Scientists discovered an animal that rely on sunshine for its nutrition. A new study published in The Biological Bulletin belive that Elysia chlorotica might be the first plant-animal hybrid ever discovered, as the emerald green slug steals its solar power by feeding on algae and storing the algae’s photosynthesis performing plastids in its large transparent digestive glands.

According to the Immortal News, the emerald green elysia acquires its solar power by feeding on algae. In the process of feeding on the submerged vegetation, the slug consumes green organelles which capture energy from the sun, combine it with carbon dioxide and water, and produce food. As the chloroplasts are stored in the slug’s digestive glands, it’s able to adopt the plant-like ability of photosynthesis.

Chloroplasts are tiny capsules inside green leaves which use sunlight to power chemical reactions plants require to survive.

Scientific American’s Ferris Jabr wrote that most slugs digest chloroplasts right away, but some species like the emerald green slugs, store the algal chloroplasts for weeks to months.

This storage turns the sea slugs brilliant shades of green. Jabr goes on to say that the chloroplasts inside an alga depend on a lot of genes in the alga’s own nuclear and the proteins for which they code.

“In order to photosynthesize, the chloroplasts inside an alga depend on many genes in the alga’s own nucleus and the proteins for which they code. Tearing chloroplasts out of algal cells and asking them to make food inside a slug’s gut is like expecting the bottom half of a blender to puree some carrots sans the blade and glass jar.”

The research team used fluorescent DNA markers to illuminate the algal genes in the genetic material of adult and larva slugs, the researchers reported in the Biological Bulletin.

Professor Sidney K. Pierce, the study’s co-author and a biologist at the University of South Florida as well as the University of Maryland, indicated that there’s no way the genes from alga should work inside of an animal cell, yet they do.

” There is no way on earth that genes from an alga should work inside an animal cell […] And yet here, they do. They allow the animal to rely on sunshine for its nutrition. So if something happens to their food source, they have a way of not starving to death until they find more algae to eat.”

If the findings in the study are confirmed, this would be the first case of gene transfer from one multicellular organism to another. The report also notes that bacteria do this all the time, however, the sea slug would be the first plant-animal hybrid ever discovered.

Functional gene transfer between multicullular species is the goal of gene therapy which aims to correct genetically-based human diseases.

According to the Daily Mail, Elysia chlorotica is found in salt marshes and shallow pools along the east of the U.S., particularly in New York, Maryland, Florida, Texas, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.

The solar-powered sea slugs can produce carbohydrates and lipids for itself for up to nine months.

A tiny spacecraft designed to be pushed through space by ultra-thin “solar sails” will be launched in May by a U.S.-based non-profit group, 10 years after its first failed attempt.

The Planetary Society announced recently that its LightSail spacecraft will blast off on a test flight aboard an Atlas V rocket. The society is a non-profit space advocacy organization co-founded by the late astronomer Carl Sagan and headed by Bill Nye, best known as the Science Guy from his popular TV show.

According to CBC News, the LightSail spacecraft, a tiny cube satellite about the size of a loaf of bread, is expected to unfurl its four solar sails in June. The triangular sails are made of Mylar, about a quarter of the thickness of a garbage bag, and have a combined area of 32 square metres — equivalent to two parking spaces.

Solar sails are designed to capture the momentum from solar energy photons using large, mirrored surfaces. The small, continuous acceleration allows a spacecraft propelled by solar sails to reach high speeds over time.

“As LightSail breezes around the Earth, its shiny sails will be visible from the ground,” the Planetary Society says on its website for the project.

According to a blog post by Jason Davis, the society’s digital editor, the spacecraft won’t fly high enough to escape Earth’s atmospheric drag and demonstrate “true” solar sailing.

But it will gather time-lapse images of the sails’ deployment and engineering data that show how they perform in microgravity.

That, in turn, will be used to prepare for a second flight in 2016, at a higher altitude of 720 kilometres that will demonstrate “true solar sailing.”

The Planetary Society is collaborating on the project with California Polytechnic State University and the Georgia Institute of Technology, which will help collect data from the spacecraft, and two private space technology companies, Stellar Exploration Inc., which built the spacecraft, and Ecliptic Enterprises Corp., which conducted flight testing.

Five years later, the first solar sails were deployed by Japan’s Venus-bound IKAROS spacecraft and NASA’s NanoSail-D satellite in low-Earth orbit.

NASA has two upcoming solar sail missions, one to the moon and the other to an asteroid, scheduled for 2018.

Microbiologists from California have discovered bacteria that survive by eating pure electrons rather than food, bringing an entirely new method of existence to awareness and raising questions about possibilities for alien life.

According to Extreme Tech, the ‘electric bacteria’ – as they have been dubbed by the team that discovered them – take energy from rocks and metal by feasting directly on their electrons. The hair-like filaments the bacteria produce carry electrons between the cells and their environment.

These bacteria yet again prove the almost miraculous tenacity of life — but, from a technology standpoint, they might also prove to be useful in enabling the creation of self-powered nanoscale devices that clean up pollution. Some of these bacteria also have the curious ability to form into ‘biocables,’ microbial nanowires that are centimeters long and conduct electricity as well as copper wires — a capability that might one day be tapped to build long, self-assembling subsurface networks for human use.

As you may recall from high school biology, almost every living organism consumes sugar to survive. When it gets right down to it, everything you eat is ultimately converted or digested into single molecules of glucose. Without going into the complexities of respiration and metabolism (ATP!), these sugars have excess electrons — and the oxygen you breathe in really wants those electrons. By ferrying electrons from sugar to oxygen, a flow of electrons — i.e. energy — is created, which is then used to carry out various vital tasks around your body (triggering electrons, beating your heart, etc.)

These special bacteria, however, don’t need no poxy sugars — instead, they cut out the middleman and feed directly on electrons. To discover these bacteria, and to cultivate them in the lab, the USC biologists quite simply scooped up some sediment from the ocean, took it back to the lab, stuck some electrodes into it, and then turned on the power. When higher voltages are pumped into the water, the bacteria “eats” electrons from the electrode; when a lower voltage is present, the bacteria “exhales” electrons onto the electrode, creating an electrical current (which could be used to power a device, if you were so inclined). The USC study very carefully controlled for other sources of nutrition — these bacteria were definitely eating electrons directly.

 All told, various researchers around the world have now discovered upwards of 10 different kinds of bacteria that feed on electricity — and, interestingly, they’re all pretty different (they’re not from the same family), and none of them are like Shewanella or Geobacter, two well-known bacteria that have interesting electrical properties. Kenneth Nealson of USC, speaking to New Scientist about his team’s discovery, said: “This is huge. What it means is that there’s a whole part of the microbial world that we don’t know about.

As for the repercussions of finding bacteria that eat and excrete electrons, the most obvious use is in the growing fields of molecular motors and nanomachines. These bacteria, at their most basic, are machines that consume raw electricity — and so, with some clever (genetic?) engineering, it stands to reason that we might one day use them to power tiny machines that can perform tasks that are currently carried out by expensive, human-operated machines (cleaning up chemical spills, for example). These bacteria might also allow us to find out exactly how much energy a living cell needs to survive; put them in a test tube, and then slowly dial back the electrode voltage until they die. A cruel experiment, but one that would yield very informative results.

IKEA has selected Inovateus Solar for the development and installation of 1.28 MW customized solar power system. PV installation will begin this spring with the store opening scheduled for the fall 2015, which will be Missouri’s largest rooftop solar array.

The 259,000 square-foot solar array will incorporate 4,085 panels that are expected to produce approximately 1.78 GWh of electricity annually for the store. The generated power will be equivalent to reducing 1,227 tons of carbon emission annually, Greentech Lead writes.

This installation will be IKEA’s 42nd solar project in the U.S, contributing to the IKEA roof top solar presence around 90 percent of its U.S. locations, with a total generation goal of 40 MW.

IKEA operates its own solar PV energy system atop the buildings and has so far installed around 700,000 roof top solar panels and 157 wind turbines across Europe and Canada.

In addition, IKEA has planned a global renewable energy investment of $1.8 billion through 2015, with a target of becoming totally energy independent by 2020.

Last month, IKEA projected plans for a possible store in the City of Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee increasing its presence in the Southeastern United States as its first store in the state.

In another development, IKEA proposed plans to increase the solar array atop its Detroit-area store in Canton, MI. The new panels will be installed from spring 2015 with a completion expected by summer.

Besides, IKEA has plans to produce only LED bulbs by 2016 and also has installed electric vehicle charging stations at 13 stores, with further plan for more locations.

There are currently more than 360 IKEA stores in 47 countries, including 40 in the U.S. IKEA incorporates sustainability into day-to-day business and supports initiatives that benefit children and the environment.