MIT's artificial leaf is ten times more efficient than the real thing Speaking at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in California, MIT professor Daniel Nocera claims to have created an artificial leaf, made from stable and inexpensive materials, which mimics nature's photosynthesis process. The device is an advanced solar cell, no bigger than a typical playing card, which is left floating in a pool of water. Then, much like a natural leaf, it uses sunlight to split the water into its two core components, oxygen and hydrogen, which are stored in a fuel cell to be used when producing electricity. Nocera's leaf is stable -- operating continuously for at least 45 hours without a drop in activity in preliminary tests -- and made of widely available, inexpensive materials -- like silicon, electronics and chemical catalysts. With a single gallon of water, Nocera says, the chip could produce enough electricity to power a house in a developing country for an entire day. This isn't the first ever artificial leaf, of course.
Ten Ways to Find Free Textbooks Online Going to university is expensive, and textbooks can make the bill go even higher. However, you don't have to break the bank to finance a good education; there are plenty of places on the Web where you can find and download free online books for nearly any class available. Here are ten sources on the Web you can use to find free content for many college classes, all freely available to either download and print offline or view online in your browser. 1. The first place to start when looking for a textbook is Google, using the filetype command. filetype:pdf "history of anthropology" If you don't have any luck with the book's title, try the author (again, surrounded by quotes), or, you can also look for another type of file: PowerPoint (ppt), Word (doc), etc. 2. Open Culture, a fascinating repository of some of the best content on the Web, has assembled an ongoing database of free texts ranging in subject from Biology to Physics. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.