Using tiny solar-panel-like cells surgically placed underneath the retina, scientists have devised a system that may someday restore sight to people who have lost vision because of certain types of degenerative eye diseases.

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Tiny solar-panel-like cells help restore sight to the blind

A team that includes NASA and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is celebrating the successful launch of an experimental hypersonic scramjet research flight from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on the island of Kauai, Hawaii.

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HIFiRE scramjet research flight will advance hypersonic technology

Flexible, lightweight and inexpensive dyes could be used to harvest the power of the sun rather than our relying on costly and fragile semiconductor solar panel that use crystalline silicon, new research suggests.

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Solar power to dye for: Flexible lightweight inexpensive dyes could harvest energy from sun

The photovoltaics industry is booming, and the market for solar farms is growing quickly all over the world. Yet, the task of planning PV power plants to make them as effi cient as possible is far from trivial. Researchers have now developed software that simplifies conceptual design.

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Optimal planning of solar power plants

A detailed description of development of the first practical artificial leaf — a milestone in the drive for sustainable energy that mimics the process, photosynthesis, that green plants use to convert water and sunlight into energy — has just been published.

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Secrets of the first practical artificial leaf

In a post-Solyndra, budget-constrained world, the transition to a decarbonized energy system faces great hurdles. Overcoming these hurdles will require smarter and more focused policies. Two writers outline their visions in a pair of high-profile analyses.

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Use of public and private dollars for scaling up clean energy needs a reality check, say scholars

Large wind farms in certain areas in the United States appear to affect local land surface temperatures, according to a new article.

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Night-warming effect found over large wind farms in Texas

Decades of research into how much plastic litters the ocean, conducted by skimming only the surface, may in some cases vastly underestimate the true amount of plastic debris, according to an oceanographer.

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Wind pushes plastics deeper into oceans, driving trash estimates up

Scientists have developed a potential pathway to cheap, stable solar cells made from nanocrystals so small they can exist as a liquid ink and be painted or printed onto clear surfaces.

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Liquid solar cells can be painted onto surfaces

Scientists found that incorporating graphene increased the cell’s conductivity, bringing 52.4 percent more current into the circuit.

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Graphene boosts efficiency of next-gen solar cells