A testing facility for optimizing concrete roadways has been inaugurated at the University of Stuttgart. 70 percent of passenger and freight traffic today goes by road. Road surfaces made of concrete are especially well suited for the high stresses this involves, because they are both robust as well as long-lasting and can be recycled in high quality at the end of their lifespan. However, it would be preferable if replacement cycles were even longer, because this would save on resources…
Special GSI expertise… Which are the best applications for tumor therapy with charged particles to realize its great potential for the future? In which cases can it be used most effectively? These aspects belong to the most exciting questions in radiation biology and medical physics. A group of top-class experts now evaluated and summarized the state-of-the-art of heavy ion radiotherapy and presented a review article in the world-renowned online journal “Nature Reviews”. Main author of the text with the title…
Göttingen Scientists of the Cluster of Excellence Multiscale Bioimaging (MBExC) and the Collaborative Research Center 1190 develop novel strategy to investigate gene expression in mitochondria. Published in “Cell”. Mitochondria are considered the power plants of cells because they generate energy from our food with the help of oxygen. The machinery required for this is called the respiratory chain. Its central building blocks are formed by mitochondria themselves through the expression of genes of their own genetic material. Malfunctions in gene…
Together with scientists from the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), X-ray specialists from Empa are now providing their industrial partners with access to state-of-the-art material analysis of 3D-printed work pieces and components. For this purpose, Empa has recently become a member of the technology transfer center ANAXAM in Villigen. The membership in the technology transfer center ANAXAM, initiated in 2019 by PSI, the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), the Swiss Nanoscience Institute (SNI) and the Canton of Aargau, fosters…
Research team develops for the first time a light field that reflects the structure of four-dimensional space. Researchers have developed a method for structuring light in such a way that a projection from four-dimensional space is created. The results have now been published in the journal Nature Communications. Light is used for various purposes in nowadays applications. For example, data can be transmitted with light and nanoscopic structures can be created by light. To enable such applications, light must be…
Small (hybrid) electric planes just like the conceptualized 19-passenger commuter aircraft are about to change regional air travel in the future. The apparent benefits of the commuter aircraft are their fuel efficiency and the fact that they can be employed on routes that are geographically or economically far-fetched, compared to other means of transportation. Moreover, the global scientific and industrial communities are seeing aircraft electrification as one potential solution to reduce gaseous and noise emissions. Researchers at Mälardalen University, Sweden…
… is latest use of new strategy against diseases. Using the same approach they recently used to create effective vaccine candidates against COVID-19 and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), scientists are tackling another virus: the tick-borne Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF). It causes death in up to 40% of cases, and the World Health Organization identified the disease as one of its top priorities for research and development. The results appear today in the journal Science. Using what scientists refer to as…
Engineers and physicians teamed up to develop a wireless device to monitor and protect bone health. A team of University of Arizona researchers has developed an ultra-thin wireless device that grows to the surface of bone and could someday help physicians monitor bone health and healing over long periods. The devices, called osseosurface electronics, are described in a paper published Thursday in Nature Communications. “As a surgeon, I am most excited about using measurements collected with osseosurface electronics to someday provide my…
Since its invention over 400 years ago, the microscope has continued to evolve, peering ever deeper into nature’s mysteries at the smallest scales. In new research, Prof. Shaopeng Wang, his postdoctoral research scholar Guangzhong Ma along with their colleagues at the Biodesign Center for Bioelectronics and Biosensors at Arizona State University describe advances in microscopy based on a phenomenon known as surface plasmon resonance (SPR). The new study highlights a series of experiments that show how SPR technology can be used to precisely image 100…
Terahertz (THz, 1011~1013 Hz) related technology, with its superior spectral performance, has wide application potential in communication, security, sensing fields and so on. Its engineering applications highly depend on a variety of THz components. Recently, a collaborated team from Hefei Institutes of physical science (HFIPS), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and University of Science and Technology (USTC) successfully developed a highly efficient magneto-tunable and phonon-based monochromatic THz generator with a frequency of ~0.9 THz by utilizing a 2D ferromagnetic Cr2Ge2Te6 crystal. “Benefiting from the bosonic…
The intestine is essential for maintaining our energy balance and is a master at reacting quickly to changes in nutrition and nutrient balance. It manages to do this with the help of intestinal cells that among other things are specialized in the absorption of food components or the secretion of hormones. In adult humans, the intestinal cells regenerate every five to seven days. The ability to constantly renew and develop all types of intestinal cells from intestinal stem cells is…
Demonstrating that a material thought to be always chemically inert, hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), can be turned chemically active holds potential for a new class of catalysts with a wide range of applications, according to an international team of researchers. hBN is a layered material and monolayers can be exfoliated like in graphene, another two-dimensional material. However, there is a key difference between the two. “While hBN shares similar structure as graphene, the strong polar bonds between the boron and…
First microfluidic organ-on-a-chip model of the disease could help bring much needed drugs, and personalized medicine approaches to patients. The inherited progressive disorder cystic fibrosis (CF) causes severe damage to the lungs, and other tissues in the body by affecting the cells that produce mucus, sweat, and digestive juices. In individuals carrying mutations in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene, which encodes an ion channel controlling the flow of ions and water in and out of cells, the…
Scientists at the University of Birmingham have succeeded in creating an experimental model of an elusive kind of fundamental particle called a skyrmion in a beam of light. The breakthrough provides physicists with a real system demonstrating the behaviour of skyrmions, first proposed 60 years ago by a University of Birmingham mathematical physicist, Professor Tony Skyrme. Skyrme’s idea used the structure of spheres in 4-dimensional space to guarantee the indivisible nature of a skyrmion particle in 3 dimensions. 3D particle-like…
As a kid, were you ever curious to know what lice looked like from really close by? Or even a mosquito? To do this you would definitely need to use a microscope, in order to observe all the complex structures of these insects. Invented more than 350 years ago and considered a ground breaking discovery, this instrument is now omnipresent in many fields of science. Chemists, biologists, clinicians, physicists, and even engineers rely on the capabilities of different types of…
FRM II research group develops new processing method for image data. Technology could not only improve the resolution of neutron measurements but could also reduce radiation exposure during x-ray imaging. An international research team at the Research Neutron Source Heinz Maier-Leibnitz (FRM II) of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed a new imaging technology. In the future this technology could not only improve the resolution of neutron measurements by many times but could also reduce radiation exposure during…
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