Forum for Science, Industry and Business

A UK team of astronomers report the first detection of matter falling into a black hole at 30% of the speed of light, located in the centre of the billion-light year distant galaxy PG211+143. The team, led by Professor Ken Pounds of the University of Leicester, used data from the European Space Agency's X-ray observatory XMM-Newton to observe the black hole. Their results appear in a new paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

On the cusp of our atmosphere live a thin group of seasonal electric blue clouds. Forming 50 miles above the poles in summer, these clouds are known as noctilucent clouds or polar mesospheric clouds -- PMCs. A recent NASA long-duration balloon mission observed these clouds over the course of five days at their home in the mesosphere. The resulting photos, which scientists have just begun to analyze, will help us better understand turbulence in the atmosphere, as well as in oceans, lakes and other planetary atmospheres, and may even improve weather forecasting.

Blocking IL1b with anakinra controls tumor-promoting inflammation in breast cancer

Precise control of multimetallic one-nanometer cluster formation achieved

Due to the heterogenity of natural habitats and its dimension, Brazil is thought to hold 15 - 20% of the biodiversity on planet Earth. A study conducted in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest under the leadership of senior researcher Olavi Kurina from the Chair of Biodiversity and Nature Tourism at Estonian University of Life Sciences could only confirm this theory.

Scientists from Russia and Germany shed light on the crystalline structure of calaverite, foretelling the existence of a new gold compound previously unknown to chemists. The results of their study were published in the reputable scientific journal PNAS.

NASA's continued quest to explore our solar system and beyond received a boost of new information this week with three key missions proving not only that they are up and running, but that their science potential is exceptional. On Sept. 17, 2018, TESS -- the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite -- shared its first science observations. Later in the week, the latest two missions to join NASA's heliophysics fleet returned first light data: Parker Solar Probe, humanity's first mission to "touch" the Sun, and GOLD, a mission that studies the dynamic boundary between Earth and space.

By making a neural-network computer model that can be fooled by optical illusions like humans, the researchers advanced knowledge of the human visual system and may help improve artificial vision

Equators of Sun-like stars rotate up to two and a half times as fast as higher latitudes, NYU Abu Dhabi researchers have discovered

Scientists at the Natural and Medical Sciences Institute (NMI) in Reutlingen and the Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen have developed new molecular probes to monitor and quantify changes in the concentration of endogenous proteins by live-cell fluorescence microscopy.

Photovoltaics is booming worldwide. If one considers PV installations in 2017, Europe has lost its pioneering role and now holds fourth place behind China, the USA and India. On the other hand, Europe is leading worldwide in PV research and development as demonstrated by the 35th European PV Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition EU PVSEC, held this year in Brussels from 24-28 September 2018. Fraunhofer ISE, Europe’s largest solar research institute, is represented at the conference with over 60 contributions in the form of talks, posters, session chairs and two plenary speeches as well as a booth at the exhibition.

An international team of scientists has discovered molecules of fat in an ancient fossil to reveal the earliest confirmed animal in the geological record that lived on Earth 558 million years ago. The team was led by The Australian National University and included scientists from the German Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry and University of Bremen as well as the Russian Academy of Science. Their recent results are published in the journal Science.

Research could provide new insights into diseases in which normal cell fusion is disrupted

Know that sickening feeling when you exit the grocery store and find your car has been banged up by a runaway shopping cart? It may one day be just a bad memory if auto body manufacturers make use of a new suite of tests developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and three industry partners. Data from these tests could eventually help your vehicle's exterior better defend itself against dings, dents, scratches and things that go bump on the highway.

Barely heard of a couple of years ago, quinoa today is common on European supermarket shelves. The hardy plant thrives even in saline soils. Researchers from the University of Würzburg have now determined how the plant gets rid of the excess salt.

How do we know if we're looking at three apples or four? Researchers at the Universities of Bonn and Tübingen are now one step closer to answering this question. They were able to demonstrate that some brain cells fire mainly for quantities of three, others for quantities of four and others for other quantities. A similar effect can be observed for digits: In humans, the neurons activated in response to a “2” are for instance not the same as the neurons activated for a “5”. The results also demonstrate how we learn to handle number symbols in comparison to quantities. The study is published online in the journal “Neuron”.

The diagnosis of ovarian cancer is still comparable to a death sentence. Only one in six patients survives more than 10 years after diagnosis. In a new study, an international research team from Germany, the USA, and Denmark, identified a molecular mechanism that is linked to patient long-term survival for those roughly 20% of the patients. By proteomic analysis, the protein CT45 was identified as a novel prognostic cancer cell marker. The authors further showed that the protein itself increases cancer cell death after platinum chemotherapy and activates the patient’s immune system. This work will be published in the renowned scientific journal Cell.

Dr. Li Deng of Helmholtz Zentrum München has been awarded a Starting Grant of the European Research Council (ERC). The scientist intends to tackle antimicrobial resistance by fighting bacteria with their natural enemies – the viruses. The grant is endowed with nearly 1.5 million euros for five years.

Targeted engineering projects to hold off glacier melting could slow down the collapse of ice sheets and limit sea-level rise, according to a new study published in the European Geosciences Union journal The Cryosphere. While an intervention similar in size to existing large civil engineering projects could only have a 30% chance of success, a larger project would have better odds of holding off ice-sheet collapse. But study authors Michael Wolovick and John Moore caution that reducing emissions still remains key to stopping climate change and its dramatic effects.

To be able to meet the temperature targets agreed upon in Paris, society needs to remove large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere in future. However, the technologies required for this, frequently referred to as “negative emissions technologies” (NETs), come with certain risks. Their corresponding ethical implications should therefore be taken into consideration both in ethics and in climate science, recommend researchers led by Dominic Lenzi of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC).

The completion of NOEMA phase 1, the first phase of the NOEMA project was officially celebrated on Wednesday, September 19th. The Max Planck Society and its partner institute IRAM have completed the first, decisive step towards one of the most important German-French-Spanish initiatives in astronomy: upgrading the NOEMA observatory in the French Alps and developing the most powerful and most sensitive telescope at millimetre wavelengths in the Northern hemisphere. Four years after the inauguration of the first NOEMA antenna, ten 15-meter dishes currently constitute the observatory and have provided ground-breaking scientific results.

Constantly changing environments represent an enormous challenge for modern driver assistance systems. To meet these, software-controlled automotive radars offer entirely new opportunities: They are compact, low-cost, and also versatile and highly reconfigurable. By applying cognitive methods, they can be used to develop radars that intelligently and automatically adapt their parameters to the individual situations during operation. Fraunhofer FHR will present such an adaptive radar at the European Microwave Week at booth 33 in Madrid from 25 – 27.09.2018. The demonstrator accurately measures changing distances and positions quickly and intelligently while optimizing the use of resources.

Although depression is one of the leading psychiatric disorders in Germany, its cause remains unclear. A recent study at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI CBS) in Leipzig, Germany, and the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the University Clinic in Leipzig found that those affected by depressive disorder have a larger hypothalamus compared to their healthy counterparts. This could explain why many sufferers show increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol and are very often afflicted with periods of tension.