Maison Fibre of the University of Stuttgart at Biennale Architettura 2021. In response to the exhibition theme “How will we live together?”, the Institute for Computational Design and Construction (ICD) and the Institute of Building Structures and Structural Design (ITKE) of the Cluster of Excellence IntCDC at the University of Stuttgart present a full-scale inhabitable installation made entirely from robotically produced, fibrous building elements, constituting the very first multi-story structure of its kind. The Maison Fibre, exhibited at the 17th…
– the basis for innovative semiconductor devices. The Berlin-based Ferdinand-Braun-Institut (FBH) recently put a sophisticated ion implanter system from High Voltage Engineering Europa B.V. into operation. The highly versatile tool extends the technological capabilities of FBH for in-house research and customer processes. With three different ion sources and the ability to heat substrates, the implanter is ideally suited for the development of innovative semiconductor devices. Among other things, the system enables doping implantations of wide-bandgap semiconductors, whose outstanding material properties…
… enabling personalized medicine with wireless charging. Treatment of chronic autoimmune diseases is no longer limited to expensive drugs and undesirable side effects. Neuromodulation has been shown to be effective in treating diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, chronic headaches, asthma or Parkinson’s disease. To ready the technology for widespread clinical application, researchers at Fraunhofer IZM are developing a new generation of microimplants as part of the EU Moore4Medical project. These highly miniaturized devices have a special feature: the implants can…
Where do you find inspiration? New research suggests that a good place to look is in an art museum. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany, have found that appealing visual art can increase moments of inspiration. In a new article published in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, the authors report several experiments in which participants were asked to write short creative stories in response to different prompts. People reported feeling…
Radio telescope images enable a new way to study magnetic fields in galaxy clusters millions of light years away. For the first time, researchers have observed plasma jets interacting with magnetic fields in a massive galaxy cluster 600 million light years away, thanks to the help of radio telescopes and supercomputer simulations. The findings, published in the journal Nature, can help clarify how such galaxy clusters evolve. Galaxy clusters can contain up to thousands of galaxies bound together by gravity….
A critical process in the infection cycle of viruses has been revealed for the first time in dynamic detail using pioneering plant-based technology. Evidence about the process of virus maturation revealed in the research could help us develop new methods for treating viral infections. Maturation plays a critical role for all animal and bacterial viruses and is required to produce infectious virions or particles. Though the outlines of the process have been determined for many groups of viruses, detailed mechanistic…
Dresden and Copenhagen researchers establish human pancreas culture system. The pancreas is a little organ behind the stomach and has two main functions – digestion and blood sugar regulation. How the human pancreas develops has been relatively unexplored for ethical and practical reasons. Researchers from the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden, Germany, the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Biology (DanStem) in Copenhagen, Denmark, and several other international collaborators, including CIC bioGUNE…
Before the huge potential of tiny nanocarriers for highly targeted drug delivery and environmental clean-up can be realized, scientists first need to be able to see them. Currently researchers have to rely on attaching fluorescent dyes or heavy metals to label parts of organic nanocarrier structures for investigation, often changing them in the process. A new technique using chemically-sensitive “soft” X-rays offers a simpler, non-disruptive way of gaining insight into this nano-world. In a study published by Nature Communications, a…
A research team from TU Wien together with US research institutes came across a surprising form of ‘quantum criticality’; this could lead to a design concept for new materials. In everyday life, phase transitions usually have to do with temperature changes – for example, when an ice cube gets warmer and melts. But there are also different kinds of phase transitions, depending on other parameters such as magnetic field. In order to understand the quantum properties of materials, phase transitions…
Tracking down species on the go using environmental DNA. Sloughed off skin and bodily fluids are things most people would prefer to avoid. But for marine biologist like Cheryl Lewis Ames, Associate Professor of Applied Marine Biology in the Graduate School of Agricultural Science at Tohoku University (Japan), such remnants of life have become a magical key to detecting the unseen. Any organism living in the ocean will inevitably leave behind traces containing their DNA – environmental DNA (eDNA) –…
Multistep technique uses small invertebrate to detect, count and characterize nanoplastics. If you’ve been to your local beach, you may have noticed the wind tossing around litter such as an empty potato chip bag or a plastic straw. These plastics often make their way into the ocean, affecting not only marine life and the environment but also threatening food safety and human health. Eventually, many of these plastics break down into microscopic sizes, making it hard for scientists to quantify…
Scientists at IST Austria discover how a high-risk gene for developing autism spectrum disorder affects brain development. Study published in Nature Communications. Although many forms of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are thought to have genetic causes, the cellular and molecular functions of the identified genes remain unclear. Scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology (IST) Austria studied a high-risk gene and discovered its important role during a critical phase of brain development. Within the European Union alone, about three…
Chiral-spin rotation found in non-collinear antiferromagnet. Researchers at Tohoku University and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) have discovered a new spintronic phenomenon – a persistent rotation of chiral-spin structure. Their discovery was published in the journal Nature Materials on May 13, 2021. Tohoku University and JAEA researchers studied the response of chiral-spin structure of a non-collinear antiferromagnet Mn3Sn thin film to electron spin injection and found that the chiral-spin structure shows persistent rotation at zero magnetic field. Moreover, their…
The model can better predict the physical phenomenon inside of very-high-temperature pebble-bed reactors. When one of the largest modern earthquakes struck Japan on March 11, 2011, the nuclear reactors at Fukushima-Daiichi automatically shut down, as designed. The emergency systems, which would have helped maintain the necessary cooling of the core, were destroyed by the subsequent tsunami. Because the reactor could no longer cool itself, the core overheated, resulting in a severe nuclear meltdown, the likes of which haven’t been seen…
Analag-to-digital converters are a key component of nearly every piece of electronic equipment. To meet soaring demand for lightning-quick mobile technology, each year tech giants create faster, more powerful devices with longer-lasting battery power than previous models. A major reason companies like Apple and Samsung can miraculously pull this off year after year is because engineers and researchers around the world are designing increasingly power-efficient microchips that still deliver high speeds. To that end, researchers led by a team at…
Self-propelled particles can condense by turning and moving toward crowded areas. We observe water vapor condensing into liquid droplets on a daily basis, be it as dew drops on leaves or as droplets on the lid of a cooking pot. Since the work of Dutch physicist J.D. van der Waals in the 19th century, condensation has been understood to result from attractive forces between the molecules of a fluid. Now, an international team of researchers has discovered a new mechanism…
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