It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, October 12, 2020
World Bank Falling $81 Billion Short on COVID Funding Promises
OCTOBER 12, 2020 Contact: Jeremy Gaines Center for Global Development
WASHINGTON, DC—At its current pace, the World Bank could fall $81 billion short on its $160 billion target for emergency funding to help developing countries deal with the effects of COVID-19, according to a new study from the Center for Global Development (CGD).
The researchers built a database of the more than 500,000 World Bank transactions since before 2008 to track the Bank’s performance during the current crisis against the norm. They found that the World Bank is lagging both on its rate of new commitments and on the speed it is disbursing loans compared to the bank’s performance during the global financial crisis a decade ago.
The study found:
At its current rate, the Bank’s new commitments will fall $31 billion short of its target of $160 billion by June 2021.
More importantly, they found, the slow rate of disbursements falls far short of that headline target. At the current pace, just $79 billion of the $160 billion target will flow to developing countries by June 2021.
The expected shortfall against the Bank’s lending target
“The World Bank’s own analysis suggests we’re in the midst of a tragic reversal of years of progress in reducing global poverty. So far, the Bank has responded with modest half measures, fretted over its own triple-A credit rating, and talked about conditioning further assistance on structural reforms. The bankers need to get a lot more creative in moving money,” said Justin Sandefur, a senior fellow at CGD and an author of the study.
The researchers also found:
The World Bank has not shifted to providing more direct budgetary support, as it had during the 2008 crisis, which may partially explain the slow rate of disbursement.
Low-income countries have mostly received money faster than middle-income countries, and World Bank financing has met a somewhat larger percentage of financing needs for poorer countries.
Countries like El Salvador, Indonesia, and Yemen are currently paying more to the World Bank to service old debts than they are receiving from the institution in crisis support.
“It’s particularly troubling that World Bank is currently a drag on the ability of some countries to respond this crisis. At a minimum, countries should not be paying more to the bank to service old debts than they are receiving in crisis support,” said Scott Morris, the co-director of CGD’s development finance program and an author of the study.
Published: 10:00pm, 12 Oct, 2020 Gaofen-13, launched from Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in Sichuan, is part of an expanding network of remote sensing satellites. Photo: Xinhua
China has sent its Gaofen-13 satellite into orbit, kicking off a spree of space missions that will bring a dozen major launches in the next few months.
The Gaofen-13 was launched early on Monday morning with a Long March-3B (CZ-3B) rocket from Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in Sichuan province, in the country’s southwest.
It is a high-orbit remote sensing satellite, one of the Gaofen series, that will take high-definition optical images of the Earth.
What are Gaofen satellites?
“Gaofen” is a Chinese abbreviation of “high resolution”, which refers to the High Resolution Earth Observation Satellite programme.
China began the project in 2010 and has launched more than 20 satellites, over half of them in the past two years.
These satellites observe and take photos of the Earth, including some infrared ray images, which can be used for many civilian purposes, including monitoring pollution and environment, estimating agricultural yields, forecasting weather and disasters, and detecting minerals.
Do Chinese satellites have military uses?
There are also military applications for the satellites. Last month, China released a video captured by the Jilin-1 Gaofen-3 satellite, in which it continuously tracked the flight of a fighter jet, thought to be an F-22, the most advanced American stealth fighter.
Stealth jets are designed to avoid radar detection, but are visible by optical observation. If equipped with higher-resolution cameras and advanced identification and tracking capabilities thanks to artificial intelligence, these satellites could serve as an important support to air defence radars.
What are China’s next space plans?
By the end of March, China’s satellite launch sites will have a mission almost every other week, with the shortest gap being only five days, according to Zhang Xueyu, the director of the Xichang launch centre.
“This frequency is unprecedented and the operation will be constantly saturated, close to the limit of our capacity,” Zhang told government newspaper Science and Technology Daily.
The most notable launch will be that of the Chang’e-5 lunar exploration mission, which is scheduled for late November. It is expected to land on the moon and then return to Earth with at least 2kg (4.4 pounds) of lunar rock samples.
China has ambitious space plans and has carried out a number of significant missions. This year alone, it has sent its first independent Mars probe, Tianwen-1, on the way to the red planet, completed the 30-satellite constellation for its BeiDou navigation system – its rival to the United States’ Global Positioning System (GPS) – and tested a new type of manned spaceship and its new heavy-lift rocket Long March-5B.
Next year, the core module of a permanent Chinese space station is also on the agenda.
Why is China stepping up its space programmes?
China considers space of great importance to both national security and technological development.
Meanwhile, it is banned by Washington from taking part in US-led space programmes. This forced Beijing to be self-sufficient, such as by building a space station of its own, and developing BeiDou.
While the relationship with the US has deteriorated in the past couple of years and been described by some as a new cold war, competition in space has intensified, including in efforts to carry out the next manned mission to the moon.
The establishment of the US Space Force last December was a symbolic event. China, too, stepped up its space programmes, and this summer brought a head-on race to Mars, with China’s Tianwen-1 and Nasa’s Perseverance launched one week apart.
Mario Molina obituary
Mexican scientist who helped discover dangers posed by CFCs to the ozone layer, leading to an international ban on their use
Mario Molina’s work was responsible for a global treaty that has helped to reduce the hole in the ozone layer, which should be fully repaired by the 2080s. Photograph: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images
Unknown to humanity, in the later decades of the last century an environmental crisis was slowly unfolding in the upper atmosphere. The existence of the ozone layer was proved by chemists in the early 20th century, but as a scientific curiosity rather than a cause for concern. A thin layer between the troposphere, in which we live, and the stratosphere, the ozone layer filters out about 99% of harmful ultraviolet light from the sun before it hits the Earth. Exposure to unfiltered ultraviolet light can cause skin cancers, eye damage and weakened immune systems.
What we did not know until the mid 1970s was that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), chemicals that had come into widespread use as refrigerant gases and aerosol propellants, were reacting unseen with the ozone layer, fatally thinning the Earth’s protective cloak.
Mario Molina, who has died of a heart attack aged 77, won the Nobel prize for chemistry in 1995, along with F Sherwood Rowland and the Dutch scientist Paul Crutzen, for their work unravelling the impact of CFCs on the ozone layer, and the stark warning they delivered to humanity. Molina and Rowland jointly published a landmark paper in the peer-review journal Nature in 1974 showing the impact of CFCs on ozone.
Despite the strength of their science, it was more than a decade before their work was acted upon, amid protestations from the chemical industry. Nasa at first reported that their data showed no signs of ozone depletion – it was later discovered they were led astray by computer software trained to ignore what seemed anomalous readings. It was only with the work of Joe Farman and colleagues at the British Antarctic Survey in another Nature paper in 1985 that clinching proof was obtained – a vast hole was opening up in the ozone layer over the South Pole.
The discovery was made just in time: at the rate of destruction in the mid-80s, the ozone layer could have been damaged beyond repair in as little as a decade.
Molina was a young chemist, who had barely finished his PhD, when he started working with Rowland on the study of CFCs that would transform his career and avert disaster. Born in Mexico City to Roberto Molina Pasquel, a lawyer and judge who later served as ambassador to Ethiopia, Australia and the Philippines, and Leonor Henriquez, he showed his fascination for the world of science early on. Perhaps influenced by his aunt Esther, a chemist, as a child he set up a mini laboratory in a bathroom at home with toy microscopes and chemistry sets.
He went to boarding school in Switzerland at the age of 11, believing that to speak German was essential for a serious chemist, before returning to high school in Mexico. As he later recalled: “I was disappointed that my European schoolmates had no more interest in science than my Mexican friends. I had already decided to become a research chemist; earlier, I had seriously contemplated the possibility of pursuing a career in music – I used to play the violin in those days.”
After graduating in chemical engineering from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 1965, Molina went on to study at the University of Freiburg in Germany, and then to a PhD in laser chemistry in 1972 from Berkeley, part of the University of California. He then joined, as a post-doctoral research associate, a group led by Rowland, professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine.
In 1972 Rowland had attended a presentation on the work of James Lovelock, a British scientist who had measured traces of CFCs – then thought to be harmless – with instruments he had designed. Rowland realised that CFCs were not likely to be as inert as was thought when found at altitude, and offered this to Molina as a choice among several subjects for research.
“Mario chose the one furthest from his previous experience and from my own experience as well, and we began studying the atmospheric fate of the CFC molecules,” Rowland recounted. “Within three months, Mario and I realised that this was not just a scientific question, challenging and interesting to us, but a potentially grave environmental problem involving substantial depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer. A major part of both of our careers since has been spent on the continuing threads of this original problem.”
While at Berkeley Molina also met Luisa Y Tan, a fellow chemist, who went on to be president of the Molina Center for Strategic Studies in Energy and the Environment at La Jolla, California. They married in 1973 and their son Felipe was born in 1977. The marriage ended in divorce and Molina was married again, to Guadalupe Álvarez, in 2006.
Though he spent much of his working life in the US, including stints as a scientific adviser to President Barack Obama and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Molina continued to act as a figurehead for Mexican science throughout his life, holding a professorship at UNAM. In 2015 UNAM inaugurated the Mario Molina building, a collaboration between industry and research scientists. When his country played host to climate talks in 2010, Molina played a significant role. In his later years the climate emergency became an increasing area of focus, along with air quality and air pollution.
The ozone layer is now recovering, and should be close to full repair by the 2080s, thanks to an international treaty – the Montreal protocol, signed in 1987 – that phased out CFCs. What is less known is that Molina’s work will also help to avert ruin from that other dire emergency, the climate crisis. Some of the substitutes for CFCs held an unrecognised danger: they are powerful greenhouse gases, with the potential to warm the planet at a rate many thousands of times greater than carbon dioxide. Last year the Kigali amendment to the Montreal protocol came into force, phasing out a raft of these chemicals too.
Durwood Zaelke, president of the US-based Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, who worked with Molina on urging governments to take action on the climate, said: “The Montreal protocol solved the first great threat to the global atmosphere, and has done more to solve the next threat – the climate threat – than any other agreement, including the Paris agreement. Phasing down CFCs and related fluorinated gases has avoided more climate warming than carbon dioxide is causing today. Mario remained deeply involved until his last days.”
He is survived by his wife, his son, three stepchildren, two brothers and a sister and two grandchildren.
• Mario Molina, chemist, born 19 March 1943; died 7 October 2020
Famous feather definitely belonged to this terrifying Jurassic-era dinosaur
Research compared feather, discovered in 1861, with fossilized remains of other archaeopteryx feathers
The first-ever dinosaur feather discovered does indeed belong to the archaeopteryx, according to a new study, putting an end to a controversy that has waged within the scientific community for more than 100 years.
The research compared the feather, discovered in 1861, with the fossilized remains of other archaeopteryx feathers. The experts determined its owner is no longer a mystery and it definitely belonged to archaeopteryx.
“There’s been debate for the past 159 years as to whether or not this feather belongs to the same species as the Archaeopteryx skeletons, as well as where on the body it came from and its original color,” said the study's lead author, Ryan Carney, assistant professor of integrative biology at the University of South Florida, in a statement. “Through scientific detective work that combined new techniques with old fossils and literature, we were able to finally solve these centuries-old mysteries.” (University of South Florida)
In 2019, the debate over what creature the feather belonged to was given new life after a study said it did not belong to archaeopteryx. Those researchers suggested it may have stemmed from a different feathered dinosaur that lived in the Solnhofen Archipelago in what is now Germany.
Fox News has reached out to the authors of the 2019 study with a request for comment.
Archaeopteryx was a transitional dinosaur that lived 125 million years ago and bridged the gap between non-avian feathered dinosaurs and modern-day birds.
Carney and the other researchers used a high-powered electron microscope to gather images of the feather, which they determined came from the bird's left wing.
"They also detected melanosomes, which are microscopic pigment structures," the statement added. "After refining their color reconstruction, they found that the feather was entirely matte black, not black and white as another study has claimed."
In March 2018, researchers suggested that archaeopteryx could probably fly but in a different manner from modern-day birds, in rapid, short bursts over small distances.
Archaeopteryx possessed feathers, like a modern-day bird. However, it also possessed a "long, stiff, frond-feathered tail" and teeth, along with bones in its hands, shoulders and pelvis that were not fused.
Some 12 fossils of archaeopteryx have been found, the first discovered in the late 19th century by famed German paleontologist Hermann von Meyer. The most recent was discovered by an amateur collector in 2010, announced in February 2014 and described scientifically in 2018.
Bizarre-looking dinosaur looks like it's been crossed with a parrot: See the drawing
The dinosaur, known as Oksoko avarsan, had two digits on each forearm and a long, toothless beak, similar to parrots
A newly discovered dinosaur fossil reveals the ancient creature may have had more in common with modern-day birds than other members of the species.
The dinosaur, known as Oksoko avarsan, had two digits on each forearm and what appears to be a long, toothless beak, similar to parrots, according to the study published in The Royal Society Open Science journal.
"Oksoko avarsan is interesting because the skeletons are very complete and the way they were preserved resting together shows that juveniles roamed together in groups," the study's lead author, Dr. Gregory Funston, said in a statement. Artist's impression of Oksoko avarsan dinosaurs (credit: Michael Skrepnick)
O. avarsan, which was believed to be featherless and omnivorous, lived approximately 68 million years ago. It grew to roughly 6.5 feet long, or about the length of a giraffe's neck.
However, it's the two fingers on each limb that has surprised the researchers, as it may shed new light on dinosaur evolution.
"But more importantly, its two-fingered hand prompted us to look at the way the hand and forelimb changed throughout the evolution of oviraptors—which hadn’t been studied before," Funston added. "This revealed some unexpected trends that are a key piece in the puzzle of why oviraptors were so diverse before the extinction that killed the dinosaurs."
O. avarsan is not the only ancient birdlike dinosaur to garner attention in recent memory.
Earlier this month, researchers declared that the first-ever dinosaur feather discovered does indeed belong to the archaeopteryx, putting an end to a controversy that has waged within the scientific community for more than 100 years.
In March 2018, researchers suggested that archaeopteryx could probably fly but in a different manner from modern-day birds, in rapid, short bursts over small distances.
The gas station is often viewed as a harmless, benign stop for commuters and travelers. Looking back at a few classic horror films, however, these mainstays of the American landscape take on much deeper meanings.
University of Houston-Downtown researcher Dr. Chuck Jackson recently focused on three iconic horror films and the memorable (and frightening) scenes featuring gas stations. "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" (1956), "The Birds" (1962) and "Night of the Living Dead" (1968) all have pivotal moments centered around gas stations or gas pumps. During these respective eras, the gas station often served as a gateway to weekend escapes, day trips, vacations or other optimistic ventures. These films, however, juxtapose horrific situations with these otherwise benign and everyday environments.
He explores these scenes and deeper reflections on America's dependence on oil and gas in the article "Petrification and Petroleum: Affect, the Gas Pump and US Horror Films (1956–73)," which was recently published in the journal Film Studies.
"Starting in 1956, but throughout the 1960s, some of the most popular American horror films include a scene that takes place at a gas pump that goes terrifyingly wrong," said Jackson, Associate Professor of English and Coordinator of UHD's Film Studies Minor. "Each film destroys the presumed pleasures of getting gas to fuel a car as it heads to its next destination. Instead of a full tank, the films bring monstrosity and death."
The scenes Jackson explores include a menacing alien shape-shifting seed placed in a car's trunk by a dubious service attendant in "Body Snatchers"; an explosion caused by blood-thirsty fowl and a cigarette smoking citizen in "The Birds"; and a blinding explosion ignited by torch-wielding escapees from a zombie horde in "Living Dead." The characters' reactions to these events are what Jackson describes as "petrification meets petroleum."
As Jackson states at the onset of his article, these films "imbue scenes that take place at a gas pump with a horror so intense, it petrifies." Indeed, the reaction of protagonists to the events that take place at these service stations reflect paralyzing dread.
"The films uniquely join petroleum with petrification, or oil and the body's experience of terror—characters 'turn to stone' as they apprehend the horror of oil as an out of control and deadly force," he said.
He added that these fearful moments within these films counter the popularity of open highways and car culture found not just in films, but across the country.
"My argument is that the films index an alternative affect to what other scholars have termed the 'exuberance' of oil for Americans," he said. "The scenes elicit a feeling that is radically at odds with Big Oil's 1950s and 60s advertising and marketing campaigns and the seemingly progressive federal funding of our current national highway system—a project that guarantees private travel in individually owned cars will be the expectation for us all in the decades to come."
Jackson, also a Fellow in UHD's Center for Critical Race Studies, is a film scholar who frequently focuses his scholarly work on race and the horror genre. He previously explored the relationship between oil and gas and horror in the article "Blood for Oil: Crude Metonymies and Tobe Hooper's Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)" published in the journal Gothic Studies.
The horror genre, he said, provides deeper insights into human nature, culture and the environment than many audiences realize. His insights on the aforementioned films and the oil and gas industries reveal much about ourselves and our reliance on these resources.
"As scholars have made clear, the horror genre asks viewers to take pleasure in what we would otherwise find unbearable—fear and disgust—and often this includes forms of oppressive power," he said. "These case studies have a pedagogical value as they teach us to feel differently about the stranglehold that oil culture has on the world, which only came into being as such an intense fashion less than 100 years ago."
Delicate forest floor plants such as wood sorrel or violet, and the balance among the tree species that tower above them, are all threatened by decades of accumulated nitrogen pollution. A study has found that the darkness of the forest has subdued the effects of nitrogen. But forests are destined to let in more light in the future as trees succumb to drought and disease.
Forests cover 40% of the European Union’s land area and are expanding in some countries, mostly because of active restoration or the abandonment of agricultural land. Forests provide services such as controlling erosion and cycling water but they are also increasingly threatened by droughts and diseases such as ash dieback.
To understand how they are responding to these challenges it is vital to study the forest floor, says Professor Kris Verheyen, an ecologist at Ghent University in Belgium.
‘This herb layer is very often forgotten. Some people call it the step-over layer – you step over it to look at the trees,’ he said.
Yet, in temperate forests, the life underfoot includes 80% of a forest’s biodiversity. The herb layer cycles key nutrients such as phosphorous, potassium and nitrogen, helps decompose tree litter and filters the next generation of trees – since seedlings need to pass through it to embark on their journey to the canopy, says Prof. Verheyen.
Records
In trying to understand more about the forest floor, he led a team that retrieved records, going back in some cases as far as 50 years, of 4,000 forest plots across Europe. For those whose locations were easily identified, the researchers visited to make updated measurements.
The team also carted forest soils from around the continent to their research station where they incorporated them into outdoor experimental environments, called mesocosms, in which they varied the plants’ access to nitrogen, temperature and light.
‘The basic question we wanted to answer was how do multiple global change drivers determine the trajectories of change over time,’ says Prof. Verheyen, who led the project, known as PASTFORWARD.
‘This herb layer is very often forgotten. Some people call it the step-over layer – you step over it to look at the trees.’
Prof. Kris Verheyen, Ghent University, Belgium
Nitrogen pollution
One powerful example of this was the way it has held back the effects of nitrogen pollution.
Nitrogen deposition is a chronic problem caused by ammonia emissions from agricultural fertiliser and the creation of nitrogen oxides as a by-product of burning fossil fuels. It draws certain nutrients out of soils, acidifies land, and causes algae to grow in waterways.
The researchers found plenty of nitrogen deposition in forests and documented its consequences for species. But ‘the effects are not as strong as we expected because … the nitrogen is available but the plants (on the forest floor) can’t really benefit because they are limited by the amount of light that is available,’ said Prof. Verheyen.
Some plants – types that tend to be widespread and can survive in a variety of environments including non-native species – have the machinery to take advantage of an excess of nitrogen and grow more; others – which tend to be specialists with small ranges – do not. In shaded forests they are on an equal footing. But as soon as the canopy opens up and light pours in, those that can exploit the nitrogen pollution have an advantage.
As a result, European forests are already losing their more specialist species and thus experiencing a drop in biodiversity. Prof. Verheyen is concerned that forest canopies are in danger of opening up as trees die from drought and disease which may open the floodgates to nitrogen.
‘That will lead to rapid and very large changes in the herb layer,’ he said.
Drought – itself a result of climate change – has had a ‘massive’ effect killing trees in spruce forests in Germany, Belgium and France in recent years although broadleaf forests have been more resistant for now.
This does not mean that broadleaf forests are free from canopy-opening – one example is ash dieback disease. ‘We do have evidence that because of the dying off of the ash you get a lot of light and then the understorey really explodes because light is no longer a limiting resource,’ said Prof. Verheyen.
‘These large and probably abrupt changes that may happen in the herb layer will affect the tree regeneration and will certainly determine which species will be able to pass the herb layer filter and which not. It will have its consequences for nutrient cycling because this herb layer really impacts rate of decomposition.’ Forest dieback can open up protective canopies. When more light is let in, forests can succumb to drought and disease. Image credit – High Contrast/Wikimedia, licenced under CC BY 3.0 DE
Buffering
The researchers also discovered that forests have so far done a remarkable job of buffering plants against the broader climate change going on outside them.
Temperature measurements revealed that forests often have significantly different temperatures from what weather stations – always placed far from trees – record. In summer, for example, they are on average 4°C cooler. This is not only because thick canopies keep out the light, but also because evapotranspiration of water through the leaves and into the atmosphere sucks heat out of the forest, and the vegetation keeps out breezes that would mix warm air into the cool.
Climate models don’t take into account this buffering, despite the fact that two thirds of the world’s species live in forests and forest processes such as carbon and nutrient cycling depend on temperature, says Professor Pieter de Frenne, a bioscientist also at Ghent University, who is leading the parallel FORMICA project investigating forest microclimates.
This, in turn, explains why, in intact forest, there has been less ‘reshuffling’ of forest species than was predicted as Europe warms, he says – forest-buffering has allowed many species to cling on.
‘We would have expected that forest plants would have responded already to a stronger degree – so that more warm-adapted species would have come into the community and more cold affinity species would have declined or even become locally extinct.’
But the effect can’t last forever and if the canopy is opened up these species will have a rude awakening as their world warms up to the temperature outside the forest.
‘Buffering is buying us time so species get a chance to adapt to the new climate,’ he said.
The work has practical implications for the way forests are managed and the PASTFORWARD and FORMICA teams are now hoping to develop a tool to help forest managers work out how much of the canopy they can remove – for example for harvesting or as part of the cycle of tree-thinning known as coppicing – without triggering this explosive growth.
Some experts consider there to be seven layers in a forest, while Prof. Verheyen’s team have based their work on three interconnected layers. Image credit – Horizon
The research in this article was funded by the EU. If you liked this article, please consider sharing it on social media.
Today’s silicon solar panels are an industry standard, but these rigid, heavy blocks may be shunted aside by plastic rivals – lightweight, flexible solar panels that could be printed and stuck onto buildings or placed in windows or cars, turning light into electricity in locations inaccessible to their heavier cousins.
The standard solar panels we see on homes and businesses are made from crystalline silicon. These rigid photovoltaic (PV) panels convert light into electricity.
They weigh 20 to 30 kilogrammes per square metre and so cannot be placed easily onto all building roofs or onto facades. There is an alternative and more flexible competitor to silicon PVs, however.
Instead of silicon, researchers in Europe are working on organic photovoltaic (OPV) technologies. Organic simply means carbon-containing molecules and OPVs can be thought of as plastic solar cells. They offer advantages over silicon-based solar panels.
‘Their manufacture process (has the potential to be) cheaper, they are lightweight, offer flexibility in their architecture and in principle they can be more environmentally friendly,’ said Dr Francesca Fassioli, a theoretical physicist at Princeton University, US.
Plastic solar panels can weigh around 500g per square metre – more than 40 times lighter than their silicon counterparts. Plastic panels can be attached to the fronts of buildings or placed on the roofs of buildings that might struggle to safely support standard solar panels. Organic solar cells are also much thinner than silicon solar cells, offering substantial savings on materials, which is good for the environment.
In theory, plastic solar cells should also be easier to manufacture. ‘The main difference between silicon technologies and OPV is that we are able to print it or coat it onto something as a thin film,’ said Damien Hau, research, development and innovation manager at Armor, an engineering company headquartered in Nantes, France.
One of the company’s first such products, launched last year, has been installed on commercial greenhouses near Nantes to provide shade and generate electricity. Armor recently bought a German company, Opvius, that specialises in designing shaped plastic solar panels that could be used decoratively on buildings.
Organic PVs can be as thin as a few millimetres in thickness and can be placed onto plastic polyester films.
Armor has created thin semi-transparent OPVs that can be fitted inside windowpanes, so that office windows could filter out some sunlight while turning it into electricity.
Films containing organic solar cells means they can be integrated into everyday objects such as benches. Image credit – ARMOR/GerArchitektur
Alternative
While most standard solar panels are imports, plastic solar panels are a new technology that companies in Europe can push forward as an alternative.
Almost 90% of all PV panels around the world today are made from crystalline silicon, which is an established technology on the market for decades. Typically they can convert 18% to 22% of the energy from sunlight into electricity.
Organic PV panels are a newer technology and have the disadvantage of lower efficiencies and higher production costs – partly because it is such a small industry, for now.
‘These are the two issues that our new project BOOSTER is working to solve,’ said Hau, referring to a new €6 million research project that his company is leading. The consortium will work on the best light-harvesting molecules, which in labs can approach 17% efficiency today. Standard panels generate 150 to 200 watts per square metre, whereas commercial OPVs generate 40 watts per square metre. BOOSTER aims to get this up to 150 watts.
It will push also towards lower costs for producing plastic solar panels. As a newer technology, some of the components were not designed for these solar panels but taken from other devices.
For example, as an organic material, plastic solar panels need shielding from ultraviolet radiation. Today, a thin film is used that is needlessly expensive. This is because it was developed to protect organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screens, which are in high-end televisions and require flawless films.
‘(Organic solar cells) are lightweight, offer flexibility in their architecture and in principle they can be more environmentally friendly.’
Dr Francesca Fassioli, Princeton University, US
‘We don’t require that same quality for a barrier for OPV technology,’ Hau explained. A newly designed film specific for plastic solar panels could be far less expensive but still get the job done.
The project consortium, which consists of companies and academic partners, will make two demo products. First, a stick-on solar panel that can be attached to a door or floor or car or roof. ‘This is to prove that there is another way to do solar panels,’ Hau said. The sticky light-harvesting material will be installed on the headquarters of the energy company ENI in Rome, Italy.
A second demo product will see the plastic solar panel attached to textiles, of the sort that often cover buildings under renovation. This will be installed on a university building in Nuremberg, Germany, by a partner in the project.
Planting seeds
While researchers here hope their efforts on organic PVs will bear commercial fruits in the very near future, other scientists are planting the seeds of future advances in solar power. This is the case with theoretical physicist Dr Fassioli, who will soon join the group of Professor Stefano Baroni at SISSA in Trieste, Italy.
Theoretical physicists use mathematical models and theory to explain the world around us, ideas which are then tested in experiments by others. Albert Einstein who revolutionised physics with ideas, pen and paper is perhaps the most famous theoretical physicist.
In her QuESt project, Dr Fassioli will therefore not be handling prototype solar panels, but instead investigate the fundamentals of how organic molecules interact with light, in order to increase the power conversion efficiencies of organic solar cells.
‘This is not about creating new molecules,’ said Dr Fassioli, ‘but about how to use the typical molecules in a more clever way.
To simplify, in a solar panel light is absorbed by molecules which become excited and release an electron, which creates electric current.
Dr Fassioli considers how optical cavities can trap particles of light. Optical cavities essentially consist of two microscopic mirrors to trap light particles (photons). If you place a material inside an optical cavity, a photon is continuously swapped between the material and the cavity and this gives rise to a new hybrid state.
The strange hybrid (called a polariton) is made of both light and matter. The phenomenon involves quantum physics, so can seem counterintuitive, even weird.
This hybrid state ‘can involve thousands or millions of molecules, such that the molecules no longer behave as independent,’ said Dr Fassioli, ‘but they become synchronised by the coupling to the light in the optical cavity.’
Her project will generate scientific publications and new knowledge and ideas about the interplay of matter and light. ‘We think this synchronised collective behaviour of excited molecules can be exploited to enhance the efficiency of photovoltaics,’ Dr Fassioli explained.
‘This is a bottom-up approach in terms of understanding mechanisms that will modify the properties of (organic solar cells), rather than pursuing an immediate application for commercial applications,’ noted Dr Fassioli. But the hope is that this work will in future years improve organic solar cells so that they convert more of the sun’s rays into electricity.
The research in this article was funded by the EU. If you liked this article, please consider sharing it on social media.
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Black police officers disciplined disproportionately for misconduct, research finds
An examination of racial differences in the disciplining of police officers in three of the largest U.S. cities consistently found that Black officers were more frequently disciplined for misconduct than White officers, despite an essentially equal number of allegations being leveled. This included allegations of severe misconduct.
"We found a consistent pattern of racial differences in the formal recording of disciplinary actions in three different major metropolitan cities: Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles," wrote a group of six management professors at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. "Our results showed that Black officers were more likely to have recorded cases of misconduct, despite there being no difference between Black and white officers in the number of allegations made against them.
"It is impossible to know whether these differences are due to racial bias versus some other unmeasured factors. However, it is noteworthy that the pattern of results is in line with what theories of racial bias would predict and with evidence of racial disparities in punishment in other settings.
Authors of the article, "The Race Discipline Gap: A Cautionary Note on Archival Measures of Behavioral Misconduct," are Sheri Walter, Eric Gonzalez-Mulé, Cristiano Guarana, Ernest O'Boyle Jr., Chris Berry and Tim Baldwin. All are in Kelley's Department of Management and Entrepreneurship. The article is forthcoming in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
Using archival data, they found that Black officers in Chicago were disciplined at a 105 percent higher rate than white officers. In Philadelphia, Black officers were 48 percent more likely than white officers to have been disciplined. Allegations of misconduct include lack of service and verbal or physical assault.
After controlling for the number of allegations of misconduct, they found that Black officers were disciplined at an even higher rate—132 percent more often than white officers.
"Just as organizational leaders have implemented policies and procedures to mitigate adverse impact in hiring, they may need to implement checks to ensure that there is no adverse impact in the detection and enforcing of organizational misconduct," the Kelley professors wrote. "Just as bias by police against citizens has been very slow to change, it is likely that any bias within police departments has also been slow to change."
The professors analyzed archival information from the Citizens Police Data Project, which features information collected by the Chicago Police Department from 2001 to 2008 and 2011 to 2015, as well as administrative records from the Philadelphia Police Department from 1991 to 1998.
They also used data collected by the Analysis Group for the City of Los Angeles in 2003 and 2004 to assess whether there are race differences in the number of allegations made against officers. The results of their analysis of data from Chicago and Los Angeles found no differences in allegations between Black and white officers. Results were mixed for Hispanic and Asian officers.
The purpose of the study was to examine the use of archival organizational records as measures of behavioral misconduct. Given prior studies that Black people are more likely to be arrested, receive longer prison sentences and be suspended from school, the researchers set out to study whether Black employees—when compared to white employees—were subject to systematic differences in the documentation of misconduct.
"Similar to the issues facing the criminal justice and education systems, where racial disparities in punishment are well-documented, organizations face a difficult challenge in detecting and enforcing misconduct," researchers wrote. "Even when organizations adopt seemingly objective policies for addressing misconduct, it is still possible for certain groups to be disproportionately accused of misconduct and/or disciplined.
More information: Sheryl L. Walter et al, The race discipline gap: A cautionary note on archival measures of behavioral misconduct, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.03.010
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