Cambridge Semiconductors Power Solar Tech

Researchers from the Cavendish Laboratory and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at the University of Cambridge have harnessed the properties of a group of materials called halide perovskites to revolutionise solar cells. This material is remarkable, absorbing more of the solar spectrum of light and providing a cheaper alternative to silicon, which is currently used. The team have developed a protocol to grow ultra-thin layers of the material, allowing the atoms to line up perfectly, which can be built into a semiconductor ‘sandwich’. By alternating between 3D and 2D perovskites within the layers of the ‘sandwich’, researchers can tune the material and transform it into a semiconductor, by controlling the flow of electrons and holes (electrons’ positively charged counterparts) through the layers. Utilising this development in the future will hopefully transform solar technology, giving rise to scalable, high-performance devices.

“The collaboration led to the discovery of a new species of fungus, which can interact with the plant to form a partnership”

Ancient jaws, paws and spores

A recent wave of fossil analyses from Cambridge and other institutions across the world have shed light and insight on the past lives of many different forms of life, from ancient fungi to early crocodiles.

A 407 million-year-old plant fossil from Scotland has sparked the interest of researchers from the Natural History Museum (London), Sainsbury Laboratory (Cambridge), and Muséum d’Histoire Naturelle (Paris). The collaboration led to the discovery of a new species of fungus, which can interact with the plant to form a partnership. This symbiotic relationship helps plants take up nutrients and water and exchange metabolic compounds with the environment, suggesting these relationships could have been vital in plants’ evolution to living on land, which occurred around 500 million years ago. The new techniques used to find the fungus involved advanced microscopy, which utilised the emitted light of trace organisms – fossilised evidence of an organism’s behaviour, rather than the remains of the organism itself. These techniques will open up new avenues for analysing fossils in the future.

“Research has led to them being nicknamed semi-arboreal “drop crocs”, which would fall from trees to surprise their prey”

Could you imagine crocodiles dropping from trees? Scientists have done just that, after discovering Australia’s oldest known crocodile eggshells after decades of excavation, and have named the fragments Wakkaoolithus godthelpi. The fossils were identified as belonging to a group called mekosuchine crocodiles. Research into their behaviour has led to them being nicknamed semi-arboreal ‘drop crocs’, which would fall from trees to surprise their prey. These crocodiles were also found to have jaws and teeth like those of dinosaurs, and microscopy analysis of the eggshells showed they nested around the edges of lakes. The researchers hope that these types of findings about the past will help secure the future of the currently endangered species.

Recent findings have also shown that our beloved four-legged pet dogs have been diverging from wolves since the Stone Age, much earlier than previously thought. The international team focused on prehistoric canine skulls across a 50,000 year period, creating 3D models of the skulls, and analysing the changing features. Dr Allowen Evin, a lead researcher from the University of Montpellier, explains, “when you see a Chihuahua – it’s a wolf that’s been living with humans for so long that it’s been modified.” Some researchers suggest that this transition began when some tamer wolves started living more closely with hunter-gatherer communities, scavenging for food, and slowly became used for different tasks, including cleaning up carcasses and warning off predators. Tragically, in most modern pets these useful talents have vanished, leaving us with pups whose primary skills involve sleeping and barking at absolutely nothing.

Melting away Alzheimer’s

A signpost of Alzheimer’s is the presence of protein fibres, made from tau proteins, that form within the neurons in the brain. In healthy brains, tau helps to stabilise the machinery that passes signals through neurons; in Alzheimer’s, the proteins fold incorrectly and clump together to form these fibrils. Researchers from the Tokyo Metropolitan University have studied how they could stop the fibrils forming, thus aiming to prevent the progression of Alzheimer’s into the later stages. They found the precursors to these fibrils are soft clusters which form tau fibrils in a mechanism similar to crystallisation, and can be dissolved to suppress fibril growth. The group targeted the clusters by altering levels of sodium chloride and using an anticoagulant. Hopefully, this will provide a new strategy against Alzheimer’s and open up a new research area for studying neurodegenerative diseases.