Supervolcano fed from Earth’s mantle caused crustal plates to rotate. The plates of the Earth’s crust perform complicated movements that can be attributed to quite simple mechanisms. That is the short version of the explanation of a rift that began to tear the world apart over a length of several thousand kilometers 105 million years ago. The scientific explanation appears today in the journal Nature Geoscience. According to the paper, a super volcano split the Earth’s crust over a length…
Conditions in the tropical ocean affect weather patterns worldwide. The most well-known examples are El Niño or La Niña events, but scientists believe other key elements of the tropical climate remain undiscovered. In a study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists from the University of Washington and NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory use remotely-piloted sailboats to gather data on cold air pools, or pockets of cooler air that form below tropical storm clouds. “Atmospheric cold pools are cold air…
Proteomics produces enormous amounts of data, which can be very complex to analyze and interpret. The free software platform MaxQuant has proven to be invaluable for data analysis of shotgun proteomics over the past decade. Now, Jürgen Cox, group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, and his team present the new version 2.0. It provides an improved computational workflow for data-independent acquisition proteomics, called MaxDIA. MaxDIA includes library-based and library-free DIA proteomics and permits highly sensitive and accurate…
With its latest release of development tools for RISC-V processors, Swedish software manufacturer IAR Systems offers support for the ISO 26262 ASIL-D ready certified RISC-V processor core “EMSA5-FS” of the Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS. Users of the toolchain software will thus benefit from simplified certification processes for functional safety, lower costs over the entire product lifecycle and maximum performance in RISC-V-based applications. The new EMSA5-FS processor core from Fraunhofer IPMS is marketed by partner CAST Inc. Safety-relevant applications…
Scientists at the University of Groningen have trained an Artificial Intelligence system to recognize a specific pattern in skin biopsies of patients with the blistering disease epidermolysis bullosa acquisita. The pattern is characteristic of a specific variant of the disease which can cause scarring of the skin and mucous membranes and may lead to blindness. The new system is easy to use and is better than most doctors in making the diagnosis. A description of this AI system is published…
The LASER World of PHOTONICS Industry Days took place from June 21 to 24, 2021. With this online event, Messe München – organizer of the world’s largest trade show for applied laser technology and photonics – offered its community a high-quality program including market overviews, trend analyses and panel discussions. Industrial laser technology today and tomorrow was one focus of the program. The photonics industry is weathering COVID-19 well and expecting strong growth in 2021 The laser industry has weathered…
From above, the Antarctic Ice Sheet might look like a calm, perpetual ice blanket that has covered Antarctica for millions of years. But the ice sheet can be thousands of meters deep at its thickest, and it hides hundreds of meltwater lakes where its base meets the continent’s bedrock. Deep below the surface, some of these lakes fill and drain continuously through a system of waterways that eventually drain into the ocean. Now, with the most advanced Earth-observing laser instrument…
A new app under development is using deep learning and artificial intelligence to classify different kinds of sea ice. If you’ve watched Netflix, shopped online, or run your robot vacuum cleaner, you’ve interacted with artificial intelligence, AI. AI is what allows computers to comb through an enormous amount of data to detect patterns or solve problems. The European Union says AI is set to be a “defining future technology.” And yet, as much as AI is already interwoven into our…
EMBL scientists shed light on how Salmonella hijacks the machinery of its host cell to promote its own growth and reproduction. Our cells fight microbial invaders by engulfing them into membrane sacs – hostile environments in which pathogens are rapidly destroyed. However, the pathogen Salmonella enterica, which grows and reproduces inside our cells, has evolved ways to detoxify such hostile compartments, turning them into a comfortable home where Salmonella can survive and thrive. A team of scientists led by EMBL…
A University of Pennsylvania-led study shows how, despite having nearly identical amino acid sequences, two forms of the protein actin differ in function due their distinct nucleotide sequences. The protein actin is ubiquitous and essential for life. In mammals, every cell expresses two of its forms, beta-actin and gamma-nonmuscle-actin. Despite having distinct roles, the two forms are nearly identical, sharing 99% of their amino acid sequence. Research by Anna Kashina of Penn’s School of Veterinary Medicine and colleagues has shown…
Researchers at the University of Freiburg and the University of Stuttgart have developed a new process for producing movable, self-adjusting materials systems with standard 3D-printers. These systems can undergo complex shape changes, contracting and expanding under the influence of moisture in a pre-programmed manner. The scientists modeled their development based on the movement mechanisms of the climbing plant known as the air potato (Dioscorea bulbifera). With their new method, the team has produced its first prototype: a forearm brace that…
Plants rotting in the soil are valuable for more than just compost. In fact, plant residues play a crucial role in keeping carbon in the soil, which is important for reducing the planet’s CO2 emissions. This is the conclusion of a new study by researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and other institutions. Soils are a key player in the global carbon cycle, storing more than twice as much carbon as the atmosphere. Researchers have now studied the…
A new study of lithium production in a classical nova found a production rate of only a couple of percent that seen in other examples. This shows that there is a large diversity within classical novae and implies that nova explosions alone cannot explain the amount of lithium seen in the current Universe. This is an important result for understanding both the explosion mechanism of classical novae and the overall chemical evolution of the Universe. In the modern world, lithium…
Only recently researchers have levitated and cooled nanoparticles into the quantum regime. An research team led by Oriol Romero-Isart now proposes a way to harness the quantum properties of such particles before they lose them due to decoherence. To this end, the wave function of the particle is repeatedly expanded and compressed in a loop. Very recently, researchers led by Markus Aspelmeyer at the University of Vienna and Lukas Novotny at ETH Zurich cooled a glass nanoparticle into the quantum…
A new laser that generates quantum particles can recycle lost energy for highly efficient, low threshold laser applications. Scientists at KAIST have fabricated a laser system that generates highly interactive quantum particles at room temperature. Their findings, published in the journal Nature Photonics, could lead to a single microcavity laser system that requires lower threshold energy as its energy loss increases. The system, developed by KAIST physicist Yong-Hoon Cho and colleagues, involves shining light through a single hexagonal-shaped microcavity treated…
When gravitational waves were first detected in 2015 by the advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), they sent a ripple through the scientific community, as they confirmed another of Einstein’s theories and marked the birth of gravitational wave astronomy. Five years later, numerous gravitational wave sources have been detected, including the first observation of two colliding neutron stars in gravitational and electromagnetic waves. As LIGO and its international partners continue to upgrade their detectors’ sensitivity to gravitational waves, they will…
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