The process of developing new generations of commercial vehicles and heavy equipment is complex. The hardware-in-the-loop technique gives researchers at Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft the opportunity to reproduce and virtually test machines in a software simulation, making machine development faster and more affordable. This technology also enables the testing of malfunctions and critical borderline situations without endangering people or the machine. Heavy equipment is a familiar sight on streets in every city: It is used to excavate earth for subway tunnels, level roads…
Development of innovative technologies for beam steering of communication antennas. With the constant increase in data volumes, wireless communication and mobility lead to ever greater demands on electronic systems. In order to meet these requirements, complex, powerful, hardware-based high-frequency components are required, including with the essential function of beamforming, the spatial control of the antenna directivity to increase the capacity of a communication system or to improve the power efficiency. The EU-funded joint project SMARTWAVE started with a virtual kick-off…
Cavity-enhanced radiative energy transfer converts biomolecular information from a single droplet into trillions of distinctive photonic barcodes. Optical barcodes enable detection and tracking via unique spectral fingerprints. They’ve been widely applied in areas ranging from multiplexed bioassays and cell tagging to anticounterfeiting and security. Yu-Cheng Chen of the Bio+Intelligent Photonics Laboratory at Nanyang Technological University notes that the concept of optical barcodes typically refers to a fixed spectral pattern corresponding to a single target. “Optical barcodes have lacked the capability…
Vaccine protects animals against tick-borne Powassan virus, an emerging infectious disease. Scientists at The Wistar Institute have designed and tested the first-of-its-kind synthetic DNA vaccine against Powassan virus (POWV), targeting portions of the virus envelope protein. A rapidly reemerging tick-borne disease, POWV has been reported to be fatal in 10% of infected people with detrimental neurological consequences including encephalitis and meningitis. This new POWV vaccine candidate, described in a paper published today in PLOS Neglected Infectious Diseases, is one of…
Rice University lab detours potential environmental hazard into useful material. Plastic waste comes back in black as pristine graphene, thanks to ACDC. That’s what Rice University scientists call the process they employed to make efficient use of waste plastic that would otherwise add to the planet’s environmental woes. In this instance, the lab of Rice chemist James Tour modified its method to make flash graphene to enhance it for recycling plastic into graphene. The lab’s study appears in the American…
Magnets are to be found everywhere in our daily lives, whether in satellites, telephones or on fridge doors. However, they are made up of heavy inorganic materials whose component elements are, in some cases, of limited availability. Now, researchers from the CNRS, the University of Bordeaux and the ESRF (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble)* have developed a new lightweight molecule-based magnet, produced at low temperatures, and exhibiting unprecedented magnetic properties. This compound, derived from coordination chemistry**, contains chromium, an…
… density fluctuations in amorphous silicon discovered Silicon does not have to be crystalline, but can also be produced as an amorphous thin film. In such amorphous films, the atomic structure is disordered like in a liquid or glass. If additional hydrogen is incorporated during the production of these thin layers, so-called a-Si:H layers are formed. “Such a-Si:H thin films have been known for decades and are used for various applications, for example as contact layers in world record tandem…
Quantum dot logic circuits provide the long-sought building blocks for innovative devices, including printable electronics, flexible displays, and medical diagnostics. Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory and their collaborators from the University of California, Irvine have created fundamental electronic building blocks out of tiny structures known as quantum dots and used them to assemble functional logic circuits. The innovation promises a cheaper and manufacturing-friendly approach to complex electronic devices that can be fabricated in a chemistry laboratory via simple, solution-based…
A spot of pressure enables chemical conversion to hardened 2D material. Marrying two layers of graphene is an easy route to the blissful formation of nanoscale diamond, but sometimes thicker is better. While it may only take a bit of heat to turn a treated bilayer of the ultrathin material into a cubic lattice of diamane, a bit of pressure in just the right place can convert few-layer graphene as well. The otherwise chemically driven process is theoretically possible according…
Analysis identified 525 genes encoding proteins that act on the nervous system, cardiovascular system and cell walls. One of the molecules proved effective against cancer cells in preliminary test results. Researchers based in Brazil and the United States have completed the first-ever mapping exercise to profile the toxins produced by tube-dwelling anemones, or cerianthids, a family of marine animals belonging to the same phylum (Cnidaria) as sea anemones, jellyfish and corals. The analysis revealed that the toxins that can act…
Seaweed as a Sustainable Source of Raw Materials EU research project with the participation of the University of Hohenheim searches for new, sustainable food additives and packaging materials from seaweeds and seagrasses. Algae (or seaweeds) already serve as a source of raw materials for stabilizers or thickening and gelling agents, such as agar, alginate, and carrageenan. However, research is also increasingly interested in their potential as a carbohydrate source for bioplastic development. These are not only biodegradable, but their properties…
Plants have veins that transport nutrients through their body. These veins are highly organized. The hormone auxin travels directionally from cell-to-cell and provides cells with positional information, coordinating them during vein formation and regeneration. Scientists at IST Austria now discovered how cells translate auxin signals into forming a complex system of veins. This phenomenon also applies to wound healing and might lead to more mechanically resistant plants and further agricultural implications. The human body uses veins and blood to transport…
The artificial impactor disturbed boulders within a 30m radius from the center of the impact crater- providing important insight into asteroids’ resurfacing processes. Professor ARAKAWA Masahiko (Graduate School of Science, Kobe University, Japan) and members of the Hayabusa2 mission discovered more than 200 boulders ranging from 30cm to 6m in size, which either newly appeared or moved as a result of the artificial impact crater created by Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa2’s Small Carry-on Impactor (SCI) on April 5th, 2019. Some boulders…
The freezing of water is one of the most common processes. However, understanding the microstructure of ice and its hydrogen-bonding networks has been a challenge. The low-energy structure of water octamer is predicted to be nominally cubic, with eight tri-coordinated water molecules at the eight corners of the cube. Such tri-coordinated water molecules have been identified at the surface of ice. Only a few gas-phase studies have been achieved for experimental characterization of water octamer, and two nearly isoenergetic structures…
Graphene and other single-atom-thick substances are a category of wonder materials, with researchers the world over investigating their electronic properties for potential applications in technologies as diverse as solar cells, novel semiconductors, sensors, and energy storage. The greatest challenge for the design of these single-layer or 2D materials into all their myriad potential uses is the need for an atom-by-atom perfection and uniformity that can be difficult and painstaking to achieve at such small scales, and difficult to assess as…
Neutrons make structural changes in molecular brushes visible They look like microscopic bottle brushes: Polymers with a backbone and tufts of side arms. This molecular design gives them unusual abilities: For example, they can bind active agents and release them again when the temperature changes. With the help of neutrons, a research team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has now succeeded to unveil the changes in the internal structure in course of the process. “The structure of the…
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