London, December 9 : Researchers at Imperial College London claim that they have set a new record for concentrating the Sun’s light on to a solar cell with the aid of a transparent polymer plate.

They think that their solar concentrator sheets may help develop a technology that can result in vastly improved solar power capabilities at much cheaper cost.

Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs) are plates of plastic or glass that have solar cells mounted along their edges. They are coated with light-absorbing dye molecules.

When the molecules re-emit the light, it bounces through the plate by total internal reflection until it hits the solar cell.

Washington, Dec 9 : The High Resolution Science Imaging Experiment (HiRISE) team, based at the University of Arizona (UA) in the US, has captured 362 three-dimensional images of Mars taken by the HiRISE camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Other Mars-orbiting cameras have taken 3D views of Mars, but the HiRISE camera - the most powerful camera ever to orbit another planet - can resolve features as small as one meter, or 40 inches, across.

Washington, Dec 9 : A new image from NASA''s Spitzer Space Telescope shows a turbulent star-forming region, where rivers of gas and stellar winds are eroding thickets of dusty material.

The image is of a stormy region, called M17, or the Swan nebula.

The picture provides some of the best examples yet of the ripples of gas, or bow shocks, that can form around stars in choppy cosmic waters.

"The stars are like rocks in a rushing river," said Matt Povich of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Washington, Dec 9 : Research at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands has led to better understanding of the behavior of clouds, which would help to make reliable predictions on climate change.

The behaviour of clouds is the great unknown quantity in current climate models. To make reliable predictions on climate change, more knowledge about clouds is thus essential.

Delft researcher Thijs Heus has tackled this issue with a combination of detailed computer simulations and airplane measurements.

He charted data including cloud speed, temperature and the ''life span'' of clouds to arrive at new observations.

Washington, Dec 9 : In an effort to improve the on-board entertainment and internet access enjoyed by train passengers, University of York researchers have developed a new technology that could not only offer internet and live media services on the move but will not be too harsh on your pocket as well.

With the advent of the new technology, the researchers have overcome two of the major technological challenges, which severely limit the services currently provided on trains.

Washington, Dec 9 : Video sharing websites like YouTube face major problems dealing with proper labelling of videos and monitoring for copyright infractions. But now, a revolutionary technology has been developed that will help ward off these issue.

The breakthrough technology, developed by one student from the University of Toronto, will not only improve the efficiency of such websites but cut down on copyright infringement also.