They are not yet usable as building blocks – but the lanes melted with the laser are a first step towards 3D-printed buildings, landing points, and roads made of moon dust. In the MOONRISE project, the team of scientists from the Institute of Space Systems (IRAS) at the Technical University of Braunschweig and the Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. (LZH) have succeeded in both melting regolith under lunar gravity and “printing” joint lanes. At the end of the two-year project funded…
All photo-electronic devices work on the basis that the materials inside them absorb, transmit and reflect light. Understanding the photo properties of a specific material at the atomic level not only helps to decide what material to choose for a given application but also opens up ways to control such properties on demand. In a new collaborative work, researchers from Italy, Germany and the United States show how ‘kicking’ the atoms in a CuGeO3 crystal with an infrared laser pulse…
They are as thin as a hair, only a hundred thousand times thinner—so-called two-dimensional materials, consisting of a single layer of atoms, have been booming in research for years. The materials possess novel properties that can only be explained with the help of the laws of quantum mechanics and that may be relevant for enhanced technologies. Researchers at the University of Bonn have now used ultracold atoms to gain new insights into previously unknown quantum phenomena. They found out that…
An international team of researchers found that so-called photonic processors, with which data is processed by means of light, can process information very much more rapidly and in parallel than electronic chips. The results have been published in the scientific journal “Nature”. In the digital age, data traffic is growing at an exponential rate. The demands on computing power for applications in artificial intelligence such as pattern and speech recognition in particular, or for self-driving vehicles, often exceeds the capacities…
‘Coral hospital’ tool could help safeguard reefs facing climate change Researchers have found a novel way to identify heat-stressed corals, which could help scientists pinpoint the coral species that need protection from warming ocean waters linked to climate change, according to a Rutgers-led study. “This is similar to a blood test to assess human health,” said senior author Debashish Bhattacharya, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers…
In older people with type 1 diabetes, damage to the retina may be linked to memory problems and other cognitive conditions. As they age, people with diabetes are more likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive disorders than are people without diabetes. Scientists at Joslin Diabetes Center now have shown that routine eye imaging can identify changes in the retina that may be associated with cognitive disorders in older people with type 1 diabetes. These results may open up…
While humanity is facing the COVID-19 pandemic, the citrus industry is trying to manage its own devastating disease, Huanglongbing (HLB), also known as citrus greening disease. HLB is the most destructive citrus disease in the world. In the past decade, the disease has annihilated the Florida citrus industry, reducing orange production for juice and other products by 72%. Candidatus Liberibacter asiaticus (CLas) is the microbe associated with the disease. It resides in the phloem of the tree and, like many…
Most of the mangrove forests on the coasts of Oman disappeared about 6,000 years ago. Until now, the reason for this was not entirely clear. A current study of the University of Bonn now sheds light on this: It indicates that the collapse of coastal ecosystems was caused by climatic changes. In contrast, falling sea level or overuse by humans are not likely to be the reasons. The speed of the mangrove extinction was dramatic: Many of the stocks were…
In the future, the Antarctic could become a greener place and be colonised by new species. At the same time, some species will likely disappear. 25 researchers recently presented these and many other findings in a major international project, in which they analysed hundreds of articles on the Antarctic published in the past ten years. By doing so, the team have provided an exceptionally comprehensive assessment of the status quo and future of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean that surrounds…
The strength and beauty of mother-of-pearl, also known as nacre, comes from its remarkably regular and uniform architecture. Until now, it was unclear how this intricate structure could be built by a multitude of single cells, all secreting materials at different locations at the same time. In a new study published in Nature Physics, researchers from the B CUBE – Center for Molecular Bioengineering at TU Dresden and European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble describe, for the first time,…
Topological materials are characterised by unique electronic and physical properties that are determined by the underlying topology of their electronic systems. Scientists from the Max Planck Institutes for Microstructure Physics (Halle) and for Chemical Physics of Solids (Dresden) have now discovered that (TaSe4)2I is the first material in which a charge density wave induces a phase transition between the semimetal to insulator state. An international team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics, Halle (Saale), the Max…
Supersolids are fluid and solid at the same time. Physicists from Innsbruck and Geneva have for the first time investigated what happens when such a state is brought out of balance. They discovered a soft form of a solid of high interest for science. As the researchers led by Francesca Ferlaino and Thierry Giamarchi report in Nature Physics, they were also able to reverse the process and restore supersolidity. Last year, more than fifty years after initial theoretical proposals, researchers…
New Columbia Engineering study–first to investigate the long-term effect of soil moisture-atmosphere feedbacks in drylands–finds that soil moisture exerts a negative feedback on surface water availability in drylands, offsetting some of the expected decline. Scientists have thought that global warming will increase the availability of surface water–freshwater resources generated by precipitation minus evapotranspiration–in wet regions, and decrease water availability in dry regions. This expectation is based primarily on atmospheric thermodynamic processes. As air temperatures rise, more water evaporates into the…
Plants can perceive and react to light across a wide spectrum. New research from Prof. Nitzan Shabek’s laboratory in the Department of Plant Biology, College of Biological Sciences shows how plants can respond to blue light in particular. “Plants can see much better than we can,” Shabek said. Plants don’t have dedicated light-detecting organs, like our eyes. They do have a variety of dedicated receptors that can sense almost every single wavelength. One such are the blue light photoreceptors called…
Sunlight offers a potential solution in the search for an energy source that does not harm the planet, but this depends on finding a way to efficiently turn electromagnetic energy into electricity. Researchers from KAUST have shown how a known herbicide can improve this conversion in organic devices. While solar cells have traditionally been made from inorganic materials such as silicon, organic materials are starting to break through as an alternative because they are light, flexible and relatively inexpensive to…
How tomorrow’s windows will generate electricity A new study led by scientists from Incheon National University in Korea shows how to make a fully transparent solar cell. Five years after the Paris climate agreement, all eyes are on the world’s progress on the road to a carbon-free future. A crucial part of this goal involves the energy transition from fossil fuels to renewable sources, such as sun, water, wind and wave energy. Among those, solar energy has always held the…
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