At the moment, industry is lacking in robust sensors that can withstand extremely high temperatures and pressures. Eight Fraunhofer Institutes have now developed a technology platform for building this type of sensor systems as part of the “eHarsh” lighthouse project. These are even capable of monitoring the insides of turbines and deep boreholes for geothermal systems. They sense disruptive vibrations, issue warnings when a machine is running hot and are able to identify damaged components on a production line. Sensors…
The microspeakers for wireless in-ear headphones from Arioso Systems GmbH, a spin-off of the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS, are up to ten times smaller than conventional microspeakers and are made entirely from silicon. Currently at the prototype stage, the energy-efficient MEMS speakers may in future play a role in expanding the range of functions offered by miniaturized headphones – such as instant translations and health monitoring features. This is made possible by an innovative sound transducer principle that…
Erratic, involuntary movements often emerge as a side effect of the primary medication used to treat Parkinson’s disease. Texas Biomed researchers and collaborators have shown a compound can substantially reduce those movements in animal studies. A new study from Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed) and collaborators has identified a promising drug candidate to minimize uncontrolled, erratic muscle movements, called dyskinesia, associated with Parkinson’s disease. The small molecule, called PD13R, reduced dyskinesia by more than 85% in the marmoset animal…
Reseachers at MPQ have just demonstrated a new technique for digital holography using two interfering frequency combs. They can now record thousands of holograms in all colours of the rainbow. Everybody has seen holograms, on a bank note, a passport or in Star Wars. Holography is a powerful technique of photography of a light field without a lens for 3D imaging and display. Now, scientists at the Max-Planck Institute of Quantum Optics move holography forward by implementing it with optical…
Swanson School collaborators Kurt Beschorner and Tevis Jacobs will use a NIOSH award to measure floor-surface topography and create a predictive model of friction. Friction is the resistance to motion of one surface or object moving relative to another. The frictional relationship between two objects has beneficial effects: when you strike a match, friction lights a flame; when you use your vehicle’s brakes, friction helps bring it to a stop. This same relationship, when leveraged properly, can help prevent slips…
Scientists from McGill University develop new biomaterial for wound repair. Combining knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology, and engineering, scientists from McGill University develop a biomaterial tough enough to repair the heart, muscles, and vocal cords, representing a major advance in regenerative medicine. “People recovering from heart damage often face a long and tricky journey. Healing is challenging because of the constant movement tissues must withstand as the heart beats. The same is true for vocal cords. Until now there was…
The quantum world and our everyday world are very different places. In a publication that appeared as the “Editor’s Suggestion” in Physical Review A this week, UvA physicists Jasper van Wezel and Lotte Mertens and their colleagues investigate how the act of measuring a quantum particle transforms it into an everyday object. Quantum mechanics is the theory that describes the tiniest objects in the world around us, ranging from the constituents of single atoms to small dust particles. This microscopic…
Crucial in the design of any semiconductor device is how to inject and extract an electrical current, and now a KAUST-led team has reviewed ways to do this without damage to the device. A basic metal-semiconductor interface can create a potential energy barrier to the efficient flow of electrons, depending on the electronic properties of the two materials. It is vital to make a careful choice of contact material and the process by which this material is deposited onto the…
Research team led by Göttingen University use genomic data to discover five species hidden in rare alga. All land plants originated from a single evolutionary event when freshwater algae got a foothold on land, giving rise to an astonishing biodiversity of plants on earth. However, the group of algae that would later give rise to land plants had already been living and evolving in both freshwater and terrestrial habitats for over one billion years. There is a tiny group of…
Research team with participation of the University of Stuttgart succeeds in integrating color centers into nanophotonic silicon carbide structures. A promising route towards larger quantum computers is to orchestrate multiple task-optimised smaller systems. To dynamically connect and entangle any two systems, photonic interference emerges as a powerful method, due to its compatibility with on-chip devices and long-distance propagation in quantum networks. One of the main obstacles towards the commercialization of quantum photonics remains the nanoscale fabrication and integration of scalable…
Researchers of the Cluster of Excellence 3D Matter Mode to Order show how 3-dimensional nanostructures can be printed using compact desktop devices – publication in Nature Photonics. Lasers in conventional laser printers for paper printouts are very small. 3D laser printers for 3-dimensional microstructures and nanostructures, by contrast, have required big and expensive laser systems so far. Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Heidelberg University now use another process for this purpose. Two-step absorption works with inexpensive…
A new study from Swansea University has introduced a framework to calculate the material properties of a new class of two-dimensional curved hexagonal lattices that could be used in the production of improved mechanical metamaterials found in bio-engineering, stretchable electronics, impact absorption and soft robots. The research published in the Composite Structures journal, outlines how the research team from the university’s Faculty of Science and Engineering pioneered the new framework of calculations, known as generalised closed-form expressions. Dr Shuvajit Mukherjee who…
Team studied thermal inertia to understand how rock layers were formed. As part of a team of collaborators from Northern Arizona University and Johns Hopkins University, NAU PhD candidate Ari Koeppel recently discovered that water was once present in a region of Mars called Arabia Terra. Arabia Terra is in the northern latitudes of Mars. Named in 1879 by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli, this ancient land covers an area slightly larger than the European continent. Arabia Terra contains craters, volcanic…
Method combines quantum mechanics with machine learning to accurately predict oxide reactions at high temperatures when no experimental data is available; could be used to design clean carbon-neutral processes for steel production and metal recycling. Extracting metals from oxides at high temperatures is essential not only for producing metals such as steel but also for recycling. Because current extraction processes are very carbon-intensive, emitting large quantities of greenhouse gases, researchers have been exploring new approaches to developing “greener” processes. This…
Micro-sized cameras have great potential to spot problems in the human body and enable sensing for super-small robots, but past approaches captured fuzzy, distorted images with limited fields of view. Now, researchers at Princeton University and the University of Washington have overcome these obstacles with an ultracompact camera the size of a coarse grain of salt. The new system can produce crisp, full-color images on par with a conventional compound camera lens 500,000 times larger in volume, the researchers reported…
Game-changing technology to design traffic lights that absorb kinetic energy, stopping them from crumpling when hit by a vehicle, will prevent thousands of fatalities and injuries each year and make our roads much safer. That’s the prediction from University of South Australia (UniSA) senior lecturer and research lead Dr Mohammad Uddin, who is partnering with manufacturing company Impact Absorbing Systems (IAS) on a new project to minimise collision-related injuries as well as damage to traffic lights and vehicles. The $640,000…
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