A new generation of thermomagnetic generators Alloy film thickness and footprint influence electrical power — publication in Joule. Use of waste heat contributes largely to sustainable energy supply. Scientists of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Tohoku University in Japan have now come much closer to their goal of converting waste heat into electrical power at small temperature differences. As reported in Joule, electrical power per footprint of thermomagnetic generators based on Heusler alloy films has been increased by a…
Scientists are working to expand the way they have made immune cells fight tumors from a small handful of cancers to a wide array of them. Scientists are hoping advances in cancer research could lead to a day when a patient’s own immune system could be used to fight and destroy a wide range of tumors. Cancer immunotherapy has some remarkable successes, but its effectiveness has been limited to a relatively small handful of cancers. In APL Bioengineering, by AIP…
Scientists experimentally realize 2D Si-Ge alloys with tunable electronic properties, getting us closer to a breakthrough in modern electronics. Semiconducting 2D alloys could be key to overcoming the technical limitations of modern electronics. Although 2D Si-Ge alloys would have interesting properties for this purpose, they were only predicted theoretically. Now, scientists from Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology have realized the first experimental demonstration. They have also shown that the Si to Ge ratio can be adjusted to fine…
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the major greenhouse gases causing global warming. If carbon dioxide could be converted into energy, it would be killing two birds with one stone in addressing the environmental issues. A joint research team led by City University of Hong Kong (CityU) has developed a new photocatalyst which can produce methane fuel (CH4) selectively and effectively from carbon dioxide using sunlight. According to their research, the quantity of methane produced was almost doubled in the…
mRNA molecules from retrogenes are reverse transcribed to DNA and incorporated into the genome. A new study from scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing shows that the potential genetic burden of mutations arising from retrogenes is significantly greater than originally thought. Genetic information is stored in DNA and transcribed as mRNA. The mRNA is usually translated into proteins. However, it has long been known that mRNA…
An effort led by Lin Li, Ph.D., assistant professor of physics at The University of Texas at El Paso, in collaboration with students and faculty from Howard University, has identified key variants that help explain the differences between the viruses that cause COVID-19 and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). A team comprised of researchers from UTEP and the historically Black research university in Washington, D.C., discovered valuable data in comparing the fundamental mechanisms of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS-CoV)…
New study found that electrons can reach ultra-relativistic energies for very special conditions in the magnetosphere when space is devoid of plasma. New study found that electrons can reach ultra-relativistic energies for very special conditions in the magnetosphere when space is devoid of plasma. Recent measurements from NASA’s Van Allen Probes spacecraft showed that electrons can reach ultra-relativistic energies flying at almost the speed of light. Hayley Allison, Yuri Shprits and collaborators from the German Research Centre for Geosciences have…
Plankton algae that supplement photosynthesis by eating other algae and bacteria may play a crucial role in the future Arctic. As the sea ice shrinks in the Arctic, the plankton community that produces food for the entire marine food chain is changing. New research shows that a potentially toxic species of plankton algae that lives both by doing photosynthesis and absorbing food may become an important player in the Arctic Ocean as the future sea ice becomes thinner and thinner….
Just as pressing a guitar string produces a higher pitch, sending laser light through a material can shift it to higher energies and higher frequencies. Scientists have discovered how to use this process to explore quantum materials in more detail. Topological insulators are one of the most puzzling quantum materials – a class of materials whose electrons cooperate in surprising ways to produce unexpected properties. The edges of a TI are electron superhighways where electrons flow with no loss, ignoring…
Completion of Australian-led astronomy project sheds light on the evolution of the Universe. The complex mechanics determining how galaxies spin, grow, cluster and die have been revealed following the release of all the data gathered during a massive seven-year Australian-led astronomy research project. The scientists observed 13 galaxies at a time, building to a total of 3068, using a custom-built instrument called the Sydney-AAO Multi-Object Integral-Field Spectrograph (SAMI), connected to the 4-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) at Siding Spring Observatory in…
An online database has been created for the Meckel Collections in cooperation with the IT Service Center (ITZ) at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. The collections are housed at the Institute of Anatomy and Cell Biology in the Faculty of Medicine and contain around 8,000 medical and zoological specimens. Some of the items date back to the 18th century and are unique and extremely valuable from a medical and historical perspective. “For the first time, all of the information about an…
Trigger for autoimmune diseases and cancer of the lymph node found Autoimmune diseases, in which the body’s own immune system attacks healthy tissue, can be life-threatening and can impact all organs. A research team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now found a possible cause for these self-destructive immune system attacks: a hyperactive RANK protein on the surface of B cells. The research opens the door to new therapeutic possibilities. The immune system can be a mixed blessing:…
DFKI presents method for image-based diagnosis of Corona Apart from the commonly used PCR tests for the diagnosis of infections with SARS-CoV-2, the Corona virus can also be detected on computed tomography scans. With a new method of automated image recognition, this form of diagnosis can be refined and made more comprehensible for medical staff. In an international cooperation, the DFKI research department Interactive Machine Learning (IML) has developed an interactive AI system that, with a success rate of 92…
A new method for constructing special solar cells could significantly increase their efficiency. Not only are the cells made up of thin layers, they also consist of specifically arranged nanoblocks. This has been shown in a new study by an international research team led by the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), which was published in the scientific journal “Nano Letters”. Commercially available solar cells are mostly made of silicon. “Based on the properties of silicon it’s not feasible to say…
A consortium led by physicist Wolfram Pernice from the University of Münster is receiving almost six million euros for four years from the European Commission for the “PHOENICS” project as part of the “FET Proactive” funding line (Horizon 2020). The group is researching fast and energy-efficient optical computer architectures. The project is intended to give a major boost to the development of new computing resources. Artificial intelligence (AI) is seen as a key technology with fields of application in a…
Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg, RWTH Aachen University (both in Germany), the Flatiron institute as well as Columbia University (both in the USA) and part of the Max Planck – New York City Center for Non-equilibrium Quantum Phenomena have provided a fresh perspective on the potential of twisted van der Waals materials for realising novel and elusive states of matter and providing a unique materials-based quantum simulation platform. The…
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