Forum for Science, Industry and Business

Graphene enables ultra-wide bandwidth communications coupled with low power consumption, with potential to surpass the needs of 5G, IoT and Industry 4.0.

In the fairy tale "Goldilock and the Three Bears", the girl Goldilock goes to the bears' house where she finds three bowls of porridge, but only one has the "just right" temperature, and in the same way within biology, you can find the "just right" conditions - called the Goldilocks principle. This is precisely what an international research team has done by demonstrating that in order to get the "just right" amount of signalling for symbiosis in the roots of legumes, a specific enzyme called chitinase (CHIT5) must be present.

Scientists at Yokohama National University and the University of Tokyo in Japan have designed an ion gel with excellent toughness and an ability to self-heal at ambient temperature without any external trigger or detectable change in the environment such as light or temperature. This new class of material has promising potential for building flexible electronic devices.

Researchers from Japan have taken a step toward faster and more advanced electronics by developing a way to better measure and manipulate conductive materials through scanning tunneling microscopy.

The road cut seems rather dull and gray at first, but the tuff and pumice rocks hold the secrets of a volcano. Covered in green ferns and brown roots, the rocks lock in the compositional and temporal signatures from past eruptions of the Taupo Volcanic Zone, New Zealand. Taupo is an active system, where some of the world's largest eruptions have occurred over the past two million years. In particular, between 350,000 and 240,000 years ago, Taupo exploded with seven eruptions--a volcanic 'flare-up' of activity.

A recent study, affiliated with UNIST has introduced a novel catalyst that can significantly enhance the performance of perovskite electrodes in Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC).

Together with 14 project partners, Fraunhofer IWES, in the role of coordinator, launched the BladeFactory project at the beginning of October. The research project, which has been funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economics Affairs and Energy (BMWi) to the tune of € 7 million, is set to last 3.5 years. During this period, IWES researchers will develop and test production methods with the aim of reducing the production time for rotor blades. To this end, the team is working to parallelize production steps. In addition, a 3D laser measurement system, which is suitable for assuring the quality of blade production, will be tested for the first time.

How exactly the grid cell system works in the human brain, and in particular with which temporal dynamics, has until now been speculation. A much-discussed possibility is that the signals from these cells create maps of “cognitive spaces” in which humans mentally organize and store the complexities of their internal and external environments. A European–American team of scientists has now been able to demonstrate, with electrophysiological evidence, the existence of grid-like activity in the human brain.

When we put water in a freezer, water molecules crystallize and form ice. This change from one phase of matter to another is called a phase transition. While this transition, and countless others that occur in nature, typically takes place at the same fixed conditions, such as the freezing point, one can ask how it can be influenced in a controlled way.

Heat pumps are a key technology for the energy transformation, since they cover the heating demand efficiently and sustainably. While the market for heat pumps in detached and semi-detached homes is growing continuously, there is still potential for heat pump use in multi-family homes and for commercial and industrial applications. At the Chillventa, the international trade fair for cooling, air-conditioning, ventilation and heat pumps, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE focuses on the potential and the current challenges facing heat pumps in a special presentation. The Chillventa trade fair takes place from 16-18 October 2018 in the City of Nuremberg.

Purdue researchers find light-active version of heme may help people infected with MRSA

For the first time, physicists have built a unique topological insulator in which optical and electronic excitations hybridize and flow together. They report their discovery in "Nature".

Fundamental research sheds light on new many-particle quantum physics in atomically thin semiconductors

Extremely hard tools are required in forming technology, metal-cutting and process engineering. They are conventionally made by powder pressing. Although this achieves a high degree of hardness, it is often necessary to carry out a complex and therefore expensive post-processing.

The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) is the first institution in Europe to receive an NVIDIA DGX-2, which is considered to be the world's most powerful AI supercomputer. Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, presented the new AI system in his keynote speech at the GPU Technology Conference Europe (GTC) in Munich yesterday and referred to the outstanding work of DFKI in the field of satellite image analysis.

At NVIDIA’s GPU Technology Conference (GTC) from October 9th – 11th, 2018 in Munich, Fraunhofer FOKUS researchers will demonstrate on the outdoor exhibition grounds how they can control a vehicle tele-operatively with minimal latency. That helps to bridge the gap from driver-controlled to fully autonomous vehicles. In addition, they will present their semi-automated tool for processing image data from Lidar laser scanners and cameras for training the artificial intelligence (AI) of smart cars.

At the Centre for Media, Communication and Information Research (ZeMKI) at the University of Bremen, scientific software will be further developed over the next three years together with partners. It is intended to provide new insights into the individual use of various media and into the resulting digital traces. The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) is supporting the research and development project with more than 720,000 euros.

Fraunhofer IWS Dresden scientists print electronic layers with polymer ink

The Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT has taken its “TwoCure” process to the next level by developing it into an industry-ready machine technology. The team of scientists from Aachen, Germany will be presenting their “TwoCure” system at formnext in Frankfurt am Main from November 13 to 16. The new technique uses resin-based 3D printing to produce large numbers of plastic components without support structures in an automated process.

Recipes for three-dimensional (3D) printing, or additive manufacturing, of parts have required as much guesswork as science. Until now.

A RUDN chemist developed a new type of photocatalysts -- nanostructures from titanium dioxide

Novel design could help shed excess heat in next-generation fusion power plants

Harvesting solar fuels through a bacterium's unusual appetite for gold