Forum for Science, Industry and Business

In the most detailed analysis of how sands move around on Mars, a team of planetary scientists led by the UA found that processes not involved in controlling sand movement on Earth play major roles on Mars

Piedmont Atlanta Hospital is the first in the state of Georgia to offer a new minimally invasive treatment for emphysema, a severe form of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD).

Chemists from the University of Bonn and their US colleagues at Columbia University in New York have discovered a novel mechanism in catalysis. It allows the synthesis of certain alcohols more cheaply and environmentally friendly than before. The reaction follows a previously unknown pattern in which hydrogen is split into three components in a time-coordinated manner. More than five years passed between the idea and its practical realization. The results are published in the prestigious journal Science.

In typical development, both infants and their parents flexibly use verbal and non-verbal behaviors to establish frequent episodes of joint attention, such as when a child follows her parent’s gaze to look at an airplane in the sky. A new study published in Biological Psychiatry shows that infants who are later diagnosed with autism react adequately when others initiate joint attention, but seldom actively seek to establish such episodes themselves. This finding provides support for the view that children with autism have reduced social motivation already as infants.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry are developing a method that enables more accurate dating of petroglyphs

A team of polymer chemists and engineers from Carnegie Mellon University have developed a new methodology that can be used to create a class of stretchable polymer composites with enhanced electrical and thermal properties. These materials are promising candidates for use in soft robotics, self-healing electronics and medical devices. The results are published in the May 20 issue of Nature Nanotechnology.

Bacteria can quickly become resistant to antibiotics. Which mechanisms are responsible for this and how to counteract it? Dr. Ana Rita Brochado, who is setting up a new Emmy Noether Junior Research Group at the University of Würzburg, is investigating this.

Two-dimensional materials made of Group 14 elements, graphene's cousins, have attracted enormous interest in recent years because of their unique potential as useful topological insulators.

Researchers from the MIPT Center for Photonics and 2D Materials have synthesized a quasi-2D gold film, showing how materials not usually classified as two-dimensional can form atomically thin layers.

A great success for Würzburg's physics department: its Collaborative Research Centre was rated as excellent and is now entering its second funding phase. The German Research Foundation is providing 12 million euros for this purpose.

Researchers from Freiburg discovered a novel mechanism that ensures obstacle-free protein traffic into the powerhouse of the cell

Application-specific high-throughput stem cell production processes revolutionize industrial new drug testing. For biotechnological and pharmaceutical companies, the development of cell culture automation using innovative materials is a promising approach to optimize existing processes. By customized material characteristics, expansion and/or differentiation of human stem cells (with focus on human induced pluripotent stem cells, hiPSCs) shall be positively influenced and automated solutions for the production for high-qualitative cells shall be developed. Meet Fraunhofer IBMT, an expert in automation solutions for workflows in stem cell process engineering at the BIO International in USA.

Young stars heat molecular clouds and drive hot interstellar gas bubbles throughout galaxies

Physicists at the University of Basel are able to show for the first time how a single electron looks in an artificial atom. A newly developed method enables them to show the probability of an electron being present in a space. This allows improved control of electron spins, which could serve as the smallest information unit in a future quantum computer. The experiments were published in Physical Review Letters and the related theory in Physical Review B.

EU Project BRIGHTER sets its sights on 3D bioprinting systems with light sheet lithography.

Researchers create most complete model of complex protein machinery

Symbiotic algae living inside corals provide those animals with their vibrant color, as well as many of the nutrients they need to survive. That algae, and other microbes within the bodies of corals, have been extensively studied--yet until now, researchers have largely ignored the microbial communities just outside of the coral colonies.

Researchers of the University of Bonn identify extremely rare fusion of two white dwarfs

In addition to Ampere, Kelvin, Mol and Co., the kilogram also is now defined by a natural constant. In concrete terms, this means that the original kilogram, which has been the measure of all things for 130 years, has now served its purpose in Paris. This is made possible by the single crystals grown from the highly enriched isotopic silicon-28 at the Leibniz-Institut für Kristallzüchtung (IKZ).

Joint press release by Technische Universität Berlin and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin

Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology have found a simple, yet highly versatile, way to generate "chaotic signals" with various features. The technique consists of interconnecting three "ring oscillators," effectively making them compete against each other, while controlling their respective strengths and their linkages. The resulting device is rather small and efficient, thus suitable for emerging applications such as realizing wireless networks of sensors.

Ladder polymers -- molecules made of adjacent rings sharing two or more atoms -- are challenging to synthesize, because they require highly selective, quantitative reactions to avoid the formation of branching structures or of interruptions in the ring sequence in the polymer chain.

Physical chemistry: Publication in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces