Geothermal systems are becoming an increasingly important source of clean and, above all, baseload-capable energy. But the wells, which can be several thousand meters deep, are risky, and things can sometimes go wrong. Fraunhofer scientists have now developed an innovative tool that enables additional branches to be drilled off of the main well. This decreases the risk of dry boreholes and improves the output. Geothermal energy is an inexhaustible energy source. Hot water from reservoirs, fissures and cracks can be…
… supplies buildings with renewable energy. The rate of renovation in the building sector is still too low to achieve the energy transition by the target date set by the German federal government. However, increased use of prefabricated components can help accelerate this process. Researchers at the Fraunhofer IBP and the Fraunhofer IEE are developing a facade module that integrates the technical building equipment and supplies it with renewable energy to heat, cool and ventilate the adjoining rooms. This is…
Quantum mechanically entangled light particles break down the boundaries of conventional optics and allow a glimpse into previously invisible wavelength ranges, thus bringing about new possibilities for imaging techniques, microscopy and spectroscopy. Unearthing these possibilities and creating technological solutions was the goal of the Fraunhofer lighthouse project QUILT, the results of which are now available. Light can do some amazing things. For example, light particles (photons) be entangled upon creation, which connects them inextricably to one another in terms of…
The venom of a single spider can contain up to 3000 components. These components, mostly peptides, can be used to develop promising drug leads for the treatment of diseases. Spider venom can also be used as a biological pesticide. A team of scientists from the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology IME and the Justus Liebig University in Giessen is primarily researching the venoms of spiders native to Germany, which have mostly been neglected until now. Their results…
Detergent bottles are frequently manufactured using recycled plastic; however, as far as higher value-added applications are concerned, these recyclates have yet to be deployed on a large scale. Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Structural Durability and System Reliability LBF, working together with partner companies, have demonstrated that recycled plastic performs similarly to virgin plastic – not only that, it is also a suitable material for dishwasher case bottoms. Recycling plastic plays a key role in climate and environmental protection….
Scientists from the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH), together with colleagues from Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the university hospitals in Bonn and Aachen, have found a type of immune cells that is particularly active in severely ill COVID-19 patients. The CD16 positive T cells have an increased cytotoxic effect, especially on the inner cell layer of blood vessels. Their presence, along with complement system factors, is associated with a highly fatal outcome of the disease. The scientists…
Researchers invented a technique that combines bioprinting with cryopreservation to construct frozen, cell-laden structures that can be used in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and drug discovery. A new technique takes bioprinting — in which an ink of cells is printed, layer by layer, to form a structure — to a whole new, and icy level. Investigators from the Zhang lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital have developed a technology that they term “cryobioprinting,” a method that uses a bioink embedded…
Researchers have incorporated phosphorene nanoribbons into new types of solar cells, dramatically improving their efficiency. Phosphorene nanoribbons (PNRs) are ribbon-like strands of the 2D material phosphorous, which, similar to graphene, are made of single-atom-thick layers of atoms. PNRs were first produced in 2019, and hundreds of theoretical studies have predicted how their properties could enhance all kinds of devices, including batteries, biomedical sensors, and quantum computers. However, none of these predicted exciting properties have so far been demonstrated in actual…
The rechargeable battery can be woven and washed, and could provide power for fiber-based electronic devices and sensors. Researchers have developed a rechargeable lithium-ion battery in the form of an ultra-long fiber that could be woven into fabrics. The battery could enable a wide variety of wearable electronic devices, and might even be used to make 3D-printed batteries in virtually any shape. The researchers envision new possibilities for self-powered communications, sensing, and computational devices that could be worn like ordinary…
More than 66 million years ago, an asteroid impact led to the extinction of almost three-quarters of life on Earth. The little life that was left had to struggle, and research into its tenacity can provide key insights into how organisms survive environmental challenges. In a new study, scientists at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences discovered how some species of single-celled algae lived through the mass extinction, a finding that could change how we understand global ocean processes. Coccolithophores, like…
Since the 1960s, there has been speculation about a hypothetical propulsion method for interstellar space travel. Calculations at TU Wien (Vienna) show: it will remain science fiction. In science fiction stories about contact with extraterrestrial civilisations, there is a problem: What kind of propulsion system could make it possible to bridge the enormous distances between the stars? It cannot be done with ordinary rockets like those used to travel to the moon or Mars. Many more or less speculative ideas…
Scripps Research and collaborators find new target for universal influenza vaccine. Scientists at Scripps Research, University of Chicago and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai have identified a new Achilles’ heel of influenza virus, making progress in the quest for a universal flu vaccine. Antibodies against a long-ignored section of the virus, which the team dubbed the anchor, have the potential to recognize a broad variety of flu strains, even as the virus mutates from year to year, they…
With the demand in real-time monitoring of endoplasmic variations and rapid detection of extracellular signals, a great number of approaches to bioimaging have been developed. The past few decades have witnessed a dramatic progress in optical imaging, especially with the emerging of microsphere-assisted techniques that have the excellent ability of signal collection and enable real-time and super-resolution imaging with conventional optical microscopic systems. However, as most of the microspheres in current strategies are in solid and artificially synthetic materials, they…
In the study, the researchers have developed new approaches that allow DNA repair to be visualised by analysing hundreds of proteins at once. Each one of the trillions of cells that make up the human body suffers more than 10,000 DNA lesions every day. These injuries would be catastrophic if cells were unable to repair them, but a very delicate machinery that detects and repair genetic damage is at work to prevent DNA mutations and diseases such as cancer. With…
An international team of researchers have used a unique tool inserted into an electron microscope to create a transistor that’s 25,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. The research, published in the journal Science, involves researchers from Japan, China, Russia and Australia who have worked on the project that began five years ago. QUT Centre for Materials Science co-director Professor Dmitri Golberg, who led the research project, said the result was a “very interesting fundamental discovery” which…
Cylindrical vector beam (CVB) multiplexing has emerged as a powerful technique to boost signal channels. Coupling and separating CVBs are two pivotal elements in CVB multiplexing communication. Although off-axis control technologies, such as miniature Dammann vortex gratings, have been investigated to couple and separate light beams, it is usually limited to light beams with homogeneous polarization due to its phase-only grating structure. For CVBs with inhomogeneous polarization, a gradient phase device is required to create a gradient phase difference between…
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