Building a better quantum bit: You are no doubt viewing this article on a digital device whose basic unit of information is the bit, either 0 or 1. Scientists worldwide are racing to develop a new kind of computer based on the use of quantum bits, or qubits, which can simultaneously be 0 and 1 and could one day solve complex problems beyond any classical supercomputers. A team led by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National…
… from Fraunhofer IPMS at the Sensor+Test trade fair in Nuremberg. The Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS is one of the leading research institutions for the development and testing of electronic, mechanical and optical components and devices and their integration into intelligent systems. The Fraunhofer IPMS will again be present at the SENSOR+TEST 2022 trade fair in Nuremberg. The institute will showcase some of its latest research and developments, such as a new technology for measuring gas mixtures based…
Mountains of sugar under seagrass meadows. Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology report that seagrasses release large amounts of sugar into their soils – worldwide more than 1 million tons of sucrose, enough for 32 billion cans of coke. Such high concentrations of sugar are surprising. Normally, microorganisms quickly consume any free sugars in their environment. The scientists found that seagrasses excrete phenolic compounds, and these deter most microorganisms from degrading the sucrose. This ensures that the…
Hydrogen is a key element in the energy transition. To ensure that hydrogen can become generally established as an energy source, it must be produced at market prices, in sufficient quantities and in a climate-neutral manner, and used with a high CO2 reduction rate. This requires affordable, robust hydrogen systems in the form of electrolyzers and fuel cells. With the intent of launching their serial production in the future, Reference-factory.H2 provides both a design for guidance and a modular system…
Sustainable, autonomous, intelligent, clean: From self-learning robots for use in fields and factories to state-of-the-art cleanroom technologies, methods for explaining machine learning and software tools for optimized production – Fraunhofer IPA will be showcasing a wealth of applications and services for automated production at automatica from 21 to 24 June 2022. After a break due to the coronavirus pandemic, the automatica trade fair will be returning this summer focusing on four clusters: “Digital Transformation”, “Artificial Intelligence”, “Humans and Machines” and…
EU funds research project to elucidate pathological cardiac remodelling caused by cancer drugs with around 2.5 million euros. Heart failure is one of the most common causes of death worldwide. The disease, known in medicine as cardiac insufficiency, affects about four million people in Germany. One of the main causes are remodelling processes in the heart muscle, which can be triggered for various reasons – for example, by the side effects of chemotherapy or an infection with the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2….
The remnants of a collapsed neutron star, called a pulsar, are magnetically charged and spinning anywhere from one rotation per second to hundreds of rotations per second. These celestial bodies, each 12 to 15 miles in diameter, generate light in the x-ray wavelength range. Researchers at The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a new way spacecraft can use signals from multiple pulsars to navigate in deep space. “We can use star trackers to determine the direction a…
A new approach to battery design could provide the key to low-cost, long-term energy storage, according to Imperial College London researchers. The team of engineers and chemists have created a polysulfide-air redox flow battery (PSA RFB) with not one, but two membranes. The dual membrane design overcomes the main problems with this type of large-scale battery, opening up its potential to store excess energy from, for example, renewable sources such as wind and solar. The research is published in Nature…
Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, recently received samples of the lunar surface that have been curated in a freezer at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston since Apollo 17 astronauts returned them to Earth in December 1972. This research is part of the Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis Program, or ANGSA, an effort to study the samples returned from the Apollo Program in advance of the upcoming Artemis missions to the Moon’s South Pole. However, the process of getting the samples from…
Adding a little oxygen to particle accelerator structures may make them more efficient and easier to build. The Science Scientists have developed a new theoretical model for preparing particle accelerator structures made of niobium metal. The model predicts how oxygen in the thin oxide layer on the surface of the niobium metal moves deeper into the metal. This happens as the oxide layer dissolves during gentle heating. This heating is part of how a particle accelerator is made and prepared…
Forming presses are widely used as key elements of industrial production processes. From automotive technology to refrigerators, almost every product we encounter contains formed parts. The purchasing costs of these machines can reach double-digit millions, and it takes a great deal of time to set up and adjust precisely as needed. Given such a high level of investment, buyers expect machinery of this kind to keep running efficiently for a long time without any loss in quality. At the Hannover…
When it comes to activities such as fighting forest fires, monitoring construction sites or providing multimedia services at sports and other mass events, a reliable, secure 5G campus network is often needed locally and temporarily to ensure maximum network coverage on the entire site. Thanks to the 5G+ Nomadic Node from the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS, this kind of non-public, temporary network can be set up at short notice in order, for instance, to connect emergency forces…
In poplars, two plant hormones boost each other in defense against pathogenic fungi. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology showed that higher levels of jasmonic acid were also detectable in poplars that had been modified to produce increased levels of salicylic acid or that had been treated with salicylic acid. Plants that had higher concentrations of both hormones were also more resistant to the rust fungus Melamspora larici-populina, with no negative effect on growth. Knowledge of the…
Combination of nucleic acid nanotechnology and cryo-EM gives unprecedented insights into the structures of large and small RNAs, advancing RNA biology and drug design. We live in a world made and run by RNA, the equally important sibling of the genetic molecule DNA. In fact, evolutionary biologists hypothesize that RNA existed and self-replicated even before the appearance of DNA and the proteins encoded by it. Fast forward to modern day humans: science has revealed that less than 3% of the human…
… provides a full 360° phase tunable metasurface. The new strategy displays an unprecedented upper limit of dynamic phase modulation with no significant variations in optical amplitude. An international team of researchers led by Professor Min Seok Jang of KAIST and Professor Victor W. Brar of the University of Wisconsin-Madison has demonstrated a widely applicable methodology enabling a full 360° active phase modulation for metasurfaces while maintaining significant levels of uniform light amplitude. This strategy can be fundamentally applied to…
The new technology could make at-home diagnosis of diseases faster and more affordable. A University of Minnesota Twin Cities research team has developed a new microfluidic chip for diagnosing diseases that uses a minimal number of components and can be powered wirelessly by a smartphone. The innovation opens the door for faster and more affordable at-home medical testing. The researchers’ paper is published in Nature Communications, a peer-reviewed, open access, scientific journal published by Nature Research. Researchers are also working…
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