Excavation of caverns part of Fermilab’s Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. With excavation work complete at the site where four gigantic particle detectors for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) will be installed, scientists are preparing to begin construction on first detector. Part of that work is taking place at The University of Texas at Arlington. Located a mile below the surface at the Sanford Underground Research Laboratory in Lead, South Dakota, the three colossal caverns serve as the core of a…
Synthetic biologists’ hack blood-glucose reaction to create chemotherapy detector. Rice University synthetic biologists have found a way to piggyback on the glucose monitoring technology used in automated insulin dosing systems and make it universally applicable for the monitoring and dosing of virtually any drug. In a recently published study in Nature Communications, researchers in the lab of Caroline Ajo-Franklin demonstrated the technique by modifying a blood-glucose sensor to detect the anticancer drug afimoxifene , an estrogen inhibitor that patient’s bodies…
T cells are often called “assassins” or “killers” because they can orchestrate and carry out missions to hunt down bacteria, viruses, and cancer cells throughout the body. Mighty as they may be, recent research has shown that once T cells infiltrate the environment of a solid tumor, they lose the energy needed to combat the cancer. A research team led by Jessica Thaxton, PhD, MsCR, associate professor of cell biology and physiology and co-leader of the Cancer Cell Biology Program…
New insights into the release of Candidalysin promise progress in the treatment of Candida albicans infections. The toxin Candidalysin of the yeast Candida albicans is incorporated into an unusual protein structure during an infection, the composition of which has so far been unknown to scientists. Researchers at the Leibniz-HKI have now succeeded in deciphering the function of this unusual arrangement. By modifying the protein structure, the pathogenicity of the fungus could also be reduced. The new findings were used to…
Research team at the TWINCORE and the HZI shows how an enzyme regulates the pathogenicity of a clinically relevant pathogen. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an important opportunistic pathogen responsible for life-threatening infections that are associated with high rates of morbidity and mortality. Researchers from TWINCORE, the Centre for Experimental and Clinical Infection Research in Hannover, and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in Braunschweig have now been able to show that an enzyme controls virulence through modification of tRNAs. They…
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena and the Ilmenau University of Technology, Germany, show that plant observations collected with plant identification apps such as Flora Incognita allow statements to be made about the developmental stages of plants – both on a small scale and across Europe. “The snowdrops have never bloomed as early as this year, have they?” Many people who explore nature with keen senses will surely have asked themselves such questions. The German Weather…
Herz- und Diabeteszentrum NRW, Bad Oeynhausen: “Three-dimensional imaging quality facilitates new ways of evaluating and treating structural cardiac diseases.” Experts have been discussing the use of holograms to support medical-clinical decision-making and treatment for more than two decades. The technology is now so far advanced that physicians can simultaneously take an exact replica of the beating heart of a patient and turn it around in their hands, look at it from all angles or measure distances with their fingertips. For…
– Fraunhofer WKI advises on bonding. For the company Modvion AB in Gothenburg, researchers from the Fraunhofer WKI accompanied the bonding of the first wooden tower for commercial wind turbines on the construction site and advised the company on complex bonding processes. The so-called “Wind of Change Tower” of the energy provider Varberg Energi AB was inaugurated on 4 March 2024. Including a V90-2.0MW turbine from Vestas Group, the tower reaches a total height of 150 metres (pure tower height…
In our rapidly industrialized world, the quest for sustainable materials has never been more urgent. Plastics, ubiquitous in daily life, pose significant environmental challenges, primarily due to their fossil fuel origins and problematic disposal. Now, a study led by Jeremy Luterbacher’s team at EPFL unveils a pioneering approach to producing high-performance plastics from renewable resources. The research, published in Nature Sustainability, introduces a novel method for creating polyamides – a class of plastics known for their strength and durability, the…
ANYmal has for some time had no problem coping with the stony terrain of Swiss hiking trails. Now researchers at ETH Zurich have taught this quadrupedal robot some new skills: it is proving rather adept at parkour, a sport based on using athletic manoeuvres to smoothly negotiate obstacles in an urban environment, which has become very popular. ANYmal is also proficient at dealing with the tricky terrain commonly found on building sites or in disaster areas. The quadrupedal robot Anymal…
In a recent publication in Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-024-07094-9, researchers at the Max Born Institute (MBI) in Berlin, Germany, and at Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching report on a new technique for deciphering the properties of matter with light, that can simultaneously detect and precisely quantify many substances with a high chemical selectivity. Their technique interrogates the atoms and molecules in the ultraviolet spectral region at very feeble light levels. Using two optical frequency combs and a photon counter, the…
– vacuum process may offer a short track to commercialization. A large variety of fabrication processes are investigated in research and industry – comparative study assesses options for mass production. Over the past decade, perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells have demonstrated a stunning development. In research, efficiencies of more than 33 percent have been shown, exceeding by far those of conventional silicon-based solar cells. However, yet the technology has not reached the market. One of the major challenges is the unresolved…
Jefferson Lab accelerator physicists to partner with national lab, university and industry colleagues for development of compact SRF accelerators for industrial settings. Superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) technology allows particle accelerators to efficiently produce powerful electron beams. Physicists use these beams to study the building blocks of matter at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. But these research machines also have a promising list of industrial applications. Now, some researchers are figuring out how to get SRF accelerators…
Materials that are incredibly thin, only a few atoms thick, exhibit unique properties that make them appealing for energy storage, catalysis and water purification. Researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, have now developed a method that enables the synthesis of hundreds of new 2D materials. Their study has been published in the journal Science. Since the discovery of graphene, the field of research in extremely thin materials, so-called 2D materials, has increased exponentially. The reason is that 2D materials have a…
…and use far less energy. UMass Amherst research demonstrates that a memristor device can solve complex scientific problems using significantly less energy, overcoming one of the major hurdles of digital computing. A team of researchers including University of Massachusetts Amherst engineers have proven that their analog computing device, called a memristor, can complete complex, scientific computing tasks while bypassing the limitations of digital computing. Many of today’s important scientific questions—from nanoscale material modeling to large-scale climate science—can be explored using…
Cooperation project involving Kiel University aims at facilitating import of sustainably produced energy. Germany can probably only meet its demand for climate-friendly hydrogen by imports, for example from South America or Australia. For such long-distance transport, hydrogen can be converted into ammonia, for example. To facilitate the release of the hydrogen afterwards, researchers from the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at Kiel University (CAU) and their cooperation partners have developed a more active and cost-effective catalyst. The results were obtained as…
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