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This image shows the Pleiades cluster of stars as seen through the eyes of WISE, or NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer.

Observations suggest Venus may have had water oceans in its distant past. A land-ocean pattern like that above was used in a climate model to show how storm clouds could have shielded ancient Venus from strong sunlight and made the planet habitable.

A demonstration solar park based on polymer solar cells at the Technical University of Denmark in Roskilde, Denmark.

Fig.1 (a) Conceptual drawing of nanoparticle-based metamaterial solid immersion lens (mSIL) (b) Lab made mSIL using titanium dioxide nanoparticles (c) SEM image of 60 nm sized imaging sample (d) corresponding superlens imaging of the 60 nm samples by the developed mSIL.

A paper in Science Advances (12 August) provides proof of a new concept, using new solid 3D superlenses to break through the scale of things previously visible through a microscope.

Like cosmic ballet dancers, the stars of the Pleiades cluster are spinning. But these celestial dancers are all twirling at different speeds. Astronomers have long wondered what determines the rotation rates of these stars.

The research, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy SunShot Initiative, involved hybrid halide perovskite solar cells and revealed treating them with a specific solution of methyl ammonium bromide (MABr) would repair defects, improving efficiency. The scientists converted a low-quality perovskite film with pinholes and small grains into a high-quality film without pinholes and with large grains. Doing so boosted the efficiency of the perovskite film in converting sunlight to 19 percent.

These variations in humidity and temperature are translated into physical processes involving evaporation or freezing of the water contained in the cement paste, which often cause stresses and even micro-cracking inside the cement. Characterizing the response to these phenomena affecting the confined water in the smallest pores of the cement "is hugely important as a large proportion of the water, about 30 %, is located in these small spaces, so to a great extent it contributes towards the final properties of the material," explained Hegoi Manzano, a researcher in the UPV/EHU's department of Condensed Matter Physics, and author of the study in collaboration with a research group of the University of Tohoku in Japan.