AORA, a leading Israeli solar energy technology company, launched world’s first hybrid solar thermal power station at Kibbutz Samar in southern Israel.
This marked the first time that concentrating solar power (CSP) stations can provide environmentally-friendly power 24 hours a day, according to AORA’s CEO, Haim Fried.
AORA’s “Power Flower” station, named due to its unique yellow tulip design, consists of a field of 30 tracking mirrors (heliostats) situated on half an acre of land.
Each of the station’s 30 heliostats tracks the sun and reflects its rays towards the top of a 30 meter-high tower housing a special solar receiver along with a 100 kilowatt gas turbine.
Continue reading ‘First Hybrid Solar Power Station’
Pigeons may sometimes appear to randomly target city sculptures with their droppings, but according to a new Japanese study they also have the potential to become discerning art critics.
Researchers at Tokyo’s Keio University say they have found that the birds have “advanced perceptive abilities” and can distinguish between “good” and “bad” paintings, recognising beauty the way humans do.
The team — which previously published research saying that pigeons can tell a Monet from a Picasso — was seeking to find out whether the animals may also be able to prefer one to the other.
For their experiment, the scientists took paintings by elementary school children and selected those that were commonly deemed to be “good” and “bad” by teachers and a control group of other adults.
Continue reading ‘Japan study : Pigeons have Eye for Paintings’
Scientists at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, along with researchers in Italy, have found two types of liquid water that have long been suspected to exist below water’s normal freezing point.
Unlike most liquids, water becomes less rather than more dense when it freezes — and it is densest not when it is coldest (at 0 degrees Celsius, just before it freezes) but at 4 degrees C.
These are just two of water’s host of anomalous properties, some of which are crucial to its behaviour in the natural environment.
In 1992, Gene Stanley of Boston University, Massachusetts, and his co-workers carried out computer simulations of water, which suggested that hydrogen bonds in water might produce two different types of liquid if water was made very cold and squeezed to high pressures.
Continue reading ‘Scientists found mysterious forms of Water’
Vladimir Putin
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