Picking up night waves

Published: 10 November 2009 07:00 AM
Source: The Engineer

Future solar cells could operate 24 hours a day by collecting radiation emitted from the Earth at night and turning it into energy.

So believe researchers at Manchester University's School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, who are working on a new technology that would give solar cells the ability to collect light energy from multiple wavelengths.

The team has developed nano-diodes that detect terahertz waves lying at the far end of the infrared band, right before microwaves.

Project leader Aimin Song, a professor of nanoelectronics at Manchester University, said their nano-diode terahertz detector has a novel planar architecture and works at 1.5THz or 1,500GHz, the highest speed of electronic nano-devices to date.

He claimed that combining such a diode with an antenna would make it possible to collect energy from infrared waves and convert them into DC electricity.

Song said the technology would take advantage of the Earth's greenhouse effect.

'The Earth and the atmosphere absorb a lot of the sunlight,' he added. 'After absorption they slowly radiate this energy back but not in the visible light frequency range but in the infrared frequency band.'

Song said that the technology, which is known as rectenna because it combines a rectifier (diode) and antenna, has already been demonstrated to work for converting microwave energy into DC electricity with a claimed efficiency between 80 and 90 per cent. 'If we develop this rectenna technology for the infrared frequency band, we can develop solar cells that operate at night time,' he said. 'This rectenna concept could potentially offer solar cells 80-90 per cent efficiency.'

Manchester University recently began a one-year commercialisation programme for the technology and Song said a spin-out company could be formed within the first half of 2010.

'We hope at the end of this one-year programme to achieve the first prototype device to work at infrared frequencies,' he said. 'Our first prototype wouldn't work for visible sunlight, but it would work to harvest energy in the night.'

Manchester University is also involved in a three-year EU-funded project beginning in January that will attempt to develop nano-devices that can both detect and emit terahertz waves.

Siobhan Wagner

Source

New way to kill cancer found using body's immune system/lysosomal bursting

July 21st, 2009

[Perhaps this lysosomal bursting finding could be applied to killing viruses?]

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have discovered a new way of killing cancer cells in a breakthrough that could eventually lead to new treatments for a range of different cancers.

Researchers at The University of Manchester, working with colleagues at the University of Southampton, investigated how antibody treatments make cancer cells kill themselves and found a previously undiscovered mechanism that could, in future, be even more effective in causing their death.

When antibodies bind to cells, including cancer cells, they can ‘flag’ those targets for destruction by the body’s immune system but this latest study has shown that antibodies can kill cancer cells directly. When the antibody binds, it causes lysosomes - small acid-containing sacs - inside the cell to swell and burst, rapidly releasing their toxic contents with fatal results for the cancer cell.

The study, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation , offers hope of more alternative approaches to killing cancer cells that may have become resistant to the traditional chemotherapy treatments.

”A number of antibody treatments for cancer have been developed over the last decade and some of them are a huge step forward in treatment,” said Professor Tim Illidge, in Manchester’s School of Cancer and Imaging Sciences at the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research.

“Our research focused on several antibodies that bind to a molecule found on many leukaemia and lymphoma cells called CD20. Until now scientists did not understand exactly how these antibodies work as treatments for these blood cancers but our research not only identifies how they kill the cancer cells but also provides exciting insights into how other antibodies that use this mechanism might be developed.”

Dr Mark Cragg, from the University of Southampton, added: “Our findings are significant and open up the possibility of applying the knowledge of how antibodies can be developed to trigger cell death and may enable us to design treatments for other cancers.”

http://www.physorg.com/news167408029.html

Ref:
http://jem.rupress.org/cgi/reprint/117/6/879.pdf