Solar-charged cement that emits light developed

                Scientists have created a new light-emitting cement that could last a hundred years and illuminate roads, highways or bicycle lanes at night by absorbing solar energy during the day. Currently, the cement exists in blue or green colour, and the light intensity can be regulated to avoid dazzling drivers.

                “The main issue was that cement is an opaque body that doesn’t allow light to pass to its interior,” said Jose Carlos Rubio, from Michoacan’s University of San Nicolas Hidalgo (UMSNH) in Mexico. Rubio explained that common cement is a dust that when added to water dissolves like an effervescent poll.

“In that moment it starts to become a gel, similar to the one used for hair styling, but much stronger and resistant; at the same time, some crystal flakes are formed, these are unwanted sub-products in hardened cement,” Rubio said.

Due to this researchers focused on modifying the micro-structure of the cement in order to eliminate crystals and make it completely gel, helping it to absorb solar energy and then return it to the environment as light. By the morning, the building, road, highway or structure that is made out of this new cement can absorb solar energy and emit it during the night for around 12 hours.

Soon, the length of a second could change

                For nearly 50 years, the length of a second has been defined in the same way. But researchers in Germany have found how to make the most accurate clock ever created, which if it had started 14 billion years ago at the Big Bang would have lost just 100 seconds.

                While the change in accuracy would hardly be noticed by human, it could be significant for GPS navigation as well as electrical power grids. And because the clock uses a different way of measuring time, it could alter length of seconds, minutes and hours by miniscule amount.

                Time is measured based on the idea of a pendulum. Since 1967, the International System of Units has defined second as the time that elapses during 9,192,631,770 cycles of the microwave signal produced by these oscillations. However, they have an error of about a nano-second every 30 days.

                A paper in journal Optical says the new clock uses strontium atoms, which “tick” much faster than the microwave, part of the spectrum. If a second was defined in terms of strontium, the equivalent SI unit would be 429,000 billion cycles. This method of calculating length of a second reduces the error to less than 0.2 nanoseconds in 25 days.

Solar storms key to life on Earth

                Powerful solar explosions on the adolescent sun may have provided the crucial energy needed to warm Earth and create complex molecules necessary for life, despite the star’s faintness four billion years ago, according to a new NASA study.

                Understanding what conditions were necessary for life on our planer helps trace both the origins of life on earth and guide the search for life on other planets. Until now, mapping evolution has been hindered by the fact that the young Sun was not luminous enough. Four billion years ago, the sun shone with only about three-quarters the brightness we see today, but its surface roiled with giant eruptions spewing enormous amounts of solar material and radiation. These solar explosions may have provided the energy to warm earth.

China developed world's first graphene electronic paper

                China developed a new electronic paper, which has been heralded as the world’s first graphene electronic paper. It was in news in the last of April 2016. It will be a huge breakthrough that will catapult the material to a new level. It was developed by The Guangzhou OED Technologies in partnership with a company in Chongqing. Compared with traditional e-paper, graphene e-paper is more pliable and has more intensity and its high-light transmittance means optical displays will be much brighter. E-paper have been produced on a commercial scale since 2014. Compared with liquid crystal displays, e-paper are thinner, bendable and energy efficient, meaning products are more portable.