Fraunhofer IDMT has developed a software tool for quality inspectors based on Artificial Intelligence (AI), which automates and simplifies the analysis of industrial sounds, for example in welding processes. Thanks to pre-built AI models, established methods for audio analysis and application-specific sensor data, companies can use it to improve their quality control decisively. Even without AI expert knowledge, statements can be made quickly and reliably regarding the quality of products and manufacturing processes during production and in the final quality…
The present SARS-coronavirus-2 pandemic with all its effects on society – both health and economic – highlights the urgency of developing new therapies for COVID-19 treatment. At the same time, it demonstrates the necessity to become well prepared for new virus infections we may be facing in the future. To help control the current pandemic and brace for novel pathogens that may cause future pandemics, Fraunhofer researchers have initiated the project BEAT-COVID to develop independent novel therapy strategies and build…
Ultrathin materials such as graphene promise a revolution in nanoscience and technology. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have now made an important advance within the field. In a recent paper in Nature Communications they present a method for controlling the edges of two-dimensional materials using a ‘magic’ chemical. “Our method makes it possible to control the edges – atom by atom – in a way that is both easy and scalable, using only mild heating together with abundant,…
Two open-ocean hydrographic stations record 40 years of change in the subtropical North Atlantic Ocean. New research published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment uses data from two sustained open-ocean hydrographic stations in the North Atlantic Ocean near Bermuda to demonstrate recent changes in ocean physics and chemistry since the 1980s. The study shows decadal variability and recent acceleration of surface warming, salinification, deoxygenation, and changes in carbon dioxide (CO2)-carbonate chemistry that drives ocean acidification. The study utilized datasets from…
A soil scientist from RUDN University discovered the effect of fertilization on the ability of the soil to retain carbon. To understand this mechanism, he and his team studied the movement of organic carbon in the soil of rice paddies. The results of the study can help increase the fertility of the paddies while at the same time reducing the volume of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. An article about the study was published in the Soil Biology and Biochemistry…
Scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and international collaborators demonstrated a new method for mapping the location and size of trees growing outside of forests, discovering billions of trees in arid and semi-arid regions and laying the groundwork for more accurate global measurement of carbon storage on land. Using powerful supercomputers and machine learning algorithms, the team mapped the crown diameter – the width of a tree when viewed from above – of more than 1.8…
Coronavirus uses enzymatic cutter for virus production and to disable essential immune proteins. American and Polish scientists, reporting Oct. 16 in the journal Science Advances, laid out a novel rationale for COVID-19 drug design – blocking a molecular “scissor” that the virus uses for virus production and to disable human proteins crucial to the immune response. The researchers are from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UT Health San Antonio) and the Wroclaw University of Science…
On the occasion of EclipseCon 2020, Fraunhofer FOKUS launches its simulation environment Eclipse MOSAIC. This solution is based on VSimRTI (Vehicle-2-X Simulation Runtime Infrastructure), which has been developed over the last 12 years in close cooperation with the DCAITI of the TU Berlin and has already been used by more than 600 partners to test mobility services and traffic scenarios. Eclipse MOSAIC is now partially available as open-source. Whether dynamic lane assignment or traffic light phase assistant, new mobility services…
Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, virologist Christian Drosten and UN Secretary-General António Guterres on COVID-19 and global health Due to the worsening situation in the COVID-19 pandemic, the World Health Summit (October 25-27) will be held exclusively in digital form this year. There will be no on-site events and therefore personal attendance on-site will not be possible. Participation in the World Health Summit 2020 is only online. Accreditation is not required. The opening ceremony…
The entire endemic megafauna of Madagascar and the Mascarene islands Mauritius and Rodrigues was eliminated during the past millennium. To investigate possible drivers of this extinction, an international team of scientists constructed an 8000-year record of the islands’ past climate. Their findings imply that the ecosystem was resilient to prior climate stress but ultimately collapsed with an increase in human activities. The results have now been published in Science Advances. Nearly all of Madagascan megafauna – including the famous Dodo…
Outstanding green visionaries from all over the world will meet Germany’s sustainability research elite during the first virtual science tour. The 25 winners of this year’s Green Talents Competition have been selected to attend the premiere of a Virtual Science Forum for talented junior researchers in the field of sustainability science, which starts today; responsible for the organisation of the competition is the DLR Project Management Agency. The winners are engaged in topics ranging from climate change to energy systems….
Research initiative of the Helmholtz Association presents strategies, technologies, and open-source tools. To contribute to global climate protection, Germany has to rapidly and comprehensively minimize the use of fossil energy sources and to transform the energy system accordingly. The Helmholtz Association’s research initiative “Energy System 2050” has studied how and by which means this can be achieved. One of the partners is Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). At the final conference in Berlin, scientists of the participating research centers presented…
Red dwarfs are the coolest kind of star. As such, they potentially allow liquid water to exist on planets that are quite close to them. In the search for habitable worlds beyond the borders of our solar system, this is a big advantage: the distance between an exoplanet and its star is a crucial factor for its detection. The closer the two are, the higher the chance that astronomers can detect the planet from Earth. “But these stars are rather…
Researchers at uOttawa have created a new method to measure the temporal evolution of electric fields with optical frequencies. The new approach, which works in ambient air, facilitates the direct measurement of the field waveform and could lead to breakthroughs in high-speed electronics. To learn more, we talked to Aleksey Korobenko, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of Ottawa, and lead author of “Femtosecond streaking in ambient air”, an article recently published in the journal…
The results of the VIBRA project of the Politecnico di Milano Funded by ERC and just completed, the project uncovers the cellular mechanisms underlying various diseases thanks to a new optical microscopy technique. The VIBRA project, “Very fast Imaging by Broadband coherent Raman”, has just ended at the Politecnico di Milano. Funded by the prestigious European Research Council of the European Community and lasted 5 years (2015-2020), it led to the development of a new revolutionary optical microscope in the…
High-profile research institutions, clinics and companies from seven European countries have formed a European Training Network aiming at the development of innovative light-based procedures for cancer diagnostics and therapy. The PHAST (Photonics for Healthcare: multiscAle cancer diagnosiS and Therapy) program funded by the European Commission provides an excellent, interdisciplinary qualification in the vibrant field of biophotonics for 15 Early Stage Researchers which will be enrolled in a strong multidisciplinary PhD program. The application phase for the program is ongoing and…
Feedback
