The ability to precisely control the various properties of laser light is critical to much of the technology that we use today, from commercial virtual reality (VR) headsets to microscopic imaging for biomedical research. Many of today’s laser systems rely on separate, rotating components to control the wavelength, shape and power of a laser beam, making these devices bulky and difficult to maintain. Now, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have developed a…
What steers galaxies, or whole ensembles of galaxies – so-called galaxy clusters? Aren’t they surrounded by vast empty space? Could the recently discovered long hot interconnecting gas filaments play a role? Although cosmological models and simulations predicted these structures and the role they may play, the observational confirmation of their existence, using the x-ray space telescope eROSITA, is quite recent. Further snapshots of simulations compared to the observations unveil a galaxy group speeding along such a long gas filament, on…
Six months ago, astronomers at the University of Bonn reported the discovery of an extremely long intergalactic gas filament with the X-ray telescope eROSITA. In a new study, they have now focused on an interesting structure in the filament, the northern clump. Their new observational data prove that this is a cluster of galaxies with a black hole at its center. The gas filament is therefore a galactic matter highway: The northern clump is moving along it towards two more…
Areas like this do not exist on Earth: Cracks, ridges, valleys, large and small angular blocks characterize them. Hence the name, chaotic terrains. How these peculiar regions on Mars were formed has long been a subject of debate among experts. Water, either liquid or as ice, played a central role in this process, according to the common theory. A study led by Erica Luzzi, a doctoral student at Jacobs University Bremen, is now published in the journal “Geophysical Research Letters”….
Russian scientists have experimentally proved the existence of a new type of quasiparticle – previously unknown excitations of coupled pairs of photons in qubit chains. This discovery could be a step towards disorder-robust quantum metamaterials. The study was published in Physical Review B. Superconducting qubits are a leading qubit modality today that is currently being pursued by industry and academia for quantum computing applications. However, the performance of quantum computers is largely affected by decoherence that contributes to a qubits…
Led by Katie Baldwin, Ph.D., research published in Neuron shows how the loss of the protein hepaCAM drives brain development dysfunction and plays an important role in neurological disorders. When we think of the brain, we think of neurons. But much of the brain is made of non-neuronal cells called glial cells, which help regulate brain development and function. For the first, time UNC School of Medicine scientist Katie Baldwin, PhD, and colleagues revealed a central role of the glial…
Tuberculosis is one of the top ten causes of death worldwide, infecting about one-quarter of the world’s population. Although it is treatable, the rise of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis poses a major threat to global health security, and has been declared by the World Health Organization as a global health emergency. Reduced access to diagnosis and treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to dramatically increase the number of tuberculosis infections. This will set global efforts to tackle the disease back several…
An international team of researchers has demonstrated a new concept for the generation of intense extreme-ultraviolet (XUV) radiation by high-harmonic generation (HHG). Its advantage lies in the fact that its footprint is much smaller than currently existing intense XUV lasers. The new scheme is straightforward and could be implemented in many laboratories worldwide, which may boost the research field of ultrafast XUV science. The detailed experimental and theoretical results have been published in Optica. The invention of the laser has…
Three years ago, Arthur Ashkin won the Nobel Prize for inventing optical tweezers, which use light in the form of a high-powered laser beam to capture and manipulate particles. Despite being created decades ago, optical tweezers still lead to major breakthroughs and are widely used today to study biological systems. However, optical tweezers do have flaws. The prolonged interaction with the laser beam can alter molecules and particles or damage them with excessive heat. Researchers at The University of Texas…
Energy storage is one of the key issues for a sustainable energy supply in the future. Thousands of researchers around the world are currently working on this issue. An exciting project is also currently underway at the Münchberg campus of Hof University of Applied Sciences. Here, new types of ice batteries for cooling applications are being researched, which can help to sustainably reduce energy and CO2. They are powered by surplus solar energy. We talked about this with Tushar Sharma,…
Researchers from the Fritz Haber Institute (FHI) in Berlin, the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg and the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg have provided important new insights into a key process for the development of more efficient solar cells and other light-based technologies, called singlet exciton fission. They have managed to track how molecules of a promising material, single crystals comprised of pentacene molecules, move in real time as singlet fission takes place, showing that…
A three-dimensional atlas of the bumblebee brain is now available. It will allow to even better research how nerve cells are interconnected and how they process information. The buff-tailed bumblebee Bombus terrestris is one of the most common bumblebee species in Europe. It is not only active in nature as a pollinator – humans also use it in greenhouses and foil tunnels to get good harvests of tomatoes or strawberries. The buff-tailed bumblebee is also used in science: “Basic research…
The influence of solar events on satellite-based applications such as orbit determination, telecommunications or navigation is being investigated by two research projects with the participation of TU Graz. Solar storms and similar events can cause sustainable damages to electronic systems on Earth, as well as on satellites. The sun ejects huge clouds of charged plasma particles that massively disturb the Earth’s magnetic field. “The ejected plasma consists mainly of electrons and protons and increases the neutral density in the Earth’s…
How immune cells are lured to the brain in encephalitis. Certain viruses can cause inflammation of the meninges or even the entire brain, so-called viral encephalitis. In addition to the rabies virus and the West Nile virus, these also include the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) in the mouse model. The immune cells needed to fight the infection must first reach the brain from the periphery of the body. To do this, the immune system produces messenger substances as attractants. Scientists…
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft’s German-Polish High-Performance Center brings additive manufacturing to medical technology – first demonstrators will already be presented by the end of 2021. It’s all about high-tech dentures, prostheses that autonomously detect inflammatory reactions in the body, or individually adapted seats for wheelchairs. A German-Polish Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft High-Performance Center is researching new technologies for the use of 3D printing processes, known as additive manufacturing technology, in medical technology. For Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, it is one of two international High-Performance Centers launched in March that…
Motions of a remarkable cosmic structure have been measured for the first time, using NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. The blast wave and debris from an exploded star are seen moving away from the explosion site and colliding with a wall of surrounding gas. Astronomers estimate that light from the supernova explosion reached Earth about 1,700 years ago, or when the Mayan empire was flourishing and the Jin dynasty ruled China. However, by cosmic standards the supernova remnant formed by the…
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