Flower Power Devour

Saving energy? We’re talkin’ Little Shop of Horrors!  This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Consider the carnivorous pitcher plant. It’s a trash bag shaped plant that eats bugs to overcome nutrient deficient soil.  That gave Anne-Kristin Lenz and the University of Bristol an idea for

Continue reading

Green with Energy

Hm—how truly green ARE those green LED’s? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Computers, phones, lamps – our world runs on LEDs! But so much electricity! And to make colors, red, blue, and green lights have to be combined, via an energy-sapping color filter. D.J.

Continue reading

Shadow Show

There’s a new energy source … hiding in the shadows!  This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. A shady glade … ideal for cooling off! But when it comes to solar power, LESS sun means less energy!  As skyscrapers climb and open sunshine becomes less available,

Continue reading

Flash Dance

It all happens in a flash! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Solar power is so cool — the sun comes out and on go your lights! HOW does that happen? It starts with chemicals like methyl viologen. They react with light to generate power.

Continue reading

Window-O-Power

A conceptual picture of a house with the windows made of the material proposed in the study.

See windows in a whole new light! This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Renewable energy – it’s the wave of the future! Solar is popular, but huge rooftop panels don’t grab everything. What about the light streaming through our windows? Could we capture and harness

Continue reading

Cracking Recycling

Common plastic items like food and beverage containers CAN be recycled. But is the juice always worth the SQUEEZE? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Our oceans and landfills are overflowing with plastic waste. Hundreds of millions of tons are produced each year. Recycling can

Continue reading

Sweat it Out!

Bulb light on

America runs on…sweat? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. A morning run – so invigorating! The feeling of sweat rolling down your back? Yuck! But can sweat be useful? Xueping Zhang and colleagues from the National University of Singapore had a “dry idea!” The team

Continue reading

Big Brains

Plastic brain model

Big brain…tiny list of Facebook friends? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. We, humans, are VERY smart mammals – if we do say so ourselves! Some say it’s because we have such big brains. But at what cost to society? Manuela González-Suárez at the University

Continue reading

Leaf it to Solar

The energy industry really needs to lighten up … Literally. This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. We’ve been using the sun to produce power for almost two centuries. Today, mostly with solar panels. Unfortunately, they’re expensive and take up a lot of space. Can we

Continue reading

Elastic Plastic

Is it just me, or is it HOT in here? This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.  Ugh! The A-C’s gone out! Isn’t this place insulated? What? They should have used… PLASTIC?! Enter Quan Zhang and Yufeng Wang from Nankai University. They’re experts in polymers –

Continue reading