Life on Earth today relies on the presence of oxygen. However, the process behind the step-wise rise of oxygen levels in the atmosphere, which took place over nearly two billion years, remains under debate. An international team of scientists around Judith Klatt from the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen, Germany, proposes an intriguing explanation: that increasing daylength, resulting from slowing Earth rotation, may have allowed microbes to release more oxygen, thereby creating the air we breathe today….
Manganese could make luminescent materials and the conversion of sunlight more sustainable. University of Basel researchers have reached an important milestone in their quest to produce more sustainable luminescent materials and catalysts for converting sunlight into other forms of energy. Based on the cheap metal manganese, they have developed a new class of compounds with promising properties that until now have primarily been found in noble metal compounds. Smartphone screens and catalysts for artificial photosynthesis – to produce fuels from…
The mammalian cerebellum has long been associated almost exclusively with motor control, yet recent studies indicate that it also contributes to many higher brain functions. An international research team led by Prof. Dr Henrik Kaessmann from the Center for Molecular Biology of Heidelberg University (ZMBH) has now decoded the genetic programmes that control the development of cerebellar cell types before and after birth. The molecular biologists compared data from the mouse cerebellum with corresponding data from the opossum, revealing fundamental…
Electrical engineers from the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering have developed a more efficient way of converting light from one wavelength to another, opening the door for improvements in the performance of imaging, sensing and communication systems. Mona Jarrahi, professor of electrical and computer engineering at UCLA Samueli, led the Nature Communications-published research. Finding an efficient way to convert wavelengths of light is crucial to the improvement of many imaging and sensing technologies. For example, converting incoming light into terahertz wavelengths enables imaging and sensing in optically…
Controlling ferrimagnets by voltage… For the first time, an international research team with participants from Chemnitz University of Technology and IFW Dresden demonstrate 180° magnetization reversal purely by electric fields via magneto-ionic control of ferrimagnets– publication in Nature Nanotechnology The rapid increase in energy consumption related to digital technologies is a major global challenge. One key problem is the reduction of the energy consumption of magnetic data storage devices, which are used, for example, in large data centers. An international…
…to revolutionize semiconductor material defect characterization techniques. A unique XRT tool was installed recently at Fraunhofer IISB to revolutionize state of the art semiconductor material defect characterization techniques. Rigaku Corporation and Fraunhofer IISB have built the Center of Expertise for X-ray Topography in Erlangen to support the semiconductor industry worldwide in improving and better understanding their wafer quality and yield by employing the Rigaku XRTmicron advanced X-ray topography tools. Erlangen, Neu-Isenburg, Tokyo – A newly developed X-ray topography tool was…
MD&M West in Anaheim, California invites the U.S. trade audience to discover innovations and technologies in medical development and manufacturing from August 10-12, 2021. Visitor groups from development departments as well as the management level of the manufacturing industry are addressed. In recent years, the show had firmly established itself as an international medical technology marketplace for medical technology suppliers, including many component manufacturers from Europe and Asia. This year, high-tech companies with local representatives and partners are using the…
A long-term hazard from flood water is often underestimated: The raging rivers swirl up pollutants out of their sediments that stem from environmental pollution decades or centuries ago. Such harmful substances can not only cause ecological damage in the river. They can also deposit themselves on flooded areas and affect crops, grazing livestock and humans. This has been pointed out by an international research team in a review of scientific studies on flood events throughout the world. The paper has…
International Study… The discovery is groundbreaking: Previously unknown viruses live in the subsurface of our planet; they infect unicellular microorganisms, the so-called Altiarchaea. The remarkable thing: They start the food chain in an ecosystem that is actually hidden from our eyes. An international team led by Professor Dr. Alexander J. Probst from the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) made the respective discovery. The results were published in the scientific journal “Nature Communications” *. Some Archaea live in the deep subsurface without…
Research Snapshot: Led by Justus Ndukaife, assistant professor of electrical engineering, Vanderbilt researchers are the first to introduce an approach for trapping and moving a nanomaterial known as a single colloidal nanodiamond with nitrogen-vacancy center using low power laser beam. The width of a single human hair is approximately 90,000 nanometers; nanodiamonds are less than 100 nanometers. These carbon-based materials are one of the few that can release the basic unit of all light—a single photon—a building block for future quantum…
JDRF funds creation of implant to automatically regulate blood glucose levels. Rice University bioengineers are using 3D printing and smart biomaterials to create an insulin-producing implant for Type 1 diabetics. The three-year project is a partnership between the laboratories of Omid Veiseh and Jordan Miller that’s supported by a grant from JDRF, the leading global funder of diabetes research. Veiseh and Miller will use insulin-producing beta cells made from human stem cells to create an implant that senses and regulates…
NASA mission will study the creation of the solar wind. On July 23, 2021, the Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission achieved an important milestone, passing its latest NASA review and entering the final mission design phase with a new launch-readiness target of October 2023. Southwest Research Institute is leading PUNCH, a NASA Small Explorer (SMEX) mission that will integrate understanding of the Sun’s corona, the outer atmosphere visible during total solar eclipses, with the “solar wind”…
Climate models predict that rainfall variability over wet regions globally will be greatly enhanced by global warming, causing wide swings between dry and wet conditions, according to a joint study by the Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Met Office, the UK’s national meteorological service. This study was published in Science Advances on July 28th 2021. Rainfall plays an important part of our daily life. More leads to floods, less to drought. It has been…
Walking blindfolded in a straight line is a difficult task. Most of the time, we end up running in circles. Fruit flies that are blind to motion have similar problems during free flight: They only manage to fly straight for short distances, as researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology have now shown. Motion vision is thus the component of visual perception that contributes decisively to course control in fruit flies. Walking in straight line towards a tree is…
In space, autonomous robots are supposed to fulfil diverse tasks. In order to meet the respective requirements, existing systems are strongly mission-specific. The downside: If the mission requirements change, a completely new development might be necessary. The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and the University of Bremen want to initiate a paradigm shift in space robotics with the help of the recently launched ModKom project. By developing a modular system, the usually highly specialized robots are to be…
3D-printing is becoming increasingly important in industrial manufacturing. It not only makes it possible to produce very complex shapes that would otherwise be virtually impossible to generate using conventional processes, but also enables small batch numbers to be produced on a cost-effective basis. However, up to now, the integration of electronic components and consequently, the production of customized sensors has presented a challenge. Now, together with the Baden-Württemberg-based companies ARBURG and Balluff, Fraunhofer IPA has achieved a breakthrough. Sensors in…
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