articles

Perovskite solar cells promise cheaper and efficient solar energy, with enormous potential for commercialization. But even though they have been shown to achieve over 22% power-conversion efficiency, their operational stability still fails market requirements. Despite a number of proposed solutions in fabrication technology, this issue has continued to undercut whatever incremental increases in efficiency have been achieved. EPFL scientists have now built a low-cost, ultra-stable perovskite solar cell that has operated for more than a year without loss in performance (11.2%). The work is published in Nature Communications.

Lassonde School of Engineering Professor Usman Khan‘s research on the measurement of aquatic ecosystem health has been published in the journal Water.

In the paper, Khan proposes an approach based on artificial intelligence to predict dissolved oxygen in an urban river environment.

During the last glacial period – when the ice in the Antarctic was far thicker and extended further offshore than it does today – it has been speculated that subglacial lakes existed beneath it. An international team of researchers has now successfully sampled the metre-thick sediment layers left behind by these lakes contemporary on the seafloor. This is the outcome of a study by Gerhard Kuhn and colleagues, which was published today in the journal Nature Communications.

A new study combining European ice core data and historical records of the infamous Black Death pandemic of 1349-1353 shows metal mining and smelting have polluted the environment for thousands of years, challenging the widespread belief that environmental pollution began with the Industrial Revolution in the 1700s and 1800s.

A new U.S. Geological Survey study that looked at the extensive harmful algal bloom that plagued Florida last year found far more types of cyanobacteria present than previously known.