help top up its battery while parked under the sun, or a pair of smart glasses whose lenses can harvest light to power built-in electronics.
Such applications could become more feasible with a new type of ultrathin transparent solar cell developed by scientists from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore).
Led by Associate Professor Annalisa Bruno, the NTU researchers created perovskite solar cells that are about 10,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair and around 50 times thinner than conventional perovskite solar cells.
Optical meta‑conveyors enable programmable nanomanipulation along arbitrary open paths
The task of gently transporting a microscopic particle from one point to another along a winding path, and then bringing it back using nothing more than a single, compact chip is a challenge we set out to address in our new study, now published in Nature Communications.
Optical forces arising from momentum exchange during light–matter interactions have become indispensable tools in biophysics, soft matter science and micro-and nanofabrication. Among these, optical conveyors—capable of generating stable, directional optical flows—enable nanoparticle transport along predefined trajectories, offering unique advantages for drug delivery, cell sorting, and lab-on-a-chip systems. However, conventional platforms often rely on spatial light modulators to produce dynamic holograms. Such systems are bulky, constrained by limited pixel size and count, and difficult to integrate—factors that severely impede practical deployment.
Metasurfaces have recently opened new pathways for miniaturizing optical manipulation devices, thanks to their subwavelength field-shaping capabilities. Yet, most existing metasurface-based schemes still depend on radially or azimuthally uniform phase gradients, which confine the resulting optical flow to closed loops (vortex rings) due to the intrinsic geometry of vortex fields.
Scientists Find Evidence Earth Is Drifting Through the Ashes of an Exploded Star
Earth is flying through the radioactive ashes of an ancient exploded star, and Antarctic ice preserved the evidence.
Scientists have found new evidence that Earth is moving through a cloud of ancient supernova debris left behind by a long ago stellar explosion. By examining Antarctic ice tens of thousands of years old, researchers detected iron-60, a rare radioactive isotope created when massive stars explode. The findings suggest that the Local Interstellar Cloud surrounding our Solar System contains lingering material from an ancient supernova. The study was led by an international team from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) and published in Physical Review Letters.
Ancient Supernova Material Reaching Earth.
NASA Curiosity rover finds mysterious life linked molecules on Mars
NASA’s Curiosity rover has identified a wide range of organic molecules on Mars, including compounds that scientists consider key ingredients for the origin of life on Earth.
The discovery comes from a chemical experiment carried out on another planet for the first time. Results show that the Martian surface is capable of preserving molecules that could act as potential signs of ancient life. However, the experiment cannot determine whether these organic compounds came from past life on Mars, natural geological processes, or meteorites that struck the planet.
To confirm any true evidence of past life, scientists would need to bring Martian rock samples back to Earth for detailed study.
Scientists recruit red blood cells to deliver genetic cargo with instructions to kill cancer
Scientists have developed a way to turn the body’s own immune cells into cancer-fighting agents—without removing them from the body—by using red blood cells to deliver genetic instructions. Current CAR (chimeric antigen receptor) therapies typically involve collecting a patient’s T cells, genetically modifying them in the laboratory, and then reinfusing them in a process that can take weeks. The new strategy aims to bypass that step.
In a study published in Science Translational Medicine, researchers at Westlake Laboratory of Life Sciences and Biomedicine in Hangzhou, China, report that they used engineered erythrocytes, or red blood cells, to carry messenger RNA—mRNA—that reprograms myeloid cells into tumor-targeting cells inside the body.
“Engineering myeloid cells with chimeric antigen receptors—CARs—holds great therapeutic promise,” writes Dr. Xiaoqian Nie, lead author of the investigation.
