Hydrothermal vents have been identified as a previously undiscovered source of dissolved black carbon in the oceans, furthering the understanding of the role of oceans as a carbon sink. The ocean is one of the largest dynamic carbon sinks in the world, and is susceptible to increased carbon emissions from human activities. There are even proposals to use the ocean to sequester carbon in an effort to reduce the carbon emissions. However, much of the processes by which the ocean…
Bound for the landfill, agricultural waste contains carbon sources that can be used to produce high-value compounds, such as p-coumaric acid, which is used in manufacturing pharmaceuticals. Electrodeionization, a separation method that uses ion-exchange membranes, is one way to capture the acids and other useful components. However, to capture large quantities at scale, improvements to the method must be made. A Penn State-led research team has invented a new class of ion-exchange membrane wafer assemblies that significantly improves electrodeionizaton’s ability…
… to enable future technology. Researchers create compliant mechanism-enabled, reconfigurable antenna. Reconfigurable antennas — those that can tune properties like frequency or radiation beams in real time, from afar — are integral to future communication network systems, like 6G. But many current reconfigurable antenna designs can fall short: they dysfunction in high or low temperatures, have power limitations or require regular servicing. To address these limitations, electrical engineers in the Penn State College of Engineering combined electromagnets with a compliant…
Thanks to artificial intelligence: Engineering novel molecules and materials with specific properties can yield significant advances for industrial processes, drug discovery and optoelectronics. However, the search for novel molecules and materials is comparable to looking for a needle in a haystack, since the number of molecules in chemical space is of the unimaginable order of 10 to the power of 60. That is significantly more molecules than there are stars in the known universe. Scientists at Leipzig University and the…
A team of scientists from France and Austria has discovered a new abiotic pathway for the formation of peptide chains from amino acids – a key chemical step in the origin of life. The current study provides strong evidence that this crucial step for the emergence of life can indeed occur even in the very inhospitable conditions of space. The origin of life is one of the great questions of mankind. One of the prerequisites for the emergence of life…
Only one in 100,000 people suffer from a pheochromocytoma, a tumor of the adrenal gland. If the tumor has already metastasized, a radioactive compound can be used to detect malignant cells that have spread to other parts of the body, and to irradiate them from the inside. However, the preparation containing the beta emitter Lutetium-177 can only bind to the tumor if it has sufficient target molecules, which is not always the case. By administering two approved drugs prior to…
A newly developed system for gaseous fuels makes it possible to inject hydrogen directly into the combustion chamber. A special control system can increase torque by 20 percent. The system is particularly suitable for large engines such as those of heavy commercial vehicles, construction machinery or locomotives. Zero-emission hydrogen engines, like all internal combustion engines, require a mixture formation system, i.e. a system for metering the fuel, in this case hydrogen gas. The most promising approach is a low-pressure direct…
Heidelberg researchers investigate the earliest steps of ribosome development. Ribosomes are the nanomachines of the cell whose task is the correct synthesis of proteins. Researchers at the Heidelberg University Biochemistry Center are studying the emergence of these “protein factories”, also known as ribosomes. Led by Prof. Dr Ed Hurt, they have decoded the special role of a heretofore unexplored biogenesis factor in the maturation of precursor ribosomes. The research results, obtained in close cooperation with colleagues of Ludwig Maximilian University…
Sea ice extent in the Southern Ocean now the lowest since the beginning of satellite observation forty years ago. There is currently less sea ice in the Antarctic than at any time in the forty years since the beginning of satellite observation: in early February 2023, only 2.20 million square kilometres of the Southern Ocean were covered with sea ice. Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute and the University of Bremen analyse the situation for the Sea Ice Portal. January…
New images of Saturn from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope herald the start of the planet’s “spoke season” surrounding its equinox, when enigmatic features appear across its rings. The cause of the spokes, as well as their seasonal variability, has yet to be fully explained by planetary scientists. Like Earth, Saturn is tilted on its axis and therefore has four seasons, though because of Saturn’s much larger orbit, each season lasts approximately seven Earth years. Equinox occurs when the rings are tilted edge-on…
“Squeezing” noise over a broad frequency bandwidth in a quantum system could lead to faster and more accurate quantum measurements. A certain amount of noise is inherent in any quantum system. For instance, when researchers want to read information from a quantum computer, which harnesses quantum mechanical phenomena to solve certain problems too complex for classical computers, the same quantum mechanics also imparts a minimum level of unavoidable error that limits the accuracy of the measurements. Scientists can effectively get around…
A new method to grow single crystals and simultaneously control their growth orientation without melt processing has been discovered by Texas A&M University materials science and engineering doctoral graduate Dr. Hande Ozcan and Dr. Ibrahim Karaman, department head and Chevron Professor. The discovery of this new crystal growth and orientation control method in solid-state was recently published in the journal Acta Materialia. The research paper focuses on growing large single crystals and their ability to change their crystallographic orientation. Crystallographic…
Many industrial processes produce waste heat that is often released unused into the environment. With rising energy prices, waste heat recovery and storage are becoming increasingly attractive for companies as a substitute for fossil fuels. In the Fenopthes project, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection BMWK, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE worked with industrial partners to develop and optimize low-cost fillers for thermal storage systems. Fillers as additives in storage media…
A research team from Saarbrücken develops a novel lung cell line for testing drugs. Before new drugs can be tested in animal experiments and later in clinical trials, they must undergo a large number of laboratory tests. This involves the use of so-called cell lines, i.e. human or animal cells of a specific tissue that can be cultivated in the laboratory. A team led by Prof Claus-Michael Lehr of the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS) has now developed…
Sophisticated mix of methods offers improved structure analysis – Young scientist from the University of Regensburg awarded the Lieselotte Templeton Prize of the German Crystallographic Society. Sometimes scientists have to accept that a method they have used for years fails under certain conditions. Such a failure calls for a careful analysis of the shortcomings and their subsequent elimination. An international team from the University of Regensburg, the University of Durham and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has now done precisely this….
The new method enables faster and easier reading of RNA modifications which can be applied to clinical samples, the study of plant RNA, or understanding their role in diseases. A team of researchers from the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and the National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a software method that accurately predicts chemical modifications of RNA[1] molecules from genomic data. Their method, called m6Anet, was published in Nature Methods on 10 November 2022. Within the…
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