How to control your perception of time
It’s no surprise that time seems to speed up as we get older, but other factors can influence it too – here’s what researchers have found
The new year encourages us to look back and reflect, and this year more than any other, we’ve been made aware of time passing. Do events that happened this time last year seem as if they happened two or three years ago?
Although time itself moves steadily, our perception of its passage varies according to three factors – your mood, what you’re doing, and your age.
Counting the cost 2020: A year of climate breakdown (December 2020)
Format
Report identifies ten extreme events, influenced by climate change, that each caused $1.5 billion damage or more.
Storm Ciara which struck UK and Europe in February cost $2.7 billion and killed 14 people.
Floods, windstorms, tropical cyclones and fires killed thousands of people across the globe.
A new report by Christian Aid,
Ten of those events cost $1.5 billion or more, with nine of them causing damage worth at least $5 billion. Most of these estimates are based only on insured losses, meaning the true financial costs are likely to be higher.
Among them is Storm Ciara which struck the UK, Ireland and other European countries in February costing $2.7 billion and killing 14. The UK s Environment Agency issued 251 flood warnings.
fires and floods | Your Democracy yourdemocracy.net.au - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from yourdemocracy.net.au Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Quantum Wells Enable Record-Efficiency Two-Junction Solar Cell
With a Sandwich of 80 Ultrathin Quantum Well Layers, New Solar Cell Unlocks World Record and a Path to Further Improvements
Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the University of New South Wales achieved a new world-record efficiency for two-junction solar cells, creating a cell with two light-absorbing layers that converts 32.9% of sunlight into electricity.
Key to the cell’s design is a series of more than 150 ultrathin layers of alternating semiconductors that create quantum wells in the cell’s bottom absorber, allowing it to capture energy from a key range of the solar spectrum. While the new record only improves modestly on the previous 32.8% efficiency record, it is the first record-efficiency multijunction solar cell to use a strain-balanced structure a design that holds promise for further improvements.