Laser Alternatives to Mechanical Polishing and Deburring. The Aachen Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT has delivered impressive results at its “5th Conference on Laser Polishing LaP.” Once again, more than 70 experts from all over the world met in October 2022 to discuss the state of the art in laser-based alternatives for polishing components made of glass, metal and plastic, among other materials. The virtual English-language conference focused on laser deburring and laser polishing as well as on related…
Environmental DNA analysis of microbial communities can help us understand how a particular region’s water cycle works. Basel hydrogeologist Oliver Schilling recently used this method to examine the water cycle on Mount Fuji. His results have implications for other regions worldwide. Where does the water come from that provides drinking water to people in a particular region? What feeds these sources and how long does it take for groundwater to make its way back up to the surface? This hydrological…
Long-term measurements in the urban area of Innsbruck, Austria, show that the fraction of ozone near the surface tends to be overestimated in atmospheric models. Consequently, a fundamental assumption for air quality forecasting has to be reinterpreted for urban areas. Measurements by an international team led by atmospheric scientist Thomas Karl of the University of Innsbruck also show that direct nitrogen dioxide emissions are overestimated. The 40-meter-high monitoring tower of the Innsbruck Atmospheric Observatory near the city center of Innsbruck…
… leads to reduced warning signal conspicuousness. Monarch butterflies that sequester large amounts of plant toxins to defend against predators do so at the cost of increased oxidative damage, which is visible in the conspicuousness of their orange wings. An international research team including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena has discovered that the striking orange and black wings of monarch butterflies not only send the message to predators that these butterflies are highly toxic,…
At high elevations of the Greenland Ice Sheet, the years 2001 to 2011 were 1.5 °C warmer than in the 20th century and represent the warmest decade in the last thousand years. A temperature reconstruction from ice cores of the past 1,000 years reveals that today’s warming in central-north Greenland is surprisingly pronounced. The most recent decade surveyed in a study, the years 2001 to 2011, was the warmest in the past 1,000 years, and the region is now 1.5…
Biomedical sensing is one application of efficient, low-cost transistors. A transdisciplinary Northwestern University research team has developed a revolutionary transistor that is expected be ideal for lightweight, flexible, high-performance bioelectronics. The electrochemical transistor is compatible with blood and water and can amplify important signals, making it especially useful for biomedical sensing. Such a transistor could enable wearable devices for onsite signal processing, right at the biology-device interface. Potential applications include measuring heartbeat and levels of sodium and potassium in blood as well…
Researchers report a new, highly unusual, structured-light family of 3D topological solitons, the photonic hopfions, where the topological textures and topological numbers can be freely and independently tuned. We can frequently find in our daily lives a localized wave structure that maintains its shape upon propagation—picture a smoke ring flying in the air. Similar stable structures have been studied in various research fields and can be found in magnets, nuclear systems, and particle physics. In contrast to a ring of…
First, they walked. Then, they saw the light. Now, miniature biological robots have gained a new trick: remote control. The hybrid “eBiobots” are the first to combine soft materials, living muscle and microelectronics, said researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University and collaborating institutions. They described their centimeter-scale biological machines in the journal Science Robotics. Rashid Bashir Photo by L. Brian Stauffer “Integrating microelectronics allows the merger of the biological world and the electronics world, both with many…
New testing technologies to support global effort to reduce health risks to people, wildlife. New research from the University of Nevada, Reno, is expected to play an important role in the global battle against airborne mercury pollution, a serious health threat to people and wildlife alike. The researchers have verified that new technologies, including some developed at the University, measure airborne mercury pollution far more accurately than the older systems that have been in widespread use for decades. In fact,…
The water-filtering abilities of farmed kelp could help reduce marine pollution in coastal areas, according to a new University of Alaska Fairbanks-led study. The paper, published in the January issue of Aquaculture Journal, analyzed carbon and nitrogen levels at two mixed-species kelp farms in southcentral and southeast Alaska during the 2020-21 growing season. Tissue and seawater samples showed that seaweed species may have different capabilities to remove nutrients from their surroundings. “Some seaweeds are literally like sponges — they suck…
Illuminating study from Rice, UT, Stanford advances ‘green’ reducing agents. There are many ways to initiate chemical reactions in liquids, but placing free electrons directly into water, ammonia and other liquid solutions is especially attractive for green chemistry because solvated electrons are inherently clean, leaving behind no side products after they react. In theory, solvated electrons could be used to safely and sustainably break down carbon dioxide or chemical pollutants in contaminated water, but it has been impractical to find…
Biomedical engineers at the University of California, Davis, have created semi-living “cyborg cells.” Retaining the capabilities of living cells, but unable to replicate, the cyborg cells could have a wide range of applications, from producing therapeutic drugs to cleaning up pollution. The work was published Jan. 11 in Advanced Science. Synthetic biology aims to engineer cells that can carry out novel functions. There are essentially two approaches in use, said Cheemeng Tan, associate professor of biomedical engineering at UC Davis and…
Ecologists are increasingly using traces of genetic material left behind by living organisms left behind in the environment, called environmental DNA (eDNA), to catalogue and monitor biodiversity. Based on these DNA traces, researchers can determine which species are present in a certain area. Obtaining samples from water or soil is easy, but other habitats – such as the forest canopy – are difficult for researchers to access. As a result, many species remain untracked in poorly explored areas. Researchers at…
The Moody Lab develops a new method for on-chip generation of single photon. As buzz grows ever louder over the future of quantum, researchers everywhere are working overtime to discover how best to unlock the promise of super-positioned, entangled, tunneling or otherwise ready-for-primetime quantum particles, the ability of which to occur in two states at once could vastly expand power and efficiency in many applications. Developmentally, however, quantum devices today are “about where the computer was in the 1950s,” which…
Much recent research has focused on ‘topological’ materials – an intriguing type of solids which fall outside the standard classification into insulators and conductors. While their bulk is insulating, these phases are characterized by electrically conducting channels which appear at their edges. These resulting so-called topological phases are expected to play an important role in the future development of stable IT and large-scale quantum computing devices. Topological phases are not restricted to electronic systems. They can also occur in magnetic…
The search for nectar costs insects a lot of energy, so they have to be as efficient as possible. Colourful patterns on the petals can help with that. Be it mallow, foxglove or forget-me-not: many flowers bear colourful patterns, which are known as nectar guides in biology. They are assumed to show the pollinating insects the shortest way to the nectary. This guiding function could increase the efficiency of the insects in their search for food, and at the same…
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