Increasing demands on sheet metal forming processes require ever more extensive experimental characterizations of the original base materials. At the same time, the characterization tests used are constantly facing new challenges due to the use of thinner sheets of metal. The Virtual Lab of the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWM in Freiburg provides a remedy for this: It determines the necessary characteristic values for the design of sheet metal forming processes via simulation. The Fraunhofer IWM is cooperating…
MHH research team analyses genetic and epigenetic regulators. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to severe disease in some people, while others do not get ill or only experience mild disease. But why is this the case? Unfortunately, we do not know exactly. We do know that an overactive innate immune system is causing severe COVID-19 disease, but it is unclear how this is regulated. A team led by Professor Dr. Yang Li from Hannover Medical School (MHH) has come a step…
HZDR team creates single-photon emitters exactly where they are needed. In the very near future, quantum computers are expected to revolutionize the way we compute, with new approaches to database searches, AI systems, simulations and more. But to achieve such novel quantum technology applications, photonic integrated circuits which can effectively control photonic quantum states – the so-called qubits – are needed. Physicists from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, TU Dresden and Leibniz-Institut für Kristallzüchtung have made a breakthrough in this effort: for…
By illuminating a sample surface with short laser beam pulses, it is possible to film sequences of various chemical and physical reactions. A research team that included researchers from the University of Gothenburg has now developed the world’s fastest single-shot laser camera, which is at least a thousand times faster than today’s most modern equipment for combustion diagnostics. The discovery has enormous significance for studying the lightning-fast combustion of hydrocarbons. What happens to a material that is burned in different…
… developed for gastrointestinal inflammation therapy. Micro/nanorobots with self-propelling and -navigating capabilities have attracted extensive attention in drug delivery and therapy owing to their controllable locomotion in hard-to-reach body tissues. However, developing self-adaptive micro/nanorobots that can adjust their driving mechanisms across multiple biological barriers to reach distant lesions is still a challenge. Recently, a research team led by Prof. CAI Lintao from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has developed a twin-bioengine yeast micro/nanorobot…
… that could revolutionize health monitoring. Breakthrough in green technology represents a new, biological paradigm in electrical engineering. Scientists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently announced the invention of a nanowire, 10,000 times thinner than a human hair, which can be cheaply grown by common bacteria and can be tuned to “smell” a vast array of chemical tracers—including those given off by people afflicted with different medical conditions, such as asthma and kidney disease. Thousands of these specially tuned…
Data captured from seismic waves caused by earthquakes has shed new light on the deepest parts of Earth’s inner core, according to seismologists from The Australian National University (ANU). By measuring the different speeds at which these waves penetrate and pass through the Earth’s inner core, the researchers believe they’ve documented evidence of a distinct layer inside Earth known as the innermost inner core — a solid “metallic ball” that sits within the centre of the inner core. Not long…
School of Veterinary Medicine researchers teamed with scientists at the University of Texas at San Antonio to transform blood cells to regain a flexible fate, growing into a precursor of sperm cells. Different cell types—say, heart, liver, blood, and sperm cells—possess characteristics that help them carry out their unique jobs in the body. In general, those characteristics are hard-wired. Without intervention, a heart cell won’t spontaneously transform into a liver cell. Yet researchers from the University of Pennsylvania School of…
– saving costs and reducing waste. The system doesn’t require batteries, ensuring sustainable connectivity. Imagine you can open your fridge, open an app on your phone and immediately know which items are expiring within a few days. This is one of the applications that a new technology developed by engineers at the University of California San Diego would enable. The technology combines a chip integrated into product packaging and a software update on your phone. The phone becomes capable of…
Dust is a common fact of life, and it’s more than just a daily nuisance – it can get into machinery and equipment, causing loss of efficiency or breakdowns. Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin partnered with North Carolina-based company Smart Material Solutions Inc. to develop a new method to keep dust from sticking to surfaces. The result is the ability to make many types of materials dust resistant, from spacecraft to solar panels to household windows. The…
Power plasma with gigajoule energy turnover generated for eight minutes. After successful recommissioning in autumn 2022, the Greifswald nuclear fusion experiment has surpassed an important target. In 2023, an energy turnover of 1 gigajoule was targeted. Now the researchers have even achieved 1.3 gigajoules and a new record for discharge time on Wendelstein 7-X: the hot plasma could be maintained for eight minutes. During the three-year completion work that ended last summer, Wendelstein 7-X was primarily equipped with water cooling…
Fraunhofer technology prepares quantum computing for industrial use. Quantum computers are highly energy-efficient and extremely powerful supercomputers. But for these machines to realize their full potential in new applications like artificial intelligence or machine learning, researchers are hard at work at perfecting the underlying electronics to process their calculations. A team at Fraunhofer IZM are working on superconducting connections that measure a mere ten micrometers in thickness, moving the industry a substantial step closer to a future of commercially viable…
A novel membrane using a combination of a water filteration membrane and conductive polymer, Water quality improvement and continuous electricity generation using a simple operation method. The purification of various water resources, such as rain, seawater, groundwater, river water, sewage, and wastewater, into potable or usable water is a high-energy process. So, what if electricity could be generated during the water purification process? In the spotlight, a domestic research team has developed a multifunctional membrane that can simultaneously generate electricity…
A special carbon molecule can function as multiple high-speed switches at once. For the first time, an international team of researchers, including those from the University of Tokyo’s Institute for Solid State Physics, has demonstrated a switch, analogous to a transistor, made from a single molecule called fullerene. By using a carefully tuned laser pulse, the researchers are able to use fullerene to switch the path of an incoming electron in a predictable way. This switching process can be three…
Reactive fabrics respond to changes in temperature. New textiles developed at Aalto University change shape when they heat up, giving designers a wide range of new options. In addition to offering adjustable aesthetics, responsive smart fabrics could also help monitor people’s health, improve thermal insulation, and provide new tools for managing room acoustics and interior design. The new fabrics weave together old technology and a new approach. Liquid crystalline elastomers (LCEs) were developed in the 1980s. LCEs are a smart…
An effective, stable solid-state electrochemical transistor has been developed, heralding a new era in thermal management technology. In modern electronics, a large amount of heat is produced as waste during usage—this is why devices such as laptops and mobile phones become warm during use, and require cooling solutions. In the last decade, the concept of managing this heat using electricity has been tested, leading to the development of electrochemical thermal transistors—devices that can be used to control heat flow with…
Feedback
