It is always exciting to find new isotopes with extreme neutron/proton numbers in nuclear physics research. In the region of heavy nuclei, α-decay is one of the pervasive decay modes and plays an essential role in searching for new isotopes. However, even after about a century of studying α-decay, scientists still cannot perfectly describe how the α-particle is formed at the surface of the nucleus before its emission. In the α-decay process, the α-particle can be regarded not only as…
With “DiWan” Fraunhofer IWS takes materials testing to a new level. Scientists of the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS at Dresden in cooperation with partners from research and industry are planning to create a virtual materials expert system. This system will offer interfaces to publicly available know-how such as the latest scientific papers on materials and relevant standards as well as the practical knowledge of experts. The artificial assistant will provide this accumulated expertise to its human…
Researchers at UniSA have developed a cost-effective technique that could deliver safe drinking water to millions of vulnerable people using cheap, sustainable materials and sunlight. Less than 3 per cent of the world’s water is fresh, and due to the pressures of climate change, pollution, and shifting population patterns, in many areas this already scarce resource is becoming scarcer. Currently, 1.42 billion people – including 450 million children – live in areas of high, or extremely high, water vulnerability, and…
Experiments at the University of Stuttgart cast doubts on the existence of quantum spin liquids – report in Science. A quantum spin liquid is a state of matter in which interacting quantum spins do not align even at lowest temperatures, but remain disordered. Research on this state has been going on for almost 50 years, but whether it really exists has never been proven beyond doubt. An international team led by physicist Prof. Martin Dressel at the University of Stuttgart…
Geology experts of TU Freiberg analyze the quality of Swedish ores. Research work on the Per Geijer iron ore deposits of Luossavaara-Kiirunavaara Aktiebolag (LKAB) near Kiruna is ongoing at TU Freiberg until August 2021. The results already show a very promising raw material potential for the associated supply of the iron and steel industry. Iron ore is the basis for the production of iron and steel – the world’s most important materials for the construction of buildings, machines, tools, cars,…
New study collects data on pollutants in the atmosphere … One consequence of the coronavirus pandemic has been global restrictions on mobility. This, in turn, has had an effect on pollution levels in the atmosphere. Researchers from across the world are using this unique opportunity to take measurements, collect data, and publish studies. An international team led by Forschungszentrum Jülich’s Institute of Climate and Energy Research – Troposphere has now published a comprehensive review providing an overview of results up…
Study shows how to make stable and large aerogels that remove heavy metals, organic solvents, organic dyes. Graphene excels at removing contaminants from water, but it’s not yet a commercially viable use of the wonder material. That could be changing. In a recent study, University at Buffalo engineers report a new process of 3D printing graphene aerogels that they say overcomes two key hurdles — scalability and creating a version of the material that’s stable enough for repeated use —…
Uncovering dynamics of ultrasmall, ultrafast groups of atoms … Our high-speed, high-bandwidth world constantly requires new ways to process and store information. Semiconductors and magnetic materials have made up the bulk of data storage devices for decades. In recent years, however, researchers and engineers have turned to ferroelectric materials, a type of crystal that can be manipulated with electricity. In 2016, the study of ferroelectrics got more interesting with the discovery of polar vortices — essentially spiral-shaped groupings of atoms — within…
Wastewater carries large quantities of organic substances into the rivers and lakes, leading to heavy growth of bacteria and oxygen deficiency. Measurement methods have so far been incapable of measuring this organic pollution precisely. A new method co-developed by experts from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon should provide a clear image of the water conditions in the future. The work has now been published in the scientific journal Science Advances. When wastewater from villages and cities flows into rivers and lakes, large…
Rhode Island considers naming the local coral as a state emblem. As the Rhode Island legislature considers designating the Northern Star Coral an official state emblem, researchers are finding that studying this local creature’s recovery from a laboratory-induced stressor could help better understand how to protect endangered tropical corals. A new study published today in mSystems, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology, investigates antibiotic-induced disturbance of the coral (Astrangia poculata) and shows that antibiotic exposure significantly altered the…
CMU/ITT researchers develop novel microelectrode platform to access and record intracellular activity. Behind every heartbeat and brain signal is a massive orchestra of electrical activity. While current electrophysiology observation techniques have been mostly limited to extracellular recordings, a forward-thinking group of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia has identified a flexible, low-cost, and biocompatible platform for enabling richer intracellular recordings. The group’s unique “across the ocean” partnership started two years ago at the Bioelectronics Winter School…
Fraunhofer ISE achieves 26 percent … A team of researchers led by Dr. Armin Richter of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE achieved a record conversion efficiency of 26.0 percent for both-sides contacted silicon solar cells. In the recently published Nature Energy article “Design Rules for High-Efficiency Both-Sides-Contacted Silicon Solar Cell with Balanced Charge Carrier Transport and Recombination Losses”, Richter explains the structure of the record-breaking cell and presents fundamental design-related aspects leading to even higher efficiencies. The…
Lab study solves textbook problem … The answer to a basic science question could unlock the key to complex medical challenges. -Scientists have searched for years to understand how cells measure their size. Cell size is critical. It’s what regulates cell division in a growing organism. When the microscopic structures double in size, they divide. One cell turns into two. Two cells turn into four. The process repeats until an organism has enough cells. And then it stops. Or at…
Workshop provided venue for discussion. Many people who have COVID-19 make a full recovery and return to their baseline state of health; however, some people have symptoms or other sequelae weeks or months after initial SARS-CoV-2 infection. These heterogeneous symptoms were the subject of the virtual “Workshop on Post-acute Sequelae of COVID-19” hosted on Dec. 2 and 4, 2020, by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in collaboration with other institutes and centers of the National Institutes…
Almost all bacteria rely on the same emergency valves–protein channels that pop open under pressure, releasing a deluge of cell contents. It is a last-ditch effort, a failsafe that prevents bacteria from exploding and dying when stretched to the limit. If we understood how those protein channels worked, antibiotic drugs could be designed to open them on demand, draining a bacterium of its nutrients by exploiting a floodgate common to many species. But these channels are tricky to operate in…
In April 2019, scientists released the first image of a black hole using the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). However, that remarkable achievement was just the beginning of the science story to be told. New results are being released today that promise to give unparalleled insight into this black hole, and to improve tests of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. The collaborative effort includes a substantial contribution from the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie including observations with the 100-m radio telescope in Effelsberg….
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