A team of astronomers has released new observations of nearby galaxies that resemble colourful cosmic fireworks. The images, obtained with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT), show different components of the galaxies in distinct colours, allowing astronomers to pinpoint the locations of young stars and the gas they warm up around them. By combining these new observations with data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, the team is helping shed…
An international research team led by YAO Zhonghua from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS) has explained the cause of Jupiter’s X-ray aurorae, a mystery that has puzzled scientists for 40 years. The findings were published in Science Advances on July 9. It is the first time planetary researchers have described the entire causality chain for Jupiter’s X-ray auroral flares. The mechanism in producing X-ray auroral flares at Jupiter may have potential applications…
Physicists of the Technische Universität Dresden introduce the first implementation of a complementary vertical organic transistor technology, which is able to operate at low voltage, with adjustable inverter properties, and a fall and rise time demonstrated in inverter and ring-oscillator circuits of less than 10 nanoseconds, respectively. With this new technology they are just a stone’s throw away from the commercialization of efficient, flexible and printable electronics of the future. Their groundbreaking findings are published in the renowned journal “Nature…
Future information technologies… A team led by HZB physicist Dr. Jaime Sánchez-Barriga has gained new insights into the ultrafast response of topological states of matter to femtosecond laser excitation. The laws of quantum physics rule the microcosm. They determine, for example, how easily electrons move through a crystal and thus whether the material is a metal, a semiconductor or an insulator. Quantum physics may lead to exotic properties in certain materials: In so-called topological insulators, only the electrons that can…
Scientists at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology and collaborators have investigated how different forms of cancer therapy can influence the efficacy of subsequent therapies. They found that administering targeted therapy, drugs which target mutated cells, could jeopardise the effectiveness of immune stimulating immunotherapies in skin cancer patients – an important finding as these treatments are often given to patients in this sequence. This phenomenon, called cross-resistance, highlights the need to understand how therapies shape tumours. The researchers’ findings, now…
The human recombinant anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody COR-101 was developed in close cooperation of Technische Universität Braunschweig, the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and the biotech company YUMAB GmbH in Braunschweig. The antibody is currently undergoing phase Ib/II clinical trials for the treatment of moderate to severe COVID-19 by CORAT Therapeutics GmbH. The story of the discovery and development of this antibody was now published in the Journal “Cell Reports”. In the first step, the genetic information of immune cells, which…
Scientists from three Max Planck Institutes (MPI), the MPI for Medical Research in Heidelberg, the MPI for Marine Microbiology in Bremen and the MPI for Biophysics in Frankfurt and the Radboud University in Nijmegen have successfully determined the structure of the enzyme which produces a large part of the nitrate on earth. Microorganisms use this enzyme, called NXR or nitrite oxidoreductase, to convert toxic nitrite into nitrate. Both nitrite and nitrate are forms of nitrogen that have a major impact…
Cells, like many of us, fend off germs with cleaning products. Researchers have discovered that a molecule made throughout much of the body wipes out invading bacteria like a detergent attacking an oily stain. This killer cleaner, a protein known as APOL3, thwarts infections by dissolving bacterial membranes, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator John MacMicking and his colleagues report in the journal Science on July 15, 2021. His team tested the protein on the food-poisoning bacteria Salmonella and other similar…
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. Scientists on the hunt for an unconventional kind of superconductor have produced the most compelling evidence to date that they’ve found one. In a pair of papers, researchers at the University of Maryland’s (UMD) Quantum Materials Center (QMC) and colleagues have shown that uranium ditelluride (or UTe2 for short) displays many of the hallmarks of a topological superconductor–a material…
A team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Cornelia Denz from University of Münster has developed a simplified method to perform the necessary calibration of optical tweezers. Shortening the measurement time helps to reduce the risk of damage to biological samples due to light-induced heating. Measurements of biomechanical properties inside living cells require minimally invasive methods. Optical tweezers are particularly attractive as a tool. It uses the momentum of light to trap and manipulate micro- or nanoscale particles. A team…
A collaborative research team, led by the University of Liverpool, has discovered a new inorganic material with the lowest thermal conductivity ever reported. This discovery paves the way for the development of new thermoelectric materials that will be critical for a sustainable society. Reported in the journal Science, this discovery represents a breakthrough in the control of heat flow at the atomic scale, achieved by materials design. It offers fundamental new insights into the management of energy. The new understanding…
New artificial intelligence software can compute protein structures in 10 minutes. Scientists have waited months for access to highly accurate protein structure prediction since DeepMind presented remarkable progress in this area at the 2020 Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction, or CASP14, conference. The wait is now over. Researchers at the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle have largely recreated the performance achieved by DeepMind on this important task. These results will be…
Placing a 2D Bose-Einstein condensate in the vicinity of a graphene layer confers superconductivity to the material. Superconductivity is a physical phenomenon where the electrical resistance of a material drops to zero under a certain critical temperature. Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory is a well-established explanation that describes superconductivity in most materials. It states that Cooper pairs of electrons are formed in the lattice under sufficiently low temperature and that BCS superconductivity arises from their condensation. While graphene itself is an excellent…
When there is a gas leak in a large building or at an industrial site, human firefighters currently need to go in with gas sensing instruments. Finding the gas leak may take considerable time, while they are risking their lives. Researchers from TU Delft (the Netherlands), University of Barcelona, and Harvard University have now developed the first swarm of tiny – and hence very safe – drones that can autonomously detect and localize gas sources in cluttered indoor environments. The…
First-of-their-kind snapshots reveal byproduct crippling powerful, experimental cells. For decades, scientists have tried to make reliable lithium-metal batteries. These high-performance storage cells hold 50% more energy than their prolific, lithium-ion cousins, but higher failure rates and safety problems like fires and explosions have crippled commercialization efforts. Researchers have hypothesized why the devices fail, but direct evidence has been sparse. Now, the first nanoscale images ever taken inside intact, lithium-metal coin batteries (also called button cells or watch batteries) challenge prevailing…
As temperatures rise, the risk of devastating forest fires is increasing. Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) are using artificial intelligence to estimate the long-term impact that an increased number of forest fires will have on forest ecosystems. Their simulations show how Yellowstone National Park in the USA could change by the end of the century. Forest fires are already a global threat. “But considering how climate change is progressing, we are probably only at the beginning of…
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