PALM-4U: urban planning for climate change. As climate change progresses, extreme weather events such as prolonged hot spells, storms and heavy rain are occurring ever more frequently, and cities are feeling the strain. The new urban climate model PALM-4U will allow municipal staff and city planners to simulate the effects of their planned construction projects on the urban climate, so that they can gauge the consequences of extreme weather events before they happen, improve quality of life in urban areas…
Dynamic risk management. An important challenge for the acceptance of autonomous driving is to ensure the safety of road users without risking a loss of speed. A team of scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering IESE, the Fraunhofer Institute for Cognitive Systems IKS, and the University of York has now developed a dynamic risk management system as part of a ref-erence safety architecture. This provides a vehicle with a better understanding of current driving hazards. AI capabilities…
A further step in unravelling materials’ properties down to the atomic scale. Scientists of the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung develop a workflow and code to characterize defects in steels and publish their results in the journal Nature Communications. To develop advanced materials, a deep understanding of their underlying microstructure and chemistry is necessary. Knowing how defects influence the interplay between microstructure and chemical composition is crucial, as they are the entry gate for material’s failure due to corrosion or crack initiation….
Around 150 million doctor’s letters are written every year in Germany. This takes precious time which could be used elsewhere. The “doctor’s letter generator”, which is currently being developed by scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS, could provide a solution for creating the document in a fraction of the time. The application is based on a combination of algorithms and artificial intelligence that is applied for Natural Language Processing (NLP). The new white paper…
Kick-off meeting for the “ScaleH2” project. Shipping the sunshine – How can green hydrogen be transported cost-efficiently from Australia to Germany? This question is being addressed by the Fraunhofer IST in collaboration with German and Australian project partners. The consortium plans to go beyond feasibility studies and to transport green hydrogen from Australia to Germany by means of validated developments in electrolysis technology and model-based evaluations of the hydrogen value chain. The objective of the “ScaleH2” project within the BMBF’s…
New charging technology to make e-cars suitable for mass use as mobile power storage units. Bidirectional charging enables electric vehicles to be both charged and discharged as needed. E-cars can thus serve as mobile electricity storage units and contribute to increasing the flexibility of the energy system. To ensure that bidirectional charging can be used on a broad scale, a consortium led by Fraunhofer IAF is researching innovative charging technologies: In the recently launched project GaN4EmoBiL, the partners are developing…
An international team finds new single-crystalline oxide thin films with fast and dramatic changes in electrical properties via Li-ion intercalation through engineered ionic transport channels. An international research team from the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Halle (Saale), Germany, the University of Cambridge, UK and the University of Pennsylvania, USA reported the first realization of single-crystalline T-Nb2O5 thin films having two-dimensional (2D) vertical ionic transport channels, which results in a fast and colossal insulator-metal transition via Li ion intercalation…
New method improves proton acceleration with high power laser. Bringing protons up to speed with strong laser pulses – this still young concept promises many advantages over conventional accelerators. For instance, it seems possible to build much more compact facilities. Prototypes to date, however, in which laser pulses are fired at ultra-thin metal foils, show weaknesses – especially in the frequency with which they can accelerate protons. At the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), an international working group has tested a new…
Researchers observe an effect in the quantum world that does not exist in the macrocosm. Many substances change their properties when they are cooled below a certain critical temperature. Such a phase transition occurs, for example, when water freezes. However, in certain metals there are phase transitions that do not exist in the macrocosm. They arise because of the special laws of quantum mechanics that apply in the realm of nature’s smallest building blocks. It is thought that the concept…
Made of cement, carbon black, and water, the device could provide cheap and scalable energy storage for renewable energy sources. Two of humanity’s most ubiquitous historical materials, cement and carbon black (which resembles very fine charcoal), may form the basis for a novel, low-cost energy storage system, according to a new study. The technology could facilitate the use of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and tidal power by allowing energy networks to remain stable despite fluctuations in renewable…
A research team led by Prof. Yossi Paltiel at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with groups from HUJI, Weizmann and IST Austria new study reveals the influence of nuclear spin on biological processes. This discovery challenges long-held assumptions and opens up exciting possibilities for advancements in biotechnology and quantum biology. Scientists have long believed that nuclear spin had no impact on biological processes. However, recent research has shown that certain isotopes behave differently due to their nuclear spin. The team…
Advancements in photonic memory for faster optical computing. In a breakthrough for optical computing, researchers developed a nanosecond-scale volatile modulation scheme integrating a phase-change material. Technological advancements like autonomous driving and computer vision are driving a surge in demand for computational power. Optical computing, with its high throughput, energy efficiency, and low latency, has garnered considerable attention from academia and industry. However, current optical computing chips face limitations in power consumption and size, which hinders the scalability of optical computing…
Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Sustainable Research Science (CSRS) and the University of Toronto have discovered a new way to attack fungal infections. The key is to block fungi from being able to make fatty acids, the major component of fats. Resistance to anti-fungal drugs is increasing and this new approach will be particularly useful because it works in a new way and affects a broad range of fungal species. The study was published in the scientific journal Cell…
Researchers from TU Darmstadt and ESA present a new method. More and more artificial objects are orbiting the Earth. Apart from satellites essential for communication, research, or navigation, most others are unwelcome and pose an operational risk because they increase the probability of collisions. Preventing these requires efficient algorithms to identify objects that are getting dangerously close to each other, researchers at TU Darmstadt and the European Space Agency (ESA) now present two new approaches. In 1957, the first satellite…
Quantum key successfully distributed between two points with combination of free-space and fiber links. Researchers from Jena, Berlin, Erlangen-Nuremberg and Wessling have successfully distributed quantum keys between two points using a combination of free-space and fiber links under everyday conditions. On a heterogeneous test bed in Jena, they achieved key rates in the kilobit range per second in daylight. The experiment was implemented as part of the QuNET initiative, a pilot project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education…
Topology plays an enormous role in modern condensed matter physics and beyond. It describes how solid materials can combine two very different and somewhat contradictory properties – for example, topological insulators are materials whose bulk acts as an insulator, but whose surfaces and edges can conduct electricity nonetheless. In the last few decades, the concept of topology has changed the way scientists think of electronic structure and material properties altogether. Moreover, it has paved the way towards technological applications that…
Feedback
