Pitt researchers receive more than $1.6 million from the NSF to develop miniature robots that can navigate complex terrains using neuroscience concepts. When navigating a busy sidewalk, most people can avoid puddles, other pedestrians, and cracks in the pavement. It may seem intuitive – because it is. There’s a biological component that allows humans and other mammals to navigate our complex environments. Central Pattern Generators (CPG) are neural networks that produce rhythmic patterns of control signals for limbs using simple environmental cues….
From space-wide internet to last-mile connectivity, portable free-space optical communication promises to bridge connectivity gaps on-demand. In a world that relies on high-speed internet and seamless communication, the absence of a reliable fiber connection can be a significant hurdle. Fortunately, a cutting-edge technology known as free-space optical communication (FSO) offers a flexible solution for field-deployable high-speed wireless communication in areas where fiber connections are unavailable. FSO has garnered attention for its versatility across various scales of operation. On a global…
Physicists boost microscopes beyond limits. New technique could be used in medical diagnostics and advanced manufacturing. Ever since Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovered the world of bacteria through a microscope in the late seventeenth century, humans have tried to look deeper into the world of the infinitesimally small. There are, however, physical limits to how closely we can examine an object using traditional optical methods. This is known as the ‘diffraction limit’ and is determined by the fact that light manifests…
Researchers propose a novel approach that utilizes deep learning to generate three-dimensional holograms from colored two-dimensional images. Holograms that offer a three-dimensional (3D) view of objects provide a level of detail that is unattainable by regular two-dimensional (2D) images. Due to their ability to offer a realistic and immersive experience of 3D objects, holograms hold enormous potential for use in various fields, including medical imaging, manufacturing, and virtual reality. Holograms are traditionally constructed by recording the three-dimensional data of an…
Scientists Find an Unusual Weapon Against Virus. Infections with cytomegalovirus (CMV) often pose no major threat to the vast majority of people. They can however be deadly for people whose immune system is weakened. Current treatments against CMV infections are very limited and can have severe side effects. Researchers led by Prof. Michael Sieweke at the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD) at TUD Dresden University of Technology and the Center of Immunology of Marseille Luminy (CIML) propose a new…
Why infections with Acinetobacter baumannii can flare up again and again. A research team led by Beate Averhoff and Volker Müller of Goethe University Frankfurt has discovered a fundamental mechanism that helps the dreaded hospital pathogen Acinetobacter baumannii to survive. This mechanism explains why the pathogen is difficult to eradicate in hospitals and why infections flare up again and again in patients: When living conditions become too unfavorable for the bacteria, they fall into a kind of slumber. In this…
Novel ferroelectric material enables smaller and better semiconductors for microelectronics. Materials scientists at Kiel University and the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicon Technology (ISIT) in Itzehoe have cleared another hurdle in the development and structuring of new materials for next-generation semiconductor devices, such as novel memory cells. They have shown that ferroelectric aluminium scandium nitride can be scaled down to a few nanometres and can store different states, making it suitable as a nanoswitch. They have also shown that aluminium scandium…
Previous limitation to 256 colors far exceeded. The DNA double helix is composed of two DNA molecules whose sequences are complementary to each other. The stability of the duplex can be fine-tuned in the lab by controlling the amount and location of imperfect complementary sequences. Fluorescent markers bound to one of the matching DNA strands make the duplex visible, and fluorescence intensity increases with increasing duplex stability. Now, researchers at the University of Vienna succeeded in creating fluorescent duplexes that…
Ultrasound is used to diagnose many diseases in the abdominal cavity. A new study conducted at the University of Leipzig Medical Center and supported by the Helmholtz Institute for Metabolism, Obesity and Vascular Research (HI-MAG) shows that obesity affects the quality of ultrasound scans of the liver and kidneys. It also shows that the use of high-performance ultrasound probes can improve the anatomical depiction in these patients. The findings have been published in the journal “Scientific Reports”. Ultrasound of the…
Researchers coaxed a family of generative AI models to work together to solve multistep robot manipulation problems. Anyone who has ever tried to pack a family-sized amount of luggage into a sedan-sized trunk knows this is a hard problem. Robots struggle with dense packing tasks, too. For the robot, solving the packing problem involves satisfying many constraints, such as stacking luggage so suitcases don’t topple out of the trunk, heavy objects aren’t placed on top of lighter ones, and collisions…
Spacecraft metals left in the wake of humanity’s path to the stars. Airplane-based research by Purdue scientists detects unprecedented levels of alloy aerosols in the atmosphere. The Space Age is leaving fingerprints on one of the most remote parts of the planet — the stratosphere — which has potential implications for climate, the ozone layer and the continued habitability of Earth. Using tools hitched to the nose cone of their research planes and sampling more than 11 miles above the…
One double-helix strand of DNA could extend six feet, but it is so tightly coiled that it packs an entire sequence of nucleotides into the tiny nucleus of a cell. If that same DNA was instead split into two strands and divided into many, many short pieces, it would become trillions of uniquely folded 3D molecular structures, capable of bonding to and possibly manipulating specifically shaped molecules — if they’re the perfect fit. These short, single-stranded segments of DNA or…
Rising lake water temperatures threaten the survival of marimo, unique algal balls found only in cold lakes. Kobe University researchers clarified that the warmer it gets, the more the inward decomposition outpaces the outward growth of these life forms, making them increasingly fragile. Moss balls, or “marimo” in Japanese, are popular pet water plants that are not a moss but a special growth form of filamentous algae. They are found naturally in lakes in northern Japan and cold lakes of…
Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, are now presenting a new and efficient way to recycle metals from spent electric car batteries. The method allows recovery of 100 per cent of the aluminium and 98 per cent of the lithium in electric car batteries. At the same time, the loss of valuable raw materials such as nickel, cobalt and manganese is minimised. No expensive or harmful chemicals are required in the process because the researchers use oxalic acid –…
Transition metal dichalcogenide nanotubes promise leap beyond carbon nanotubes. Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have engineered a range of new single-walled transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) nanotubes with different compositions, chirality, and diameters by templating off boron-nitride nanotubes. They also realized ultra-thin nanotubes grown inside the template, and successfully tailored compositions to create a family of new nanotubes. The ability to synthesize a diverse range of structures offers unique insights into their growth mechanism and novel optical properties. The carbon nanotube…
Researchers discover a new family of Gram-negative bacterial enzymes related to infection capability. Gram-negative bacteria cause a variety of infectious diseases in plants and animals alike. Outbreaks of Salmonella and E. coli infections often make headlines due to their severity, and people have to resort to allopathic as well as natural remedies, increasing the burden on the healthcare system. While antibiotics offer an effective solution against bacterial infections, the increasing incidence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria have prompted researchers to identify other…
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