Gizmorama - December 17, 2012

Good Morning,

Did you know that flexible, foldable solar cells are being developed? So the day may come when the shirt on your back can charge your cellphone.

Learn about this new technology and other interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Study casts doubt on 'killer mushrooms' --*
HAMILTON, Ontario - A Canadian biologist say his trek in southwestern China has shattered a myth of "killer mushrooms" being responsible for 400 unexplained deaths in the region. Jianping Xu of McMaster University in Ontario said his investigations were triggered by a 2010 article in the journal Science, claiming Trogia venenata mushrooms contained high concentrations of the metal barium and linking them with high blood pressure, cardiac arrests and sudden deaths in southwestern China over the past 30 years. "Although there was no published evidence supporting the theory that barium in the T. venenata mushroom was the leading culprit of what was called Sudden Unexplained Death, it was picked up as a fact by almost all of the major news media," biology Professor Xu said. "These reports caused significant concern among the public about potentially high levels of barium in wild edible mushrooms in southwest China." Every summer for the last four years Xu and colleagues have trekked across the Yunnan province, collecting T. venenata and other mushrooms from villages severely impacted by these deaths. Analysis of the mushrooms found barium concentrations so low a 150-pound person would have to ingest at least 75 pounds of dried T. venenata to create a lethal amount, the researchers said. While barium can't be completely ruled out as a contributor to the deaths since high levels of the metal were found in the blood, urine and hair samples of some victims, Xu said, his study does suggest that barium in mushrooms was unlikely the leading cause. "Though there are a couple of leads," he said, "further investigation is needed to discover what the true cause was for these mysterious deaths."


*-- Flexible solar cells could be in clothing --*
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - The day may come when the shirt on your back can charge your cellphone, say U.S. researchers who've helped developed flexible, foldable solar cells. Scientists at Penn State, who worked with international colleagues, said the silicon-based optical fiber with solar-cell capabilities can be made to almost any length and paves the way for flexible, curved or twisted solar fabrics. The team worked to overcome the challenge of merging optical fibers with silicon-based integrated circuits found in most semiconductor electronic devices such as solar cells, computers, and cellphones, a university release said Thursday. The solution was an optical fiber thinner than a human hair, with its own integrated electronic component, bypassing the problem of having to integrate fiber-optics with flat electronic chips. "Our goal is to extend high-performance electronic and solar-cell function to longer lengths and to more flexible forms. We already have made meters-long fibers but, in principle, our team's new method could be used to create bendable silicon solar-cell fibers of over 10 meters in length," Penn State chemistry Professor John Badding said. "Long, fiber-based solar cells give us the potential to do something we couldn't really do before: We can take the silicon fibers and weave them together into a fabric with a wide range of applications such as power generation, battery charging, chemical sensing and biomedical devices." Most current solar cells are expensive to produce and create a flat, inflexible device, he said. "But woven, fiber-based solar cells would be lightweight, flexible configurations that are portable, foldable and even wearable," he said. The military has shown great interest in wearable power sources for soldiers in the field, Badding said.


*-- Hubble observes cosmic 'bulls-eye' galaxy --*
PARIS - The Hubble telescope has captured an image of a distant galaxy that was a target bulls-eye in a cosmic collision with another galaxy, European astronomers say. The image of galaxy NGC 922 reveals not a normal spiral galaxy but one whose arms are disrupted, with a stream of stars extending outward and a bright ring of nebulae encircling the core, a release from the European Space Agency's Paris headquarters reported Thursday. Those features are the evidence of a cosmic bulls-eye millions of years ago when a smaller galaxy smashed through the center of NGC 922 and sailed out the other side, astronomers said. The collision created ripples that disrupted the clouds of gas in NGC 922, triggering the formation of new stars whose radiation then lit up the remaining gas creating the bright pink color seen in the space telescope image, they said. This process of excitation and emission of light by gases is similar to what happens in neon signs, astronomers said. Objects like NGC 922, dubbed collisional ring galaxies, are relatively rare in our cosmic neighborhood, they said. While galaxy collisions and mergers are commonplace, the precise alignment and ratio of the colliding galaxies' sizes needed to create a ring such as the one seen in NGC 922 is unusual, they said.

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