The number of incidents involving damaged electronic devices on board aircraft has increased in recent years. Most of these are caused by lithium-ion batteries, which are found in laptops and other portable electronic devices. In the LOKI-PED project, the Fraunhofer Institute for High-Speed Dynamics, Ernst-Mach-Institut, EMI and the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics IBP are collaborating with Airbus to assess the fire and smoke risks associated with lithium-ion batteries in cockpits and cabins. The objective is to make it safer…
Environmentally friendly coating technologies. Damp, cold conditions are the enemy of wind power. If a layer of ice forms on the rotor blades, this can result in rotational imbalance and, hence, increased wear. In such cases, the turbines often have to be shut down for several days, leading to massive losses for the operators due to the pause in electricity production. Now, for the first time, a Fraunhofer team has succeeded in using drones to protect rotor blades against ice….
Farmland often harbors a multitude of pathogens which attack plants and reduce yields. A Swiss research team has now shown that inoculating the soil with mycorrhizal fungi can help maintain or even improve yields without the use of additional fertilizers or pesticides. In a large-scale field trial, plant yield increased by up to 40 percent. Intensive use of fertilizers and pesticides on fields reduces biodiversity and pollutes the environment. There is therefore great interest in finding sustainable ways to protect…
Anne Bentley, chemistry professor at Lewis & Clark College, has developed an innovative way to teach nanoscience, using 3D-printed models that make the unseen visible. Nanoparticles are super tiny―as small as one nanometer, or one billionth of a meter―and are of keen interest to materials scientists for their unique physical and chemical properties. They cannot be detected by the naked eye and require a highly specialized electron microscope to be seen. In fact, advancements in imaging technologies through the 1990s…
When a natural disaster occurs, every minute counts. Unmanned aerial vehicles are often used to assist the search for survivors as they can provide an initial overview of difficult-to-reach areas and help to detect victims — provided they are visible. Researchers at the Fraunhofer FKIE are looking to close a gap in the provision of disaster management services with a new technology: In the future, drones equipped with microphone arrays will be able to precisely locate cries for help and…
This surprising result is important for understanding unconventional superconductors and other materials where electrons band together to act collectively. Long before researchers discovered the electron and its role in generating electrical current, they knew about electricity and were exploring its potential. One thing they learned early on was that metals were great conductors of both electricity and heat. And in 1853, two scientists showed that those two admirable properties of metals were somehow related: At any given temperature, the ratio…
Researchers develop hybrid phase-change memristors that offer fast, low-power, and high-density computing memory.# By strategically straining materials that are as thin as a single layer of atoms, University of Rochester scientists have developed a new form of computing memory that is at once fast, dense, and low-power. The researchers outline their new hybrid resistive switches in a study published in Nature Electronics. Developed in the lab of Stephen M. Wu, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and of physics, the approach marries the best qualities of two…
A simple-to-apply, needle-free vaccine patch is being developed to protect people from the potentially deadly mosquito-borne Zika virus. A prototype using The University of Queensland-developed and Vaxxas-commercialised high-density microarray patch (HD-MAP) has delivered a University of Adelaide-developed vaccine and elicited an effective immune response to Zika virus in mice. UQ alum and Vaxxas researcher Dr Danushka Wijesundara said Zika virus was a risk to people across the Pacific, Southeast Asia, India, Africa and South and Central America. “We can change the way…
Kyoto-Hawai’i team reveals results of study from Ryugu samples. Micrometeorites originating from icy celestial bodies in the outer Solar System may be responsible for transporting nitrogen to the near-Earth region in the early days of our solar system. That discovery was published today in Nature Astronomy by an international team of researchers, including University of Hawai’i at Mānoa scientists, led by Kyoto University. Nitrogen compounds, such as ammonium salts, are abundant in material born in regions far from the sun,…
Genomic studies shed light on the origins of bee venom. Bees, wasps and ants belong to the Hymenoptera order and inject a whole cocktail of venomous ingredients when they sting. Despite their tremendous ecological and economic importance, little was previously known about the origins of their venom. Through extensive genomic studies, a team of researchers led by Dr. Björn von Reumont from Goethe University Frankfurt has now discovered that typical venomous components were already present in the earliest ancestors of…
Photonic integrated circuits (PICs) are compact devices that combine multiple optical components on a single chip. They have a wide range of applications in communications, ranging, sensing, computing, spectroscopy, and quantum technology. PICs are now manufactured using mature semiconductor fabrication technologies. It has reduced costs and improved performance. This makes PICs a promising technology for a variety of applications. Photonic packaging is much more challenging than electronic packaging. PICs require much higher alignment accuracy, typically at the micron or even…
Heidelberg scientists unveil genetic programmes controlling the development of cellular diversity in the cerebellum of humans and other mammals. The evolution of higher cognitive functions in human beings has so far mostly been linked to the expansion of the neocortex – a region of the brain that is responsible, inter alia, for conscious thought, movement and sensory perception. Researchers are increasingly realising, however, that the “little brain” or cerebellum also expanded during evolution and probably contributes to the capacities unique…
TUM researchers develop rapid test for severe infections. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a method for assessing the number and structure of aggregated blood platelets (or thrombocytes) that can potentially help quantify the risk of a severe COVID-19 infection. As a result, they have identified a predictive biomarker for the seriousness of a COVID-19 infection. This will allow physicians to adjust treatment at an early stage. The researchers used a method from image-based flow cytometry…
An international team of astronomers has used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to provide the first observation of water and other molecules in the highly irradiated inner, rocky-planet-forming regions of a disk in one of the most extreme environments in our galaxy. These results suggest that the conditions for terrestrial planet formation can occur in a possible broader range of environments than previously thought. These are the first results from the eXtreme Ultraviolet Environments (XUE) James Webb Space Telescope program,…
The multicellular bots move around and help heal “wounds” created in cultured neurons. Researchers at Tufts University and Harvard University’s Wyss Institute have created tiny biological robots that they call Anthrobots from human tracheal cells that can move across a surface and have been found to encourage the growth of neurons across a region of damage in a lab dish. The multicellular robots, ranging in size from the width of a human hair to the point of a sharpened pencil,…
Kiel researchers evaluate the future protection potential of dikes and show flooding scenarios for the German Baltic Sea coast until 2100. The record storm surge in October 2023 caused severe damage to the German Baltic coast. Effective adaptation scenarios to rising sea levels are therefore becoming increasingly urgent. In two recent studies, researchers at Kiel University have modelled both the flooding extent along the Baltic Sea coastal areas and, for the first time, two possible upgrades for current dike lines…
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