AI system is “trained” to read conventional retinal scans for signs of heart disease The system – which has 70% to 80% accuracy – predicts if patients are at risk of a heart attack over the next year Scientists have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can analyse eye scans taken during a routine visit to an optician or eye clinic and identify patients at a high risk of a heart attack. Doctors have recognised that changes to the…
New findings also point to coastal construction as potential way of further spreading coral disease. A new study found that seafloor sediments have the potential to transmit a deadly pathogen to local corals and hypothesizes that sediments have played a role in the persistence of a devastating coral disease outbreak throughout Florida and the Caribbean. These new findings from the University of Miami (UM) Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science-led research team could help mitigate the spread of the…
Reimagining the United States power grid could save consumers $50 billion a year. A novel plan that offers partnership in keeping the United States electric grid stable and reliable could be a win-win for consumers and utility operators. The largest ever simulation of its kind, modeled on the Texas power grid, concluded that consumers stand to save about 15 percent on their annual electric bill by partnering with utilities. In this system, consumers would coordinate with their electric utility operator…
Protected areas are among the most effective tools for preserving biodiversity. However, new protected areas are often created without considering existing ones. This can lead to an overrepresentation of the biophysical characteristics, such as temperature or topography, that define a certain area. A research group at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now assessed a global analysis of the scope of protection of various biophysical conditions. Protected areas are important for maintaining populations of various species. They ensure that…
Our brain consists of a right and a left hemisphere. Both hemispheres have different tasks and functions in perceiving and learning. In a recent study with Mongolian gerbils, researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology (LIN) Magdeburg, the German Primate Center (DPZ) in Göttingen and Otto von Guericke University (OVGU) Magdeburg have shown how both hemispheres of the brain work together when learning acoustic stimuli. The findings, published in the Journal of Neuroscience, could lead to new therapeutic options for…
Team of biologists from the University of Magdeburg identifies causes of vascular damage in severe cases of COVID-19. Scientists from the Institute of Biology at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg are to research the causes and molecular mechanisms of severe cases of COVID-19 over the next three years. In a research project that has recently been awarded 500,000 euros by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the scientists from the Department of Systems Biology at the University of Magdeburg alongside colleagues…
ISTA professor Hausel publishes new theory about the fundamental mathematics underlying particle physics. Symmetries are fundamental to physics. Searching and analyzing them helped physicists to construct a theory of a whole zoo of particles making up our universe. Mathematicians however are focused on the abstract structures behind symmetries. Tamás Hausel, professor at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), together with Oxford scholar Nigel Hitchin, developed an elaborated theory around so-called Higgs bundles that sheds new light on problems…
In a large-scale fundraising campaign, popular YouTubers like Mister Beast and Mark Rober are currently trying to rid the oceans of almost 14,000 tonnes of plastic waste. That’s about 0.15 per cent of the amount that ends up in the oceans every year. But it’s not just our waters that are full of plastic. A new study shows that the spread of nanoplastic through the air is a more widespread problem than previously thought. In a new study, Empa researcher…
Project consortium presents powerful IT infrastructure for innovative dual-arm AUV. Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), operated and controlled by artificial intelligence (AI) methods, inspect, maintain, and repair offshore installations underwater. A consortium led by the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) developed a holistic solution in the Mare-IT project to make this vision a reality: an innovative, two-armed AUV for complex inspection and maintenance tasks, embedded in a powerful IT infrastructure that enables both intuitive control and monitoring of the…
Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a new test for COVID-19 that combines the speed of over-the-counter antigen tests with the accuracy of PCR tests that are processed in medical labs and hospitals. The Harmony COVID-19 test is a diagnostic test that, like PCR tests for COVID-19, detects genetic material from the SARS-CoV-2 virus. But whereas conventional PCR tests can take several hours, the Harmony kit can provide results in less than 20 minutes for some samples and…
24 Jan 2022, at 2 p.m. EST, Webb fired its onboard thrusters for nearly five minutes (297 seconds) to complete the final postlaunch course correction to Webb’s trajectory. This mid-course correction burn inserted Webb toward its final orbit around the second Sun-Earth Lagrange point, or L2, nearly 1 million miles away from the Earth. The final mid-course burn added only about 3.6 miles per hour (1.6 meters per second) – a mere walking pace – to Webb’s speed, which was all that…
Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and the University of Basel have developed a rapid test for Covid-19. Its novel functional principle promises reliable and quantifiable results concerning a patient’s Covid-19 disease and its course – as well as evidence concerning other diseases and Covid variants that may be present. Before it can go into widespread use, however, it still must undergo further testing and optimisation. The researchers report on their development in the journal ACS Applied Nanomaterials. A…
Smoke from wildfires could increase ozone depletion in the upper layers of the atmosphere and thus further enlarge the ozone hole over the Arctic. This was recognized according to data from the international MOSAiC expedition, which studied the region around the North Pole in 2019/20. A connection between unusually high temperatures, severe droughts and increasing wildfires with a lot of smoke in the lower stratosphere and strong ozone depletion over the polar regions is likely. If this assumption is confirmed,…
EucoLight, the European Association of collection and recycling organisations for Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) lamps and lighting, has carried out successfully a study with Fraunhofer IZM on the technical feasibility for the automatic identification of lamp types in the collected lamps waste stream for recycling. The study focused on the technology assessment for the separation of collected End-of-Life (EoL) lamps, more specifically the technical possibilities for separating conventional gas discharge lamps (GDLs) from conventional light-emitting diode (LED) lamps….
TU Graz develops simulation tools for transponder occupancy. The simulation tool developed at the Institute of Microwave and Photonic Engineering shows the site-specific transponder occupancy caused by radar interrogations in Austrian or pan-European airspace. Transponders are part of the mandatory equipment of civil aircraft: they are electronic devices that respond to radar interrogations and thus help air traffic control and air collision avoidance systems of other aircraft in the sky to determine the exact position of the aircraft. The time…
A team of researchers led by Harvard and Broad Institute scientists has developed a new drug delivery system using engineered DNA-free virus-like particles (eVLPs) to package and deliver therapeutic levels of gene-editing proteins to animal models of disease. The team utilized eVLPs to edit a gene in mice that is associated with high cholesterol levels and to partially restore vision in mice with a point mutation that causes genetic blindness. Because eVLPs enable safer in vivo delivery of gene-editing agents…
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