Despite public perception, the Antarctic ozone hole has been remarkably massive and long-lived over the past four years, University of Otago researchers believe chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) aren’t the only things to blame. In a study, just published in Nature Communications, the group analysed the monthly and daily ozone changes, at different altitudes and latitudes within the Antarctic ozone hole, from 2004 to 2022. Lead author Hannah Kessenich, PhD candidate in the Department of Physics, says they found there is much less…
Microprocessor-scale transistors detect and respond to biological states and the environment. Your phone may have more than 15 billion tiny transistors packed into its microprocessor chips. The transistors are made of silicon, metals like gold and copper, and insulators that together take an electric current and convert it to 1s and 0s to communicate information and store it. The transistor materials are inorganic, basically derived from rock and metal. But what if you could make these fundamental electronic components part…
Glass – whether used to insulate our homes or as the screens in our computers and smartphones – is a fundamental material. Yet, despite its long usage throughout human history, the disordered structure of its atomic configuration still baffles scientists, making understanding and controlling its structural nature challenging. It also makes it difficult to design efficient functional materials made from glass. To uncover more about the structural regularity hidden in glassy materials, a research group has focused on ring shapes…
Key to better manufacturing… Artificial Intelligence methods guide researchers in developing improved manufacturing processes for highly efficient solar cells – a blueprint for other research areas. Perovskite tandem solar cells combine a perovskite solar cell with a conventional solar cell, for example based on silicon. These cells are considered a next-generation technology: They boast an efficiency of currently more than 33 percent, which is much higher than that of conventional silicon solar cells. Moreover, they use inexpensive raw materials and…
Universal device will allow transdisciplinary collaboration globally. Spurred by the current climate crisis, there has been a heightened attention within the scientific community in recent years to how past climate variation contributed to historic human migration and other behaviors. Now, an international group of scientists — including archaeologists, historians, climate scientists, paleo-scientists, a volcanologist and others — are calling for a strengthened commitment to transdisciplinary collaboration to study past and present human-environmental interactions, which they say will advance our understanding…
ETH Zurich researchers deployed an autonomous excavator, called HEAP, to build a six metre-high and sixty-five-metre-long dry-stone wall. The wall is embedded in a digitally planned and autonomously excavated landscape and park. The team of researchers included: Gramazio Kohler Research, the Robotics Systems Lab, Vision for Robotics Lab, and the Chair of Landscape Architecture. They developed this innovative design application as part of the National Centre of Competence in Research for Digital Fabrication (NCCR dfab). Using sensors, the excavator can…
Commonly thought to be long-lived satellites of our galaxy, a new study now finds indications that most dwarf galaxies might in fact be destroyed soon after their entry into the Galactic halo. Thanks to the latest catalogue from ESA’s Gaia satellite, an international team has now demonstrated that dwarf galaxies might be out of equilibrium. The study opens important questions on the standard cosmological model, particularly on the prevalence of dark matter in our nearest environment. It has long been…
Humboldt fellow Shailja Jain is investigating catalysts for green chemistry. She uses quantum technologies for observing molecules: Computational chemist Shailja Jain is visiting the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Stuttgart for two years as a Humboldt postdoctoral fellow. In the team of Professor Johannes Kästner, she wants to advance the development of a new generation of catalysts for sustainable chemical processes. “I want to shed light on the structures, bonding, and reaction dynamics of metal-free small molecule…
GEOMAR study investigates effects of sediment plumes. The deep sea is home to one of the largest animal communities on earth which is increasingly exposed to environmental pressures. However, our knowledge of its inhabitants and their response to human-induced stressors is still limited. A new study led by scientists from GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel now provides first insights into the stress response of a pelagic deep-sea jellyfish to ocean warming and sediment plumes caused by deep-sea mining….
Bacteria support each other across generations. When bacteria build communities, they cooperate and share nutrients across generations. Researchers at the University of Basel have been able to demonstrate this for the first time using a newly developed method. This innovative technique enables the tracking of gene expression during the development of bacterial communities over space and time. In nature, bacteria usually live in communities. They collectively colonize our gut, also known as the gut microbiome, or form biofilms such as…
Model enzyme from an edible fungus. “In plasma-driven biocatalysis, we intend to use technical plasmas to drive enzymes that use hydrogen peroxide to convert a substrate into a more valuable product,” explains Julia Bandow, Head of the Department of Applied Microbiology. The plasmas – energetically charged gases – produce hydrogen peroxide as well as a variety of reactive species. The researchers use the non-specific peroxigenase (AaeUPO) from the edible fungus Agrocybe aegerita as a model enzyme. They showed in initial…
A newly developed artificial intelligence (AI) system that analyzes specialized MRIs of the brain accurately diagnosed children between the ages of 24 and 48 months with autism at a 98.5% accuracy rate, according to research being presented next week at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA). Mohamed Khudri, B.Sc., a visiting research scholar at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, was part of a multi-disciplinary team that developed the three-stage system to analyze and classify…
The Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) is set to lead the coordination of the PHOTOTHERAPORT project, which will be developed with funding from the European Innovation Council’s Pathfinder Open programme. Pau Gorostiza, an ICREA research professor and principal investigator of the Nanoprobes and Nanoswitches group at the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) and CIBER-BBN, is set to coordinate the PHOTOTHERAPORT project, which is funded by the prestigious Pathfinder Open programme of the European Innovation Council (EIC). Through this…
Researchers from ICIQ describe a circular process to recycle polycarbonates, a specific polymer often used in plastic applications, using less chemicals and user-friendly conditions. A month ago, the European Union banned glitter. This action was englobed in a regulation with the aim of reducing 30% of the presence of microplastics in our environment. Waste plastics are a serious problem for our eco-systems and the push for recycling of plastics in general has gained significant attention as a potential solution. “Circular…
A donated organ always remains foreign to the body and is fought against by the immune system. In order to prevent rejection, the entire immune defence must be suppressed for a lifetime. An MHH research team is now using genetically modified killer cells against precisely those immune cells that want to destroy the transplant. If an organ is incurably diseased and fails, the only remaining treatment option is a transplant. However, the recipient’s immune system recognises the donor organ as…
Day by day, we communicate with our office colleagues to accomplish tasks that are necessary to function. The more than 200 different types of cells in our bodies do the same thing, but the way they communicate with each other isn’t as simple as sending an email. Researchers like Ioannis Zervantonakis are still trying to understand how these cells actually communicate with each other. The assistant professor of bioengineering at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering recently received…
Feedback
