Graphene organic photovoltaics

in Physics Chemistry USC Viterbi School of Engineering A University of Southern California team has produced flexible transparent carbon atom films that the researchers say have great potential for a new breed of solar cells. "Organic photovoltaic (OPV) cells have been proposed as a means to achieve low cost energy due to their ease of manufacture, light weight, and compatibility with flexible substrates," wrote Chongwu Zhou, a professor of electrical engineering in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, in a paper recently published in the journal ACS Nano. The technique described in the article describes progress toward a novel OPV cell design that has significant advantages, particularly in the area of physical flexibility.A critical aspect of any OPV photo-electronic device is a transparent conductive electrode through which light can couple with active materials to create electricity. The new work indicates that graphene, a highly conductive and highly transparent form of carbon made up of atoms-thick sheets of carbon atoms, has high potential to fill this role. While graphene's existence has been known for decades, it has only been studied extensively since 2004 because of the difficulty of manufacturing it in high quality and in quantity. The Zhou lab reported the large scale production of graphene films by chemical vapor deposition three years ago. In this process, the USC engineering team creates ultra thin graphene sheets by first depositing carbon atoms in the form of graphene films on a nickel plate from methane gas.Then they lay down a protective layer of thermo plastic over the graphene layer, Rosetta Stone and then dissolve the nickel underneath in an acid bath. In the final step they attach the plastic-protected graphene to a very flexible polymer sheet, which can then be incorporated into a OPV cell. (see diagram)The USC team has produced graphene/polymer sheets ranging in sizes up to 150 square centimeters that in turn can be used to create dense arrays of flexible OPV cells.These OPV devices convert solar radiation to electricity, but not as efficiently as silicon cells. The power provided by sunlight on a sunny day is about 1000 watts per meter square. "For every 1000 watts of sunlight that hits a one square meter area of the standard silicon solar cell, 14 watts of electricity will be generated," says Lewis Gomez De Arco, a doctoral student and a member of the team that built the graphene OPVs. "Organic solar cells are less efficient; their conversion rate for that same one thousand watts of sunlight in the graphene-based solar cell would be only 1.3 watts."But what graphene OPVs lack in efficiency, they can potentially more than make for in lower price and, greater physical flexibility. Gomez De Arco thinks that it may eventually be possible to run printing presses laying extensive areas covered with inexpensive solar cells, much like newspaper presses print newspapers."They could be hung as curtains in homes or even made into fabric and be worn as power generating clothing. I can imagine people powering their cellular phone or music/video device while jogging in the sun," he said.The USC researchers say graphene OPVs would be major advance in at least one crucial area over a rival OPV design, one based on Indium–Tin–Oxide (ITO). In the USC team's tests, ITO cells failed at a very small angle of bending, while the graphene-based cells remained operational after repeated bending at much larger stress angles. This would give the graphene solar cells a decided advantage in some uses, including the printed-on-fabric applications proposed by the USC team.Zhou and the other researchers on the USC team – which included Yi Zhang, Cody W. Schlenker, Koungmin Ryu, and Mark E. Thompson in addition to Gomez de Arco — are excited by the potential for this technology.

Read This Before You Start Your Home Business

A high percentage of work from home opportunities are in network marketing. Most home based businesses fail for a variety of reasons, none more critical than getting in at the wrong time in the company’s life cycle. I’ve done a lot of research into network marketing and wanted to share my findings with you. Here are some important things to know before you venture into this type of home business. Network Marketing or Multi Level Marketing (MLM) is being taught at more than 200 colleges including Harvard Business School.? After extensive research into the network marketing industry, Harvard Business School developed 3 criteria that a network marketing company must have in order to make it a desirable opportunity.? They are: 1.? The company must be at least 18 months old. 90% of all network marketing? companies that fail do so in the first 18 months of operations. Lack of adequate financing and inexperienced senior management are two of the more common pitfalls of start up companies so be sure to find out what you can about the MLM’s funding and management. 2.? The company must have a product that is both unique and highly consumable.? Meaning it must be an exclusive product that can be purchased only from your distributors with repeated sales thereby guaranteeing customer loyalty versus a one-time sale and having to locate new customers.3.? It needs to be a “ground floor” opportunity.? Harvard Business School suggests that in order for the opportunity to qualify as a ground floor type, the number of existing distributorships should be less than ? of 1% in the country where this network company exists.? In the U.S., this figure is equal to 1.5 million people.? Harvard Business School also stated that if there were less than 500,000 people involved, you would be on the cutting edge of a great Rosetta Stone opportunity.? If the company has less than 100,000 distributors, Harvard Business School considers it to be a once in a lifetime opportunity. The Harvard Business School study also stated that there are 4 distinct stages of growth in a network marketing company – Foundation, Concentration, Momentum, and Stability.? The?Momentum Phase is when the company experiences phenomenal growth.? Both retail and distributorships explode in terms of expanding growth.? It is during this period that the company virtually sweeps the nation.? When a company’s sales reach about 50 million annually (4.2 million a month), they reach what is called “critical mass” (sales go vertical right off the graph).? Also, approximately ? of the company’s growth of new distributorships occur during this period of time. Let’s assume you have an organization which is producing an override bonus check to you of $1,000 per month.? When the company reached critical mass, distributors almost automatically experience a ten-fold increase in their earnings.? In other words, $1,000 per month becomes $10,000 per month.? This is the reason for getting involved on the ground floor, so you will experience the benefits of explosive growth. The Next Big One eXfuze is a new company which was founded in 2007 and launched its distributor network in April 2008. It markets an amazing, scientifically proven product exclusively through its distributors called Seven+. The company has experienced phenomenal growth of over 30% per month since its launch. By extracting from seven super foods known for their health benefits, Seven+ gives your body the raw materials it needs to heal itself and maintain good health. To quote NFL Hall of Fame Linebacker Lawrence Taylor who was one the first to join the company, “eXfuze Seven+ does a body good. I mean REAL good.” With fewer than 20,000 active U.S. distributors, eXfuze is a ground floor and potentially life changing opportunity. You owe it to yourself to check it out today.

Importance of Parent Teacher Associations in schools

In the wake of globalization, homes with working parents are a common sight. Parents tend to spend 10-12 hours outside home and hardly get to spend quality time with their children. This is the situation at home. It gets worse when it comes to school. Most working parents are oblivious to activities at school. Their involvement with the academics and co curricular activities of their children is very limited. Academicians believe that parents’ involvement with the child is crucial to the child’s overall development. In order to ensure parents’ involvement in their wards’ academics, many schools have Parent Teacher Associations and Student Councils.Parent teacher associations are formed involving students, teachers and parents. Many activities are conducted through the association with a motive of engaging the parents in a child’s school activities. It is also a chance for the parents to meet the teachers and talk to them about their concerns and make queries regarding the school and their child. Often, suggestions made by parents are considered by the school authorities. On the other hand, parents also get a lot of tips on how to help their children excel at school and otherwise. Students benefit most out of parent teacher associations since the association becomes a promise of extended support both at home and at school. In many schools, developmental activities like seminars, lectures, competitions Rosetta Stone are organized as a part of the association activity. Parent teacher association can become building blocks of a child’s overall development. It promotes organized monitoring of the child’s activities at school and at home, which may otherwise get neglected. With the percentage of working parents steadily increasing, it is important for all schools to have parent teacher associations. We have heard many times from MT students who are already in a course of study who feel they should have spent more time checking out schools prior to making their choice, so don't let the excitement of entering a new field deter you from taking enough time to fully evaluate your options.Lastly, but certainly not least, the medical transcription school that you choose should provide a job placement program. When you are contacting schools, ask them about their placement program and continued post-graduate assistance.Are there accredited Medical Transcription Schools?The Approval Committee for Certificate Programs (ACCP) is a joint committee that was established by The American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA) and AHDI to approve medical transcription education programs. Ask if the school you're considering is ACCP-approved.

Park Homes: Why Warren Buffett invests in them

Are you still wondering if a Park Home investment is a good idea? Perhaps this might change your mind.In 2003, Warren Buffett’s company Berkshire Hathaway invested $1.7 Billion to purchase Clayton Homes – one of the largest manufactured housing companies in the world. Who is Warren Buffett? Warren Buffett (78) is a US investor, businessman and philanthropist. He is one of the most successful investors in history, and ranked by Forbes as the second richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of around $40 Billion! Typically when Buffett invests, millions of others follow.Buffett is often referred to as the “Oracle of Omaha” and is well-known for his value investing philosophy and personal frugality, despite his immense wealth. In 2007 he was listed among Time’s 100 Most Influential People in the world. His road to riches though has been a lifetime journey that started at a young age. In 1943, Buffett filed his first income tax return claiming Rosetta Stone Hindi his bicycle and watch as a work expense as newspaper delivery boy. During high school in 1945, Buffett and a friend spent $25 to purchase a used pinball machine which they placed in a barber shop. Within months, they owned three machines in three different locations. Buffett invested $1,200 of his profit from the business to buy 40 acres of farmland and rented it out to tenant farmers.In 1958, Warren Buffett bought a $31,500 house in Omaha, Nebraska. He still lives in the same house, which is estimated to be valued at around $700,000.According to Warren Buffett, “Home ownership is a wonderful thing. My family and I have enjoyed my present home for 50 years, with more to come. But enjoyment and utility should be the primary motives for purchase, not profit or refinance possibilities. And the home purchased ought to fit the the income of the purchaser”.So its no wonder that Warren Buffett has invested in a Park Home company like Clayton Homes that makes the most affordable for housing for people!“Putting people into homes, though a desirable goal, shouldn’t be our primary objective. Keeping them in their homes should be the ambition” Buffett wrote.So if you want affordable housing, there’s billions of reasons why you should consider a Park Home. Just ask Warren Buffett!

Cybertouring museums

THE purpose of museums, states the UK based Museums Association, is to allow people to explore collections for inspiration, learning and enjoyment. They are institutions that collect, safeguard and make artefacts and specimens accessible. With school in full swing and plane ticket prices soaring, checking out museums abroad is not an easy matter. But thanks to the Net, you can now choose to take cybertours. UK's COMPASS. features around 5,000 objects from a huge range of periods and cultures. Among the highlights are The- the black basalt tablet bearing inscriptions in various languages that finally allowed historians to translate Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, sections of the Parthenon, the temple built to Athena by the Ancient Greeks 2,500 years ago, and relics from Sutton Hoo, a burial mound from seventhcentury Anglo-Saxon that shed much light on early British history. Each artefact comes with an article describing its significance, a description of its physical properties, and linked thumbnails to related parts of the exhibit. Navigation in this site is simple. If you are looking for something in particular, there is a keyword search window. In addition, there is a dropdown menu listing about 50 of the most popular objects in the collection, and a second menu that allows visitors to look for objects by description, for instance, Chinese jade, Islamic metalwork and Svres Rosetta Stone Arabic porcelain. Younger visitors should start with the children's Compass where Alfred the Lion conducts tours: Ancient Egyptian animal mummies, the history of time measuring machines, the buried treasures of Britain, the story of the Trojan war and more. AUSTRALIA'S AMOL. Thanks to the Australian Museums and Galleries Online at, a project that brings together all Australian museums under one roof, you can see the best of what's on offer Down Under. The easiest way to navigate the site is to click on Site Map. If you plan to browse, look under Australian Tales and Stories from Collecting Institutions where some of the best exhibitions are gathered. Displays showcase Australian fossil hunters, fish biodiversity and more. Along the same lines, try the Australian University Museums Online at. US SMITHSONIAN. The Smithsonian Institute is an organisation consisting of 15 museums and eight research centres all over the United States. Sponsored by taxpayers and private individuals, the Smithsonian collection currently numbers over 142 million items. The best way to start your exploration is to click on Exhibitions. In addition, there is a Favourites list that comprises popular events such as the giant pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian and cub Tai Shan, which live at the US National Zoo; the Hope Diamond, which is the world's biggest blue diamond; and the 65 million-year-old Triceratops skeleton, which is on show at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. If you're in a hurry, check out the Explore and Lean channel that leads straight to Art & Design, History & Culture and Science & Technology exhibitions. Because each of these organisations is run by a different team and many exhibits have been specially designed to stand on their own, surfing from this point will take you to pages with quite a distinct look and feel. OTHER RESOURCES.

A reform of vocabulary learning is in progress

IntroductionIn language learning, "closed," mechanical exercises restrict information to only "correct" answers that are unlikely to remain in permanent memory (Stevick, 1996). On the contrary, bringing in student-generated materials (Kindt, 1999) could stimulate students or help to focus their attention, thus facilitating the creation of an open learning environment. When learners become contributors, they demonstrate informed participation to explore large problem spaces, learn from their peers and create new understandings (Fischer & Ostwald, 2002). This paper reports on a study of Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) in Nan Chiau Primary School in Singapore. We facilitated a Primary 5 (11-year-old) class to study and apply 29 common Chinese idioms. Apart from in-class idiom lessons with contextualized learning activities, the students were each assigned a smartphone which they were allowed to access 24x7 throughout the nine-week period of the study. They carried out photoblogging-like activities by using their smartphones to take photos in their daily lives, and then made sentences with the idioms, and subsequently posted them onto a wiki space for sharing and peer review.This MALL design emphasizes students' proactive association of the contexts that they encounter in the physical world with the Chinese idioms (considered a special form of vocabulary) that they have learned. In this paper, we focus on investigating the students' individual-to-social learning process throughout the intervention, which could be attributed to the process of multimodal, student artifact-focused, ongoing, open-ended meaning making in the context of vocabulary learning. The students' learning processes that we observed and the artifacts that they have delivered suggest a compelling direction for MALL--seamless language Rosetta Stone Chinese learning.Literature Review Constructivist approach in vocabulary (idiom) learningIn recent decades, we witness a paradigm shift in language learning theories from behaviorism to a communicative approach (Salaberry, 1996). In addition, prior studies in the second language (L2) classroom have suggested the importance of the negotiation of meaning, also known as social meaning making, in L2 development (Long, 1985). However, the social context has been undervalued as an arena for collaborative L2 learning. Where meaning appears fixed, immutable, to be sent and received, what is lost is the collaborative nature of meaning making (Savignon, 1991).As a fundamental component of language learning, vocabulary learning is often delivered in conventional ways, such as providing abstract definitions and sentences taken out of the context of normal use. (Miller & Gildea, 1987). Such pedagogical strategies may pose greater problem for learning of context-dependent vocabularies. The complex nature of context-dependent vocabularies, such as idioms and proverbs, may result in highly context-dependent appropriateness of their usage (Deng, 2001). There are many possible real-life contexts where such vocabulary could suitably (or unsuitably but often mistakenly) be used, which are almost impossible to be prescribed in a simple definition.A reform of vocabulary learning is in progress. In particular, Miller and Gildea's (1987) vocabulary teaching experiment showed that children acquire vocabulary faster with the method used out of the school, by relating words to ordinary conversation, than with the traditional methods based upon abstract definitions and sentences taken from external contexts. Similarly, Nation (2001) proposes three psychological processes for successful vocabulary learning: noticing (a word is highlighted as being salient text input), retrieving (repeat encountering of the word) and creative/generative (a previously encountered word is used in a slightly different context). The three-stage model stresses the importance of the coupling of language input (receptive learning) and output (productive learning), and the learners' creative/generative usage of the learned vocabulary in alternative contexts. Liu (2008) illustrates the application of this model for idiom learning.

Child Safety for Home School: Bicycle Safety for Home Schooling Families

Outdoor activities are great fun and an important addition to any homeschool curriculum. Kids should be encouraged to spend time outside whenever possible to promote physical, emotional, and social health. One of the most popular outdoor activities is bike riding which is fun, exciting, and a pleasurable form of exercise. It is important, however, to properly instruct your homeschooling child on bicycle safety.First and foremost, the proper equipment should be used. If your child is not an experienced biker, then training wheels are a wonderful resource for teaching balance and promoting confidence on the bike. Helmets, knee and elbow pads, and other protective layers are essential to any safe bike ride. In some places, wearing a helmet is actually the law, so do some research about the laws in the state that you live in.It is also very important for your homeschooling child to understand that when biking, he or she must be aware that there are other vehicles that use the road. This may seem like on obvious fact, but understanding how to share the road properly will ensure a fun safe bike ride. There are many tips that can help with this practice. Always bike with Rosetta Stone Software the traffic, meaning the direction the cars are going. This rule applies whether biking on the road, shoulder, or sidewalk. Try and avoid the busy streets or times of day when the roads are most congested, such as rush hour. When the streets are packed with cars, it limits the vision of the drivers and bikers can be easily overlooked. Drivers expect bikers to obey all traffic signals, signs, and stoplights, just as they are expected to do in their cars. For example, bikers are expected to stop at stop signs and red lights and use appropriate hand gestures as turn signals.There are also many general rules to follow in order to promote safe bicycle habits. Riding at night is not a good idea because even with headlights, the vision of drivers at this time in limited. Bright clothing and light reflectors should be worn anytime of day while biking as an added measure of safety. While biking, both hands should be kept on the handlebars of the bike. Although it is fun to test your balance or try fun tricks, control can be lost and accidents may happen.One final word of advice: make bicycling a family affair! The best way to teach your kids about bike safety is by example, helping kids see the importance and reason for the rules that you teach them. They are more than just words from a concerned parent. Biking can be a lot of fun and great exercise, so teach your kids how to best enjoy the experience.