Research led by University of Pennsylvania biologists reveals an antagonistic relationship behind flower development. In an elegant choreography, plants take cues from their environment and channel them into flowers, roots, or branches. In a new paper in Nature Communications, biologist Doris Wagner of the School of Arts & Sciences and colleagues identified some of the behind-the-scenes machinations that go into arriving at these variations in plant architecture. Long interested in the translation of these environmental inputs to physical traits, Wagner…
Pioneering new research has helped geologists solve a long-standing puzzle that could help pinpoint new, untapped concentrations of some the most valuable rare earth deposits. A team of geologists, led by Professor Frances Wall from the Camborne School of Mines, have discovered a new hypothesis to predict where rare earth elements neodymium and dysprosium could be found. The elements are among the most sought after, because they are an essential part of digital and clean energy manufacturing, including magnets in…
At around 60 million light-years from Earth, the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy, NGC 1365, is captured beautifully in this image by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Located in the constellation of Fornax (the Furnace), the blue and fiery orange swirls show us where stars have just formed and the dusty sites of future stellar nurseries. At the outer edges of the image, enormous star-forming regions within NGC 1365 can be seen. The bright, light-blue regions indicate the presence of hundreds…
New method generates precisely controlled graphene microbubbles with perfectly spherical curvature for lenses. Tiny bubbles can solve large problems. Microbubbles–around 1-50 micrometers in diameter–have widespread applications. They’re used for drug delivery, membrane cleaning, biofilm control, and water treatment. They’ve been applied as actuators in lab-on-a-chip devices for microfluidic mixing, ink-jet printing, and logic circuitry, and in photonics lithography and optical resonators. And they’ve contributed remarkably to biomedical imaging and applications like DNA trapping and manipulation. Given the broad range of…
According to a team of ecologists from RUDN University, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) can be used as pollution indicators and help monitor the movement of pollutants in environmental components such as soils, plants, and water. To find this out, the team conducted a large-scale study of a variety of soil, water, and plant samples collected from a vast area from China to the Antarctic. The results of the study were published in the Applied Geochemistry journal. Geochemical barriers mark the…
Helping NASA scientists understand major flares and life around other stars. NASA’s extensive fleet of spacecraft allows scientists to study the Sun extremely close-up – one of the agency’s spacecraft is even on its way to fly through the Sun’s outer atmosphere. But sometimes taking a step back can provide new insight. In a new study, scientists looked at sunspots – darkened patches on the Sun caused by its magnetic field – at low resolution as if they were trillions…
Although deep learning algorithms are righteously handled as one of the key aspects of modern Artificial Intelligence (AI), the conclusions of the methods do not offer a high degree of security. Many areas with potential for AI application bear too many risks to be controlled by systems that are not verifiable. The two Bremen-based research departments of the DFKI are working on a new method for system control, combining the advantages of fast self-learning and reliable verification via symbolical models….
Strengthening innovative power of German medical technology industry Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Engineering IBMT as partner in the BMB joint project “EUREKA-AMeLie: Advanced Systems Engineering aims to reduce production costs for SMEs and increase design flexibility – Exemplary testing on application cases from the fields of in-vitro diagnostics, medical devices and implants The medical technology industry is facing major challenges due to digitalization, new manufacturing technologies and changes in the regulatory framework. In order to strengthen the innovative power of…
Should I or shouldn’t I? The activity of individual nerve cells in the brain tells us how confident we are in our decisions. This is shown by a recent study by researchers at the University of Bonn. The result is unexpected – the researchers were actually on the trail of a completely different evaluation mechanism. The results are published in the journal Current Biology. You are sitting in a café and want to enjoy a piece of cake with your…
A team led by 2018 Australian of the Year Professor Michelle Simmons has taken another important step forward in the development of a silicon quantum computer. Researchers at UNSW Sydney have demonstrated the lowest noise level on record for a semiconductor quantum bit, or qubit. The research was published in Advanced Materials. For quantum computers to perform useful calculations, quantum information must be close to 100 per cent accurate. Charge noise – caused by imperfections in the material environment that…
Researchers from Osaka University mechanically reprocess silk into a biologically compatible component of bioinks that improves the structural fidelity of 3D-printed hydrogels containing cells for use in drug development and regrowing lost or damaged body. How do you test, in early-stage research, whether a potential pharmaceutical effectively targets a human tumor, organ, or some other part of the body? How do you grow a new hand or some other body part? Researchers are in the early stages of using 3D…
Transportable radio telescopes could provide global high-precision comparisons of the best atomic clocks. Using radio telescopes observing distant stars, scientists have connected optical atomic clocks on different continents. The results were published in the scientific journal Nature Physics (DOI: 10.1038/s41567-020-01038-6) by an international collaboration between 33 astronomers and clock experts at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT, Japan), the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRIM, Italy), the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF, Italy), and the Bureau International…
Banyan trees are fig trees that begin their life as an epiphyte. The most noticeable feature of banyan Ficus species is their extraordinary aerial roots, which enable them to live as hemi-epiphytes, as do the strangler figs often seen in tropical forests. Being special for their enclosed urn-shaped inflorescence, fig plants rely on specific insect pollinators (fig wasps) for pollination and, in turn, provide nourishment and shelter for pollinators to reproduce. Morphological matching and signaling communication for host location between…
WASP-121b is an exoplanet located 850 light years from Earth, orbiting its star in less than two days – a process that takes Earth a year to complete. WASP-121b is very close to its star – about 40 times closer than Earth to the Sun. This close proximity is also the main reason for its immensely high temperature of around 2,500 to 3,000 degrees Celsius. This makes it an ideal object of study to learn more about ultra-hot worlds. Researchers…
Switching voltage of an electrode alone can fine-tune the reactivity of a molecule. As we learned in chemistry class, chemical reaction occurs with the formation or cleavage of bonds between atoms. These chemical bonds form when atoms share or exchange electrons. The chemical reactivity can be controlled in several ways. Among them, the control of electronic property at the reaction site is generally employed. For example, electron-rich molecule prefers to react with a molecule that can readily accept electrons. Many…
Physicists have created a broadband detector of terahertz radiation based on graphene. The device has potential for applications in communication and next-generation information transmission systems, security and medical equipment. The study came out in ACS Nano Letters. The new detector relies on the interference of plasma waves. Interference as such underlies many technological applications and everyday phenomena. It determines the sound of musical instruments and causes the rainbow colors in soap bubbles, along with many other effects. The interference of…
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