Solar power is poised to be one of the important power sources of the future. Growth is already substantial, and within the next five years the increase will be nearly five-fold. Solar cells are however still very expensive and not at all very efficient. Both may change within this same time span. I recently read about a nanotechnology "paint" that was being developed and which could significantly increase the effect of solar cells. Today's solar cells only convert a slim specter of radiation into electricity. This means that much of the sun rays goes unused even when they hit a solar cell. The new paint simply transform some of this radiation into the frequencies that are easily exploited by the solar cells. The technique seems very appealing to me since it can be employed with existing solar cell plants and without expensive production. I also read that production capacity is now growing faster than the demand for solar cells. This implies that prices for solar cells wi...
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As always the peace prize gets most attention. Not very controversial this year wiht Martti Ahtisaari, although some think a Chinese dissident would have been a bolder and better choice.
To me it is the chemistry prize that was most interesting this year, but first a look at physics and medicine.
The physics prize is firmly placed in the magical world of quantum physics and particle theory, and as such in a very exciting area of basic science. But it is also very hard to understand for the lay-man. I will have to wait for the popular science version before I spend more time on that.
In medicine the focus this year is on virus research. The first is the papilloma viruses. These are named as key contributors to cervical cancer, the second most common cancer among women. The other is HIV which shouldn't need any further introduction. Finding and understanding these viruses is important in order to fight two of the worlds big diseases.
Finally the chemistry prize is given "for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP". Why is this interesting? In my view, there has been an explosion in methods and improvements in how we can observe and monitor physical processes. This is important because it opens up for so much new understanding and thereby advances in applications and medical treatment. GFP is a very good example of the tools now becoming available. Sitation from background material from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: "These GFP-like proteins allow the monitoring in time and space of an ever-increasing number
of phenomena in living cells and organisms like gene expression, protein localization and
dynamics, protein-protein interactions, cell division, chromosome replication and organization,
intracellular transport pathways, organelle inheritance and biogenesis, to name but a
few. In addition, the fluorescence from single GFP molecules has made it feasible to image at
a spatial resolution higher than the diffraction limit. Furthermore, sensors that report pH values,
Ca2+ concentrations and other essential features of the interior of living cells have been
engineered from GFP-like proteins."
For those interested I can recommend the web pages of the nobel organization - http://nobelprize.org. For each prize they give quite good background information.