An international research team from TU Wien (Vienna), IST Austria and MIT (USA) has developed a new artificial intelligence system based on the brains of tiny animals, such as threadworms. This novel AI-system can control a vehicle with just a few artificial neurons. The team says that system has decisive advantages over previous deep learning models: It copes much better with noisy input, and, because of its simplicity, its mode of operation can be explained in detail. It does not…
International research team led by pharmacists of the University of Jena uncovers molecular regulation mechanism: toxic substance found in Staphylococcus aureus does not just damage cells, but also stimulates tissue regeneration. Normally they are among the many harmless organisms found in and on the human body: one in four people have millions of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria on their skin and on the mucous membranes of the upper respiratory tract, without being aware of it. In some cases, however, the harmless…
Collaboration by researchers in Singapore and Australia lead to first-of-its-kind computational biology algorithm that could enable more effective cellular therapies against major diseases. Cellular therapy is a powerful strategy to produce patient-specific, personalised cells to treat many diseases, including heart disease and neurological disorders. But a major challenge for cell therapy applications is keeping cells alive and well in the lab. That may soon change as researchers at Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, and Monash University, Australia have devised an algorithm…
New research shows that sunspots and other active regions can change the overall solar emissions. The sunspots cause some emissions to dim and others to brighten; the timing of the changes also varies between different types of emissions. This knowledge will help astronomers characterize the conditions of stars, which has important implications for finding exoplanets around those stars. An international research team led by Shin Toriumi at the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency added up the different types of emissions observed…
The continuing progress in miniaturization of silicon microelectronic and photonic devices is causing cooling of the device structures to become increasingly challenging. Conventional heat transport in bulk materials is dominated by acoustic phonons, which are quasiparticles that represent the material’s lattice vibrations, similar to the way that photons represent light waves. Unfortunately, this type of cooling is reaching its limits in these tiny structures. However, surface effects become dominant as the materials in nanostructured devices become thinner, which means that…
Manufacturing safer, more powerful batteries that use geopolitically stable resources requires solid electrolytes and replacing lithium with sodium. A chemical solution is now being offered to battery developers. The lithium batteries that power our electronic devices and electric vehicles have a number of drawbacks. The electrolyte – the medium that enables electrons and positive charges to move between the electrodes – is a flammable liquid. What’s more, the lithium they’re made of is a limited resource that is the focus…
Despite being championed by a host of celebrity chefs, crayfish ‘trapping’ is not helping to control invasive American signal crayfish, according to new research by UCL and King’s College London. There have been grave concerns within the science community and amongst conservationists that American signal crayfish are wiping out other species of crayfish across Europe – including Britain’s only native crayfish, the endangered white-clawed crayfish. In their new study, published in the Journal of Applied Ecology, the researchers find that…
Discovery that bacterial biofilms behave like animal embryos sheds new light on the origin of life. Bacteria are a dominant form of life that inhabit every environment on Earth. This includes human bodies, where they outnumber our cells and genes and regulate our existence for good or bad. Bacteria are regularly viewed as simple, single-celled organisms. As bacteria are ancient, it is widely accepted that a bacteria-like, unicellular being was the first life. Recent work published in ‘Molecular Biology and…
Gliding movements to invade host cells. In biological terms, gliding refers to the type of movement during which a cell moves along a surface without changing its shape. This form of movement is unique to parasites from the phylum Apicomplexa, such as Plasmodium and Toxoplasma. Both parasites, which are transmitted by mosquitoes and cats, have an enormous impact on global heath. Plasmodium causes 228 million malaria infections and around 400,000 deaths per year. Toxoplasma, which infects even one third of…
Biotechnological solutions for degradation and recycling of plastics. Plastics are wonderful materials. They are extremely versatile and of almost eternal durability. But that also causes a problem. After around 100 years of plastic production, plastic particles are almost everywhere: in ground water, the oceans, the air and the food chain. Across the globe, considerable efforts are being taken to solve this “plastic crisis” by using biotechnological methods. However, most progress is restricted to a specific type of plastic, namely polyesters…
Dyeing process gives textiles electronic properties Whether in fitness, medicine or in the entertainment industry, IT devices worn on the body, such as smart watches, are becoming increasingly popular. Such wearables benefit from the input device fitting as naturally as possible to the body – for example as electro-sensitive fabrics, so-called e-textiles. Computer scientists at Saarland University show how these special textiles can be produced in a comparatively easy way, thus opening up new use cases. “Our goal was to…
Physicists at Mainz U successfully carry out the controlled transport of stored light. Patrick Windpassinger and his team demonstrate how light stored in a cloud of ultra-cold atoms can be transported by means of an optical conveyor belt. A team of physicists led by Professor Patrick Windpassinger at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has successfully transported light stored in a quantum memory over a distance of 1.2 millimeters. They have demonstrated that the controlled transport process and its dynamics has…
Sydney undergraduate unlocks bizarre secrets of a ticking time-bomb star. While on COVID lockdown, a University of Sydney honours student has written a research paper on a star system dubbed one of the “exotic peacocks of the stellar world”. Only one in a hundred million stars makes the cut to be classified a Wolf-Rayet: ferociously bright, hot stars doomed to imminent collapse in a supernova explosion leaving only a dark remnant, such as a black hole. Rarest of all, even…
International MOSAiC expedition successfully completed Researchers from TROPOS and Leipzig University contribute to the success of the largest Arctic expeditio. With the return of the Polarstern, the largest Arctic expedition of all times has come to a successful end. For more than a year, the German research icebreaker travelled in 5 cruise legs with more than 400 people from 20 countries to investigate the epicentre of climate change more precisely than ever before. At the end of the expedition, which…
Martensitic chromium steels are one of the steel grades with a future, steels that are ideal for automotive applications since they are both lightweight and corrosion resistant. These materials are particularly in demand for the design of collision-safe battery boxes for electric cars. For this reason, the Fraunhofer Institute for Laser Technology ILT in Aachen uses these sophisticated components as demonstration components for laser welding and heat treatment. As part of the AiF research project FAAM, supported by FOSTA –…
Imaging findings of in situ pulmonary artery thrombosis associated with radiation therapy are different from acute pulmonary emboli and do not appear to embolize. According to an article in ARRS’ American Journal of Roentgenology (AJR), the imaging findings of in situ pulmonary artery thrombosis (PAT) associated with radiation therapy (RT) are different from those of acute pulmonary emboli and do not appear to embolize. Due to the differences in clinical prognosis and subsequent management strategies, in situ PAT associated with…
Feedback
