Joint expertise from industry and research: Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a groundbreaking imaging technique that generates high-resolution cross-sectional images of transparent and semitransparent media. It is used both in industrial metrology, for example in quality assurance, and in biomedical diagnostics, such as ophthalmology or tissue diagnostics. Companies and research institutes focusing on industrial metrology and medical technology also expect a wide range of other fields of application. They cooperate in the VDI/VDE – Society for Measurement and Automatic Control…
Breakthroughs in ancient genome reconstruction and biotechnology are now revealing the rich molecular secrets of Paleolithic microorganisms. In a new study published in Science, a transdisciplinary team of researchers led by the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, and Harvard University reconstructed bacterial genomes of previously unknown bacteria dating to the Pleistocene. Using their genetic blueprints, they built a biotechnology platform to revive the ancient bacteria’s natural products. Microbes are…
Manual can help debug and design nanomagnet devices. An international team of researchers at the University of California, Riverside, and the Institute of Magnetism in Kyiv, Ukraine, has developed a comprehensive manual for engineering spin dynamics in nanomagnets – an important step toward advancing spintronic and quantum-information technologies. Despite their small size, nanomagnets — found in most spintronic applications — reveal rich dynamics of spin excitations, or “magnons,” the quantum-mechanical units of spin fluctuations. Due to its nanoscale confinement, a…
People are able to perceive their surroundings in three dimensions and can quickly spot potential danger in everyday situations. Drones have to learn this. Prof. Stefan Leutenegger refers to the intelligence needed for this task as ‘spatial artificial intelligence’, or spatial AI. This new approach will be used by cartographers mapping forests, in ship inspections and when building walls. To accomplish spatial AI, a drone must be able to establish its orientation in space and to generate a map of…
“Wind.EnergyAutonomous Schools in the Metropolitan Region Northwest ” – this is the name of a new research project led by Dr. Yilmaz Uygun, Professor at Constructor University in Bremen. The project runs in collaboration with the County of Friesland (Germany) and ist funded by the Metropolitan Region Northwest. The aim is to further develop and validate a proprietary vertical-axis wind turbine that will be produced by using the world’s largest industrial delta-type 3D printer. The turbines are intended to serve…
Scientists from four research institutes in the Science City Hamburg Bahrenfeld have joined forces to develop a ground-breaking experimental setup. Their new Spitrobot greatly simplifies observing changes in proteins as they carry out their functions. This makes time-resolved crystallography accessible for non-specialist research groups, as samples can now be prepared in standard labs and processed by automated established high-throughput methods elsewhere. The device will accelerate fundamental research in health and disease. The team has now presented the concept behind the…
Reversible logic gates designed for large scale integer factorization. Large numbers can only be factorized with a great deal of computational effort. Physicists at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, led by Wolfgang Lechner are now providing a blueprint for a new type of quantum computer to solve the factorization problem, which is a cornerstone of modern cryptography. Today’s computers are based on microprocessors that execute so-called gates. A gate can, for example, be an AND operation, i.e. an operation that…
In multiple sclerosis (MS), the immune system mistakenly attacks the brain and spinal cord, causing the complete loss of myelin. “Synthesized by specialized cells, oligodendrocytes, myelin protects nerve fibers, guarantees the good conduction of nerve impulses, and provides nutrients to the axons, Bernard Zalc recalls. This protective sheath envelops nerve fibers and is essential for their proper functioning. Its disappearance, called demyelination, causes sensory and motor symptoms: weakness of the lower or upper limbs, loss of balance, sensitivity, and vision…
Researchers in Germany and the U.S.A. have shown for the first time that terahertz (THz) light pulses can stabilize ferromagnetism in a crystal at temperatures more than three times its usual transition temperature. As the team reports in Nature, using pulses just hundreds of femtoseconds long (a millionth of a billionth of a second), a ferromagnetic state was induced at high temperature in the rare-earth titanate YTiO₃ which persisted for many nanoseconds after the light exposure. Below the equilibrium transition…
They are called UFOs, but aliens have nothing to do with them. They are the ultra-fast outflows: space winds that emerge from the surroundings of supermassive black holes and blow at speeds close to that of light. An international research team has explored this still little-understood phenomenon, hunting for these gas emissions, which are crucial to understanding the mechanisms regulating the behaviour of supermassive black holes in their active phase. The research project is called SUBWAYS (SUper massive Black hole Winds in the x-rAYS) and the first…
GOES-U, the fourth and final satellite in NOAA’s GOES-R Series, recently completed a successful test deployment of its solar array to ensure it will function properly in space. This critical test verified that the satellite’s large, five-panel solar array — which is folded up when the satellite is launched — will properly deploy when GOES-U reaches geostationary orbit. During this test, engineers unfurled the five panels on rails that simulated the zero-gravity environment of space. Each solar panel is approximately 13…
After decades of effort, scientists have finally seen the process by which nature creates the oxygen we breathe using SLAC’s X-ray laser. Photosynthesis plays a crucial role in shaping and sustaining life on Earth, yet many aspects of the process remain a mystery. One such mystery is how Photosystem II, a protein complex in plants, algae and cyanobacteria, harvests energy from sunlight and uses it to split water, producing the oxygen we breathe. Now researchers from the Department of Energy’s…
High-speed method uses less computational power, could be useful for autonomous driving. Researchers have developed a new high-speed way to detect the location, size and category of multiple objects without acquiring images or requiring complex scene reconstruction. Because the new approach greatly decreases the computing power necessary for object detection, it could be useful for identifying hazards while driving. “Our technique is based on a single-pixel detector, which enables efficient and robust multi-object detection directly from a small number of…
Licensed AMCM technology prints finished part in minutes, hastens pace for carbon-free mobility. An Oak Ridge National Laboratory-developed advanced manufacturing technology, AMCM, was recently licensed by Orbital Composites and enables the rapid production of composite-based components, which could accelerate the decarbonization of vehicles, airplanes and drones. Additive manufacturing compression molding, or AMCM, uses short-fiber-filled polymer and continuous fiber to print directly onto a mold with precise orientation to make parts such as propeller blades or battery boxes. Compression molding then turns the…
More effectively measuring tissue stiffness could help treat cancer, sports injuries and more. A team of engineers at the University of California San Diego has developed a stretchable ultrasonic array capable of serial, non-invasive, three-dimensional imaging of tissues as deep as four centimeters below the surface of human skin, at a spatial resolution of 0.5 millimeters. This new method provides a non-invasive, longer-term alternative to current methods, with improved penetration depth. The research emerges from the lab of Sheng Xu, a…
Health monitoring device from UH researchers. Link to video and sound (details below): https://go.hawaii.edu/qRX Sweat is more than just a sign of a good workout. It holds vital information about our health, providing clues to dehydration, fatigue, blood sugar levels and even serious conditions such as cystic fibrosis, diabetes and heart failure. Researchers at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa College of Engineering have taken a giant leap forward in sweat analysis with an innovative 3D-printed wearable sweat sensor called the “sweatainer.” Harnessing the power…
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