“One of our research goals is to create transparent solar cells with a natural appearance so that they can be used as windows that generate solar power.” For solar window applications, a perovskite film with a thickness of no more than 600 nm is sufficient to achieve maximal light absorption. But reduced thickness also reduces potential power conversion efficiency.
One can only imagine just what Sutton could have achieved if he was less isolated, more protective of his innovations and patents, more entrepreneurial, or had the right financial backing such as that which Tesla secured with the entrepreneur George Westinghouse. Lorayne Branch’s advocacy is compelling; Henry Sutton is an unsung Australian inventor arguably on a par with Edison, Bell, Tesla and Marconi. Her extensively researched monograph goes a long way in delineating his achievements and placing them in a broader context. This is a book that would certainly inspire any young Australian inventor and it deserves a large audience.
Our uptake of new technologies and electronics comes at a cost: information and communications technology (ICT) consumes about 8% of global electricity, doubling every decade. A massive amount of energy is consumed in the thousands of factory-sized data centres that house “the cloud,” as well as computer systems for telecommunication and storage. Most of the energy consumed in data centres, computers and other devices is dissipated as heat rather than being used to power the device itself, meaning that much of it is wasted. ICT is now on par with the aviation industry for their contribution to global warming, and it’s time for a change.
This year, the assessors of the Royal Society of Victoria’s Phillip Law Postdoctoral Award in the Physical Sciences worked diligently through the pile of applicants that grows, year on year, with the growth in Victoria’s remarkable pool of talent. It is an intensely competitive field of Early Career Researchers and, this year, our assessors simply could not find a way to separate the two lead applicants.
“Both have made – and continue to make – significant contributions to modern physics with different, substantial potential for application,” explained Dr Peter Baines, the Secretary of the Royal Society of Victoria and one of the assessors. Ultimately, the two lead applicants were ruled a dead heat.
The Society congratulates Dr Sumeet Walia and Dr Nishar Hameed on their joint win of the 2018 Phillip Law Postdoctoral Award for the Physical Sciences!
Recently, there has been worldwide “hype” around brain interfaces and the seemingly endless possibilities that they provide. Despite bold predictions from several technology companies about the future of neural interfaces (e.g. Elon Musk’s whole brain interface that will allow the brain to connect to an information network), the science of brain augmentation is still in its early days. There is a large gap between what is talked about amongst the hype and what is actually feasible in the near future. Professor Arthur Lowery gave us a reality check of what applications are possible for brain interfaces; electrodes can be placed to stimulate the occipital lobe for sight, the motor cortex for the control of prosthetics, or the speech centre for artificial speech.
