In a new study, an international team of plant researchers including the Institute of Botany at Technische Universität Dresden has discovered an unusual and previously unknown reproductive strategy in plants: the Greek pipevine species ‘Aristolochia microstoma’ produces a unique mixture of volatiles that resembles the smell of dead and decaying insects to attract the pollinating fly genus ‘Megaselia’ (also known as ‘coffin flies’) to its trap-flowers. The study was recently published in the open-access journal ‘Frontiers’. Plants use numerous mechanisms…
Insulator strings connect the live conductor to overhead-line towers. Researchers at TU Graz simulated for the first time when and under what conditions different loads act on these strings. Overhead lines will thus be made even safer. Though small and inconspicuous, they literally play a supporting role in the operational safety of high-voltage lines: insulator strings. They connect the live conductor to the overhead-line towers. Due to their low conductivity, they prevent the circuit from being closed via the towers…
The team of the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung investigates a new route to produce green steel through hydrogen plasma. Germany, Europe and almost all countries in the world are heading towards climate neutral economies in the future. This aspect means to minimize as much CO2 emissions as possible plus compensating for the remaining emissions. However, this target is not yet met by current technology. One of the biggest industrial CO2 emitters, the iron- and steelmaking industry, still lacks the possibility of…
The field of ultrafast nonlinear photonics has now become the focus of numerous studies, as it enables a host of applications in advanced on-chip spectroscopy and information processing. The latter in particular requires a strongly intensity-dependent optical refractive index that can modulate optical pulses faster than even picosecond timescales and on sub-millimeter scales suitable for integrated photonics. Despite the tremendous progress made in this field, there is currently no platform providing such features for the ultraviolet (UV) spectral range, which…
Holographic ‘movie’ of bubbles and high-pressure shockwave created by research team led by Göttingen University. Everyone is familiar with tiny gas bubbles gently rising up in sparkling water. But the bubbles that were created by intense focused lasers in this experiment were ten times smaller and contained water vapour at a pressure around a hundred thousand times higher. Under these conditions, the bubble expands at supersonic speed and pushes a shockwave, consisting of a spherical shell of highly compressed water,…
A research team from the University of Massachusetts Amherst has created an electronic microsystem that can intelligently respond to information inputs without any external energy input, much like a self-autonomous living organism. The microsystem is constructed from a novel type of electronics that can process ultralow electronic signals and incorporates a device that can generate electricity “out of thin air” from the ambient environment. The groundbreaking research was published June 7 in the journal Nature Communications. Jun Yao, an assistant…
Proliferating cells are in constant need of ribosomes, the molecular machines that help them produce proteins. Tumour cells, for instance, divide quickly and strongly rely on ribosome production to maintain their growth. A team of scientists has visualised a novel mechanism that inhibits the production of ribosomes in yeast. Their results, now published in the journal Nature Communications, could be used to develop novel classes of inhibitors to target cancer cells. Proteins are the essence of life: they give structure…
The aurora borealis, or northern lights, that fill the sky in high-latitude regions have fascinated people for thousands of years. But how they’re created, while theorized, had not been conclusively proven. In a new study, a team of physicists led by University of Iowa reports definitive evidence that the most brilliant auroras are produced by powerful electromagnetic waves during geomagnetic storms. The phenomena, known as Alfven waves, accelerate electrons toward Earth, causing the particles to produce the familiar atmospheric light…
The “miracle of life” is most obvious at the very beginning: When the fertilized egg cell divides by means of furrows into blastomeres, envelops itself in an amniotic sac, and unfolds to form germ layers. When the blastomeres begin to differentiate into different cells – and when they eventually develop into a complete organism. “We wanted to find out whether the later differences between the various cells are already partly hard-wired into the fertilized egg cell,” says Dr. Jan Philipp…
Artificial intelligence spots coronal holes to automate space weather. Scientists from the University of Graz (Austria), Skoltech and their colleagues from the US and Germany have developed a new neural network that can reliably detect coronal holes from space-based observations. This application paves the way for more reliable space weather predictions and provides valuable information for the study of the solar activity cycle. The paper was published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. Much like our life on Earth depends…
Variants of viruses, such as that causing COVID-19, can now be quickly studied in the laboratory, even before they emerge in nature and become a major public health challenge. The University of Queensland, QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, Monash University, and Queensland Health have developed a technology to manipulate viruses synthetically allowing rapid analysis and mapping of new potential virus variants. UQ’s lead researcher Professor Alexander Khromykh said the technology was ideal for…
A new technology could dramatically improve the safety of lithium-ion batteries that operate with gas electrolytes at ultra-low temperatures. Nanoengineers at the University of California San Diego developed a separator–the part of the battery that serves as a barrier between the anode and cathode–that keeps the gas-based electrolytes in these batteries from vaporizing. This new separator could, in turn, help prevent the buildup of pressure inside the battery that leads to swelling and explosions. “By trapping gas molecules, this separator…
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing and the Cluster of Excellence for Ageing Research CECAD at the University of Cologne have discovered folate metabolism as a fundamental process for ageing. Its regulation underlies many known ageing signaling pathways and leads to longevity. This could provide a new opportunity to improve human health during ageing on a broad basis. Fundamental signalling pathway is crucial for longevity Several different causes of ageing have been discovered, but the question…
Understanding how magnetic correlations change over very short timescales could be harnessed to control magnetism for applications including data storage and superconductivity. What happens when very short pulses of laser light strike a magnetic material? A large international collaboration led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory set out to answer this very question. As they just reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the laser suppressed magnetic order across the entire material for…
Imaging technique could enable new pathways for reducing concrete’s hefty carbon footprint, as well as for 3-D printing of concrete. The concrete world that surrounds us owes its shape and durability to chemical reactions that start when ordinary Portland cement is mixed with water. Now, MIT scientists have demonstrated a way to watch these reactions under real-world conditions, an advance that may help researchers find ways to make concrete more sustainable. The study is a “Brothers Lumière moment for concrete…
The Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems IPMS and semiconductor intellectual property provider CAST, Inc. announced the immediate availability of EMSA5-FS, a fault-tolerant embedded RISC-V processor IP core designed to meet the most stringent functional safety requirements of automotive, air-borne, and other safety-critical applications. Developed by Fraunhofer IPMS, the EMSA5-FS Embedded Functional Safety RISC-V Processor is a 32-bit, in-order, single-issue, five-stage pipeline processor supporting the open standard RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA). Its fail-safe features include built-in triple or double modular…
Feedback
