New method is relatively easy and efficient to produce hydrogen from water / Related Research Suggestions

Main Point:

Scientists have found a quick method of generating hydrogen from water using a catalyst in the presence of sunlight.

Published in:

Nature Nanotechnology

Study Further:

In the present study, scientists used cobalt oxide nanoparticles to break water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen.

According to Jiming Bao, lead author of the paper and an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UH, this is the first experiment to use cobalt oxide and the first to use neutral water under visible light at high energy conversion efficiency.

Nanoparticles for the present study were prepared in two ways, i.e. femtosecond laser ablation and through mechanical ball milling, and nanoparticles prepared through both ways worked well. Moreover, different sources of light were used including laser, white light simulating solar spectrum and natural sunlight.

The experiment worked equally well in the presence of sunlight and nanoparticles, hydrogen and oxygen were separated almost immediately from water. However, one of the problems in this process is the reduced lifespan of cobalt oxide nanoparticles that became deactivated after about an hour of reaction.

Research Suggestions:

Although the results were commendable in this study but the conversion rate is still too low with a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency rate of about 5% that it cannot be used commercially at this time. According to Bao, better efficiency rate would be nearly 10%, i.e. 10% of solar energy would result in hydrogen chemical energy. You can work to improve the efficiency of this process.

Among the other research suggestions are reducing the cost of the process and increased the lifespan of cobalt oxide nanoparticles.

Sources:

Researchers split water into hydrogen, oxygen using light, nanoparticles - EurekAlert (http://goo.gl/2Wg8hw)

Efficient solar water-splitting using a nanocrystalline CoO photocatalyst - Nature Nanotechnology (http://goo.gl/OmtVBu)

María Gabriela Isler from Venezuela became Miss Universe, 2013

On Saturday night November 9,2013,  in Moscow(Russia) the occasion held in which  María Gabriela Isler from Venezuela was crowned by Olivia Culpo from the United States . Venezuela took the crown of Miss Universe for the 7th time in the history of Miss Universe.

87 contestants were looking for this auspicious title but Miss Venezuela won the title.The contestants from Spain, Philippines, the United Kingdom, India, Brazil, the United States, Ukraine, Ecuador, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic were in top 10. Miss Spain has been announced as1st runner-up, Miss Ecuador as 2nd runner-up, Philippines’ Ariella Arida as 3rd runner-up and Miss Brazil as 4th runner-up.

Miss Venezuela. Isler, who was born in Maracay, is an accomplished flamenco dancer who also works on Venezuelan television.

 Winning answer from 25 years old Miss Venezuela's to judge Steven Tyler's question "What is your biggest fear and how do you plan to overcome it?" is "For me while one may have a lot of fears but nonetheless this is nothing negative. I believe we should overcome all of our fears and this in turn would make us much stronger and mostly we can become stronger persons. As soon as we overcome our fears and we are sure of ourselves then we can face any challenge.'

Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition: DSM-5

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An Imaginary yet True Love (Science Fiction Story)

An Imaginary yet True Love (Science Fiction Story)

Tragic death of a Chinese women using iPhone 5 while charging

An Apple employee looks over a new iPhone 5 at a Verizon Communications Inc. store in Orem, Utah, Sept. 20, 2012. (George Frey/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

A 23-years old woman, namely Ma Ailun, was electrocuted to death by iPhone 5 while attending the call during its charging last Thursday as reported by Chinese news outlet Xinhaunet.

According to the reports, Ma Ailun, bought iPhone in December last year and was charging the phone with the original charger. She was planning her wedding on August 8.

According to experts, mobile phones have a low voltage output of only 3 to 5 volts, which is not enough to harm the human body. Therefore, several other factors could also be involved in the electrocution.

"I want to warn everyone else not to make phone calls when your mobile phone is recharging," Ma's sister tweeted.

Apple is looking into the report. "We are deeply saddened to learn of this tragic incident and offer our condolences to the Ma family. We will fully investigate and cooperate with authorities in this matter," Apple's Beijing-based spokesperson Carolyn Wu said.

S/2004 N 1 - the smallest and newly discovered moon of Neptune

(This article has been cross-posted from SayPeople.com)

Main Point:

Astronomers discovered a tiny new moon, dubbed S/2004 N 1, around Neptune with the help of Hubble Space Telescope on July 1 and announced it on July 15.

Study Further:

Astronomers have reported that the new moon is the Neptune’s smallest moon of 14 of the known moons. It is just 12 miles (19 kilometers) wide. This moon is so small that it is about 100 million times fainter than the dimmest star.

"The moons and arcs [segments of rings around the planet] orbit very quickly, so we had to devise a way to follow their motion in order to bring out the details of the system," SETI Institute scientist Mark Showalter, the moon's discoverer, said in a statement. "It's the same reason a sports photographer tracks a running athlete — the athlete stays in focus, but the background blurs."

Scientists studied the photos taken by Hubble from the year 2004 to 2009 and found the moon in about 150 of those photos. They determined that the tiny moon orbits the Neptune about every 23 hours.

Source:

Space

First image of Pluto’s largest moon by NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft

(This article has been cross-posted from SayPeople.com)

This New Horizons LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) composite image shows the detection of Pluto’s largest moon, Charon, cleanly separated from Pluto itself. (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute)

Main Point:

NASA’s Pluto-bound New Horizons spacecraft took the first image of Charon, i.e. largest moon of the Pluto, with the help of highest-resolution telescopic camera.

Study Further:

Charon, discovered in 1978, is the largest moon of the Pluto’s five known moons. It is almost the size of Texas State of U.S. and is covered by ice. Charon is orbiting about 12,000 miles (more than 19,000 kilometers) away from Pluto.

The spacecraft was 550 million miles (885 million km) from Pluto, when its LOng Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) snapped a total of six images: three July 1 and three more July 3.

“The image itself might not look very impressive to the untrained eye, but compared to the discovery images of Charon from Earth, these ‘discovery’ images from New Horizons look great!” said New Horizons Project Scientist Hal Weaver of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. “We’re very excited to see Pluto and Charon as separate objects for the first time from New Horizons.”

“We’re excited to have our first pixel on Charon,” New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern of the Southwest Research Institute said, “but two years from now, near closest approach, we’ll have almost a million pixels on Charon — and I expect we’ll be about a million times happier too!”

Source:

NewHorizons via Astronomy