Large collaboration at ISTA yields an unprecedented “live” view into the brain’s complexity. In a new paper published today in the journal Nature Methods, an interdisciplinary team of scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) has come together to present a new way to observe the brain’s structure and dynamics – in a high resolution and without damaging the tissue. Brain tissue is one of the most intricate specimens that scientists have arguably ever dealt with. Packed…
Nitric oxide (NO) is a central molecule in the global cycling of nitrogen, and also toxic. Little is known about if and how microbes can use NO as a substrate for growth. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, have now managed to grow a microbial community dominated by two, so-far unknown species on NO for more than four years (and counting) and study their metabolism in great detail. Their research, now published in in…
For many, hydrogen is not only number 1 in the periodic table, but also as the green energy source of the future. To attain this top position, however, energy-efficient and powerful technology is needed to produce and use green hydrogen. Lasers are playing an important role in this, as current activities of the Fraunhofer ILT prove. They want to get serious about green hydrogen: Indeed, the term hydrogen appears 28 times in the German coalition agreement between the SPD, Bündnis…
How polarization patterns enable new technology. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers have developed a novel method for underwater geolocalization using deep neural networks that have been trained on 10 million polarization-sensitive images collected from locations around the world. This new study, led by electrical and computer engineering professor Viktor Gruev, along with computer science professor David Forsyth, enables underwater geolocalization using only optical data while providing a tool for tethered-free underwater navigation. These findings were recently published in the journal eLight. “We…
A new technique uses remote images to gauge the strength of ancient and active rivers beyond Earth. Rivers have flowed on two other worlds in the solar system besides Earth: Mars, where dry tracks and craters are all that’s left of ancient rivers and lakes, and Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, where rivers of liquid methane still flow today. A new technique developed by MIT geologists allows scientists to see how intensely rivers used to flow on Mars, and how they…
Imagine a wearable patch that tracks your vital signs through changes in the colour display, or shipping labels that light up to indicate changes in temperature or sterility of food items. These are among the potential uses for a new flexible display created by UBC researchers and announced recently in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. “This device is capable of fast, realtime and reversible colour change,” says researcher Claire Preston, who developed the device as part of her master’s in…
Sugar additive plays a surprise role, boosting flow battery capacity and longevity for this grid energy resilience design. A common food and medicine additive has shown it can boost the capacity and longevity of a next-generation flow battery design in a record-setting experiment. A research team from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory reports that the flow battery, a design optimized for electrical grid energy storage, maintained its capacity to store and release energy for more than a…
KIMM develops the world’s first 3D bioprinting technology that enhances the function of NK immune cells. New technology expected to improve effectiveness of cancer treatment. A three-dimensional (3D) bioprinting technology capable of eliminating cancer cells using the function of immune cells has been developed for the first time in the world. Through joint research with the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (President Sang Jin Park, hereinafter referred to as KIMM), the Korea Research Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology (President Jang Seong…
Seasonal temperature fluctuations only have an indirect influence on the bacterial community in wastewater / study published in ‘Water Research’. The community of microbial predators influences the composition of the bacterial community in wastewater. This explains seasonal variations in the microbial community that affect the efficiency of water treatment. This is the result of a study conducted by Nils Heck and PD Dr Kenneth Dumack from the University of Cologne’s Institute of Zoology. The study has been published under the…
University of Virginia School of Medicine researchers have discovered how the cells that let us hear can repair themselves after being damaged. That important insight could benefit efforts to develop new and better ways to treat and prevent hearing loss. “Hair cells” found in the inner ear, are important both for our ability to hear and our sense of balance. They are known as hair cells because the cells are covered in hair-like structures that serve as mechanical antennas for…
Scientists have unveiled a new mechanism that plants use to sense temperature. This finding could lead to solutions to counteract some of the deleterious changes in plant growth, flowering and seed production due to climate change. The results are published today in PNAS. The rise of temperatures worldwide due to climate change is having detrimental consequences for plants. They tend to flower earlier than before and rush through the reproductive process, which translates into less fruits and less seeds and…
Tectonic changes alter sea levels that can create breeding grounds for life. Movement in the Earth’s tectonic plates indirectly triggers bursts of biodiversity in 36‑million-year cycles by forcing sea levels to rise and fall, new research has shown. Researchers including geoscientists at the University of Sydney believe these geologically driven cycles of sea level changes have a significant impact on the diversity of marine species, going back at least 250 million years. As water levels rise and fall, different habitats…
The quantum nature of interactions between elementary particles allows drawing non-trivial conclusions even from processes as simple as elastic scattering. The ATLAS experiment at the LHC accelerator reports the measurement of fundamental properties of strong interactions between protons at ultra-high energies. The physics of billiard ball collisions is taught from early school years. In a good approximation, these collisions are elastic, where both momentum and energy are conserved. The scattering angle depends on how central the collision was (this is…
…and unlocks the future of electrochemical devices. A new study by researchers at the University of Cambridge reveals a surprising discovery that could transform the future of electrochemical devices. The findings offer new opportunities for the development of advanced materials and improved performance in fields such as energy storage, brain-like computing, and bioelectronics. Electrochemical devices rely on the movement of charged particles, both ions and electrons, to function properly. However, understanding how these charged particles move together has presented a…
…in children with mitochondrial disorders. One of the first human studies on how mitochondrial function impacts immune cells to guide future treatments. In a new study, National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers found that altered B cell function in children with mitochondrial disorders led to a weaker and less diverse antibody response to viral infections. The study, published in Frontiers in Immunology was led by researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), who analyzed gene activity of immune cells in…
Frank Geurts named co-spokesperson of the STAR collaboration. Rice University physicist Frank Geurts is one of two scientists elected to lead the world’s longest-running nuclear physics experiment at a particle collider facility, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Together with Brookhaven Lab physicist Lijuan Ruan, Geurts will serve a three-year term as co-spokesperson for the STAR collaboration. This group of over 740 scientists from 74 institutions across 15 countries uses a 1,200-ton, building-sized instrument ⎯ the Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC, or…
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