In the “weather kitchen,” the interplay between the Azores High and Icelandic Low has a substantial effect on how much warm water the Atlantic transports to the Arctic along the Norwegian coast. But this rhythm can be thrown off for years at a time. Experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute finally have an explanation for why: Due to unusual atmospheric pressure conditions over the North Atlantic, low-pressure areas are diverted from their usual track, which disrupts the coupling between the…
A new generation of cloud services is on the rise. It is based on the paradigm of “serverless computing”, which is an active research topic at the Institute for Computer Science in Würzburg. In cloud computing, commercial providers make computing resources available on demand to their customers over the Internet. This service is partly offered “serverless”, that is, without servers. How can that work? Computing resources without a server, isn’t that like a restaurant without a kitchen? “The term is…
Fraunhofer IPMS develops photonic microsystems that modulate light using small, controllable mirrors to create unique images and structures. These so-called spatial light modulators (SLM) are micromirror arrays with up to several million mirrors on a semiconductor chip. They have applications in semiconductor manufacturing, microscopy and holography, and have brought the Institute to the forefront of international research in this field. In its own laboratories and the 1500 m² clean room, Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS develops a wide variety…
Researchers at IOCB Prague are the first to describe the causes of the behavior of one of the fundamental aromatic molecules, which fascinates the scientific world not only with its blue color but also with other unusual properties – azulene. Their current undertaking will influence the foundations of organic chemistry in the years to come and in practice will help harness the maximum potential of captured light energy. The article appeared in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS)….
The physical laws of everyday water flow were established two centuries ago. However, scientists today struggle to simulate disrupted water flow virtually, e.g., when a hand or object alters its flow. Now, a research team from Tohoku University has harnessed the power of deep reinforcement learning to replicate the flow of water when disturbed. Replicating this agitated liquid motion, as it is known, allowed them to recreate water flow in real time based on only a small amount of data…
New finding might explain why quasars flare and fade so quickly. A new Northwestern University-led study is changing the way astrophysicists understand the eating habits of supermassive black holes. While previous researchers have hypothesized that black holes eat slowly, new simulations indicate that black holes scarf food much faster than conventional understanding suggests. The study will be published on Wednesday (Sept. 20) in The Astrophysical Journal. According to new high-resolution 3D simulations, spinning black holes twist up the surrounding space-time,…
Two-dimensional materials like graphene show fascinating properties such as superconductivity, extraordinary strength and exotic quantum phenomena. Scientists at Forschungszentrum Jülich, together with partners from the Indian Institute of Technology in Patna and the Australian University of Newcastle, have now created a special material of this kind that exhibits a metallic character. It consists of just one atomic layer of molybdenum atoms and is also referred to as “molybdenene”. The scientists succeeded in producing a thin sheet of the metal molybdenum,…
Embedded with organic crystals, hybrid membranes use “smart separation” approach that is more effective and environmentally sustainable. A team of NYU Abu Dhabi (NYUAD) researchers has developed a new kind of self-cleaning, hybrid membrane that provides a solution that overcomes significant challenges that have, until now, limited desalination technologies. The most energy-efficient desalination technologies are based on membrane desalination. However, the membranes used for desalination are prone to fouling, the accumulation of scale that results in decreased membrane performance, shorter…
Paper published in ‘Nature Communications’ details how applying magnetic forces to individual ‘microroller’ particles spurs collective motion—with counterintuitive results. Engineering researchers at Lehigh University have discovered that sand can actually flow uphill. The team’s findings were published today in the journal Nature Communications. A corresponding video shows what happens when torque and an attractive force is applied to each grain—the grains flow uphill, up walls, and up and down stairs. (Two clips, GIF1 and GIF2, also show the uphill granular flow.) “After using equations that describe the flow of granular…
Turning mixed plastic into useful chemicals. Almost 80% of plastic in the waste stream ends up in landfills or accumulates in the environment. Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have developed a technology that converts a conventionally unrecyclable mixture of plastic waste into useful chemicals, presenting a new strategy in the toolkit to combat global plastic waste. The technology, invented by ORNL’s Tomonori Saito and former postdoctoral researcher Md Arifuzzaman, uses an exceptionally efficient organocatalyst that allows selective deconstruction of various…
Hyperdiploidy is a genetic condition observed in cancer cells, where the cells contain more chromosomes than usual. The condition is particularly prevalent in childhood B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL), the most common form of pediatric cancer. To bring clarity to the field, researchers at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital worked to better define this type of ALL in the context of modern therapy to more accurately predict patient outcomes and guide treatment decisions. The findings were published today in the…
3D printing can produce highly complex shapes. But printing ceramic objects with the help of a laser is a more difficult challenge. Now researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have for the first time taken tomograms revealing what happens at microscopic level during this fabrication process. The findings will help improve this very promising technology. 3D printing is already being used to produce many objects. Additive manufacturing is increasingly being used in the aerospace and automotive industry, for example,…
The Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT will be presenting the latest research results in additive manufacturing technology at the Fraunhofer joint stand at formnext in Frankfurt am Main from November 7 to 10, 2023. Among other things, the Aachen engineers will be showing additively manufactured sensors that are printed directly onto components and that can provide real-time data for predictive maintenance. A new process makes it possible to seamlessly insert sensors into a component during the additive manufacturing process…
Researchers led by Yuko Motizuki from the Astro-Glaciology Laboratory at the RIKEN Nishina Center in Japan have developed a new laser-based sampling system for studying the composition of ice cores taken from glaciers. The new system has a 3-mm depth-resolution—about 3 times smaller than what is currently available—meaning that it can detect temperature variations that occurred over much smaller periods of time in the past. The new laser melting sampler, or LMS, is expected to help reconstruct continuous annual temperature…
Storing renewable energy as hydrogen could soon become much easier thanks to a new catalyst based on single atoms of platinum. The new catalyst, designed by researchers at City University Hong Kong (CityU) and tested by colleagues at Imperial College London, could be cheaply scaled up for mass use. Co-author Professor Anthony Kucernak, from the Department of Chemistry at Imperial, said: “The UK Hydrogen Strategy sets out an ambition to reach 10GW of low-carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030. To…
Our brain cell components were forming in shallow seas around 800 million years ago. A study in the journal Cell sheds new light on the evolution of neurons, focusing on the placozoans, a millimetre-sized marine animal. Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona find evidence that specialized secretory cells found in these unique and ancient creatures may have given rise to neurons in more complex animals. Placozoans are tiny animals, around the size of a large grain of…
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