Researchers at the University of East Anglia and the University of Manchester have helped conduct a 16-year long experiment to challenge Einstein’s theory of general relativity. The international team looked to the stars – a pair of extreme stars called pulsars to be precise – through seven radio telescopes across the globe. And they used them to challenge Einstein’s most famous theory with some of the most rigorous tests yet. The study, published today in the journal Physical Review X,…
QUEST researchers overcome a major hurdle on the journey towards even more accurate optical atomic clocks. Laser beams can do more than just heat things up; they can cool them down too. That is nothing new for physicists who have devoted themselves to precision spectroscopy and the development of optical atomic clocks. But what is new is the extremely low temperature that researchers at the QUEST Institute at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) have been able to reach with their highly…
The Bubbler, a breathalyzer that reverse-transcribes RNA from airborne SARS-CoV-2 in breath, predicts lower respiratory tract involvement and is less invasive than alternative testing approaches, report researchers in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics. In a new study in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, published by Elsevier, investigators report on the design and testing of a breathalyzer, known as the Bubbler, that relies on viral RNA detection to diagnose SARS-CoV-2. Its name is derived from the bubbling sound that occurs when…
The innovation could be a game-changer for communication technologies, such as phones and internet connections. A team from UCF has developed the world’s first optical oscilloscope, an instrument that is able to measure the electric field of light. The device converts light oscillations into electrical signals, much like hospital monitorsconvert a patient’s heartbeat into electrical oscillation. Until now, reading the electric field of light has been a challengebecause of the high speeds at which light waves oscillates. The most advanced techniques, which power our phone and internet communications, can currently clock electric fields at up to gigahertz frequencies — covering…
New method to measure spin waves brings us one step closer to spin superfluidity. Spin waves, a change in electron spin that propagates through a material, could fundamentally change how devices store and carry information. These waves, also known as magnons, don’t scatter or couple with other particles. Under the right conditions, they can even act like a superfluid, moving through a material with zero energy loss. But the very properties that make them so powerful also make them nearly…
NASA will launch four Earth science missions in 2022 to provide scientists with more information about fundamental climate systems and processes including extreme storms, surface water and oceans, and atmospheric dust. Scientists will discuss the upcoming missions at the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU) 2021 Fall Meeting, hosted in New Orleans between Dec. 13 and 17. NASA has a unique view of our planet from space. NASA’s fleet of Earth-observing satellites provide high quality data on Earth’s interconnected environment, from air quality…
Freiberg-based start-up TheiaX enters market with innovative mapping methods. With the increasing demand for high-tech metals by the industry, mining faces complex challenges. The sustainable supply of raw materials requires energy-efficient and socially acceptable methods with low environmental impact. At the Helmholtz Institute Freiberg for Resource Technology (HIF) belonging to the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), researchers have developed novel, digital mapping methods for sustainable raw material exploration and extraction over the past two years and brought them to market. The founding…
Fluorescence light microscopy has the unique ability to observe cellular processes over a scale that bridges four orders of magnitude. Yet, its application to living cells is fundamentally limited by the very rapid and unceasing movement of molecules and the light-induced destruction of fluorescent probes. Ultrarapid cryo-arrest of cells during live observation on a microscope, as developed by the group of Prof. Philippe Bastiaens the at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund, now circumvents these fundamental problems…
Standardized methods facilitate the evaluation of Raman spectra. Light-based methods are increasingly used for analytical problems in the fields of health, environment, medicine and safety. Raman spectroscopy is a suitable method in this context. The measurement data collected in this process are complex and extensive molecular fingerprints. Artificial intelligence can help in the analysis of these complex Raman spectra. There are still no established standards for the analysis, which makes it difficult to apply in medical or biological settings. A…
How can humans instantly estimate the slipperiness of a surface and adjust their gripping, for instance when picking up a wet glass? Researchers from Delft University of Technology have, together with French and Australian colleagues, demonstrated that a (radial) strain of the skin of the fingertip is involved in the perception of slipperiness during initial contact. Robotics could use this information, for instance to improve prosthetics and grippers. The results have been been published in PNAS. Slippery ‘Humans have the…
Organ-on-a-chip technology has provided a push to discover new drugs for a variety of rare and ignored diseases for which current models either don’t exist or lack precision. In particular, these platforms can include the cells of a patient, thus resulting in patient-specific discovery. As an example, even though sickle cell disease was first described in the early 1900s, the range of severity in the disease causes challenges when trying to treat patients. Since this disease is most prevalent among…
Study on genetic changes in neuroblastoma. Tumors are heterogeneous, which means that different parts of the same tumor can be genetically distinct. This phenomenon, known as intratumor heterogeneity, is steadily gaining in significance within the field of cancer research. Cellular and molecular differences within the same tumor play an important role in many different cancers due to their implications for diagnosis and the use of targeted therapies. According to a recently published study by Charité, the MDC and the German…
For the first time, scientists have identified a rare population of potentially toxic senescent cells in human brains that can serve as a target for a new Alzheimer’s disease treatment. The study, published in the Dec.10 edition of the journal Nature Aging, was led by Miranda Orr, Ph.D., assistant professor of gerontology and geriatric medicine, at Wake Forest School of Medicine and research health scientist at the W.G. Hefner VA Medical Center, and Habil Zare, Ph.D., assistant professor of cell…
Physicists publish a theoretical framework to explain the recent discovery of superconductivity in trilayer graphene. A single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb lattice makes up the promising nanomaterial called graphene. Research on a setup of three sheets of graphene stacked on top of one another so that their lattices are aligned but shifted — forming rhombohedral trilayer graphene – revealed an unexpected state of superconductivity. In this state electrical resistance vanishes due to the quantum nature of…
High-precision 3D supercomputer simulations reveal the 3D structure of theoretically predicted micron-scale megatesla magnetic fields, optimizing engineering design of laser conditions and micron-size target structures for future laser experiments. Recently, a research team at Osaka University has successfully demonstrated the generation of megatesla (MT)-order magnetic fields via three-dimensional particle simulations on laser-matter interaction. The strength of MT magnetic fields is 1-10 billion times stronger than geomagnetism (0.3-0.5 G), and these fields are expected to be observed only in the close…
Experiment finds evidence for a long-sought particle comprising four neutrons. Understanding of nuclear forces might have to be significantly changed. While all atomic nuclei except hydrogen are composed of protons and neutrons, physicists have been searching for a particle consisting of two, three or four neutrons for over half a century. Experiments by a team of physicists of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) at the accelerator laboratory on the Garching research campus now indicate that a particle comprising four…
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