Access to modern, reliable, and affordable energy services is a must for development and ensuring a decent quality of life. IIASA researchers used a novel bottom-up approach to analyze how access to energy services may evolve over time under different scenarios of socioeconomic growth and policy scenarios that meet climate mitigation goals. Energy access policies introduced around the world in the last decade have led to an encouraging decline in the number of people without access to electricity. Much of…
Understanding the Sun’s magnetic dynamo could help predict solar weather. Scientists in Australia and in the USA have solved a long-standing mystery about the Sun that could help astronomers predict space weather and help us prepare for potentially devastating geomagnetic storms if they were to hit Earth. The Sun’s internal magnetic field is directly responsible for space weather – streams of high-energy particles from the Sun that can be triggered by solar flares, sunspots or coronal mass ejections that produce…
Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have linked together, or “entangled,” the mechanical motion and electronic properties of a tiny blue crystal, giving it a quantum edge in measuring electric fields with record sensitivity that may enhance understanding of the universe. The quantum sensor consists of 150 beryllium ions (electrically charged atoms) confined in a magnetic field, so they self-arrange into a flat 2D crystal just 200 millionths of a meter in diameter. Quantum sensors such…
– underappreciated bacteria step into the spotlight. It was long assumed that cyanobacteria were mainly responsible for fixing nitrogen on early Earth, thus making nitrogen available to the biosphere. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, now show that purple sulfur bacteria could have contributed substantially to nitrogen fixation under the conditions prevailing in the Proterozoic ocean. Nitrogen is vital for all forms of life: It is part of proteins, nucleic acids and other cell…
Chronic stress is a well-known cause for mental health disorders. New research has moved a step forward in understanding how glucocorticoid hormones (‘stress hormones’) act upon the brain and what their function is. The findings could lead to more effective strategies in the prevention and treatment of mental health disorders. The study, led by academics at the University of Bristol and published today [6 August] in Nature Communications, has discovered a link between corticosteroid receptors – the mineralocorticoid receptor (MR)…
Topological quasiparticles with sophisticated spin textures are intriguing objects in particle physics and magnetic materials that exhibit exotic physics and have potential applications in information storage and processing. The most fundamental and exemplary topological spin texture is called the skyrmion, which is a nanoscale circular domain wall carrying a nonzero integer topological charge. The skyrmion texture was recently realized in structured optical fields, as a powerful tool to open new research directions of topological photonics. Since the first observation of…
University of Warwick scientists find protein that bends the cytoskeleton of cells, twisting them into different shapes. University of Warwick scientists find protein that bends the cytoskeleton of cells, twisting them into different shapes The ‘curly’ protein could play a key role in cell division, a process essential to all living matter Provides a new cell engineering tool for biologists to modify cell shapes, much like balloon modelling A protein that causes a cell’s skeleton to bend, allowing it to…
Solution Sets the Bar for Quantifying Carbon Budget and Credit. Carbon is everywhere. It’s in the atmosphere, in the oceans, in the soil, in our food, in our bodies. As the backbone of all organic molecules that make up life, carbon is a very accurate predictor of crop yields. And soil is the largest carbon pool on earth, playing an important role in keeping our climate stable. As such, computational models that track carbon as it cycles through an agroecosystem…
Reliable projections and forecasts of photovoltaic generation are becoming more and more important to maintain a stable power grid and for solar energy trading on the electric power exchange. To improve such projections, the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE and the transmission system operator TransnetBW have set up a network of measurement stations which record the current irradiance conditions in the control area on a minute-by-minute basis. These data are also extremely valuable for research in solar energy…
BMBF project “SoLiS” explores innovative lithium-sulfur battery concepts. The research project “SoLiS – Development of Lithium-Sulfur Solid State Batteries in Multilayer Pouch Cells”, which started in July 2021, aims to transfer a promising battery concept from basic research into an industrial application. Thanks to high storage capacities and low material costs of sulfur, this cell technology potentially enables the construction of very lightweight and cost-effective batteries. Under the leadership of the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in…
New research led by NASA provides a closer look at a nearby star thought to resemble our young Sun. The work allows scientists to better understand what our Sun may have been like when it was young, and how it may have shaped the atmosphere of our planet and the development of life on Earth. Many people dream of meeting with a younger version of themselves to exchange advice, identify the origins of their defining traits, and share hopes for the…
New research published in Nature has revealed the solution to Jupiter’s ‘energy crisis’, which has puzzled astronomers for decades. Space scientists at the University of Leicester worked with colleagues from the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), Boston University, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) to reveal the mechanism behind Jupiter’s atmospheric heating. Now, using data from the Keck Observatory in Hawai’i, astronomers have created the most-detailed yet global map of the gas…
Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body. It makes up a third of protein content and single strands assemble to form stable fibres that give structure to connective tissue such as skin, tendons, cartilage and bones. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now developed a multi-component molecule that interacts with collagen and can be used to illuminate new tissue growth in the body. Our bodies start producing more collagen as wounds heal – or as tumours grow. During…
New project “Superman” launched at Fraunhofer IFAM in Dresden. The Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing Technology and Advanced Materials IFAM in Dresden has launched a new project called “Innovative sinterable nickel-based superalloy paste for the additive manufacturing of functional metallic components with the new MoldJet® process”, short “Superman”. With its partners Tritone Technologies and MIMplus Technologies GmbH & Ko. KG, the institute has come together in the first joint public project on the MoldJet® process. Since 1 May 2021, the partners…
Superflares, extreme radiation bursts from stars, have been suspected of causing lasting damage to the atmospheres and thus habitability of exoplanets. A newly published study found evidence that they only pose a limited danger to planetary systems, since the radiation bursts do not explode in the direction of the exoplanets. Using optical observations from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), in collaboration with scientists in the US and Spain, studied large…
Researchers at Sinai Health have used a tiny worm to track how an animal’s brain changes throughout its lifetime, shedding new light on how human brains develop. In new research out today in Nature, scientists from the Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute (LTRI) at Sinai Health describe four basic patterns of how new connections are made in the brain of the nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, or C. elegans. “This is the first time that an entire brain’s structure is deduced and compared…
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