Measurements in thorium-229 take a step towards the direct laser excitation of an atomic nucleus in this unique isotope Nuclear clocks could make our time measurement even more accurate than atomic clocks. The key to this lies in thorium-229, an atomic nucleus whose lowest excited state has very low energy. A research team from the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics at the University of Heidelberg, TU Wien, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM), and GSI Helmholtzzentrum in…
Smoke from the many wildfires burning in the West have made air quality hazardous for millions of people in the United States. And it is the very tiniest of the aerosol particles in that air that make it particularly harmful to human health. But for decades, we haven’t known how long these particles actually stay aloft. New research by Colorado State University scientists is giving us a much better understanding of this process, which can help not only in air…
New study by a team of Harvard-led researchers rebuts 75-year-old belief in reptile evolution. Challenging a 75-year-old notion about how and when reptiles evolved during the past 300 million-plus years involves a lot of camerawork, loads of CT scanning, and, most of all, thousands of miles of travel. Just check the stamps in Tiago R. Simões ‘ passport. Simões is the Alexander Agassiz Postdoctoral Fellow in the lab of Harvard paleontologist Stephanie Pierce. From 2013 to 2018, he traveled to…
Similar to batteries, supercapacitors are suitable for the repeated storage of electrical energy. TU Graz researchers have presented a particularly safe and sustainable variant of such a supercapacitor in Nature Communications. Limited safety, sustainability and recyclability are key drawbacks of today’s lithium-ion battery technology, along with restricted availability of starting materials (e.g. cobalt). In the search for alternative electrochemical energy storage systems for use in e-mobility and for storing energy from renewable sources, a combination of battery and capacitor is…
In response to climate change, the spring migration of many migratory birds is shifting ever further forward. However, according to a study presented by an international research team led by Vetmeduni Vienna, this change does not follow a uniform pattern. On the contrary, closer inspection reveals a complex picture: Essential for the start of the migration is the region of wintering. It is known from previous studies that migratory birds bring forward their spring arrival in European breeding areas due…
Laser pulses enable faster creation of skyrmions in magnets A team of scientists led by the Max Born Institute (MBI), Berlin, Germany, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA, has demonstrated how tiny magnetization patterns known as skyrmions can be written into a ferromagnetic material faster than previously thought possible. The researchers have clarified how the topology of the magnetic system changes in this process. As reported in the journal Nature Materials, the findings are relevant for topological…
Nano-scientists at Münster University develop a molecular tool to change the structure of a metal surface. Researchers at the University of Münster have now developed a molecular tool which makes it possible, at the atomic level, to change the structure of a metal surface. The restructuring of the surface by individual molecules – so-called N-heterocyclic carbenes – takes place similar to a zipper. The study has been published in the journal “Angewandte Chemie International Edition”. The surface of metals plays…
Only in the course of several million years did Arrokoth, also known by its nickname Ultima Thule, acquire its bizarre, pancake-flat shape. The many millions of bodies populating the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune’s orbit are yet to reveal many of their secrets. In the 1980s, the space probes Pioneer 1 and 2 as well as Voyager 1 and 2 crossed this region – but without cameras on board. NASA’s spacecraft New Horizons sent the first images from the outermost edge…
Findings could lead to ways to maximize our existing antimalarial arsenal. Even when a person suffering from malaria is burning up with fever and too sick to function, the tiny blood-eating parasites lurking inside them continue to flourish, relentlessly growing and multiplying as they gobble up the host’s red blood cells. The single-celled Plasmodium parasites that cause 200 million cases of malaria each year can withstand feverish temperatures that make their human hosts miserable. And now, a Duke University-led team…
Team of materials researchers explores new domains of the compositionally complex metals. The most significant advances in human civilization are marked by the progression of the materials that humans use. The Stone Age gave way to the Bronze Age, which in turn gave way to the Iron Age. New materials disrupt the technologies of the time, improving life and the human condition. Modern technologies can likewise be directly traced to innovations in the materials used to make them, as exemplified…
Semiconductive photocatalysts that efficiently absorb solar energy could help reduce the energy required to drive a bioelectrochemical process that converts CO2 emissions into valuable chemicals, KAUST researchers have shown. Recycling CO2 could simultaneously reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere while generating useful chemicals and fuels, explains Bin Bian, a Ph.D. student in Pascal Saikaly’s lab, who led the research. “Microbial electrosynthesis (MES), coupled with a renewable energy supply, could be one such technology,” Bian says. MES exploits the capacity of…
Since 2004, Claude Knauf (INSERM) and Patrice Cani (UCLouvain) have been collaborating on molecular and cellular mechanisms in order to understand the causes of the development of type 2 diabetes and above all to identify new therapeutic targets. In 2013, they created an international laboratory, ‘NeuroMicrobiota Lab’ (INSERM-UCLouvain), to identify links between the brain and intestinal bacteria. Very quickly, they understood that the gut-brain axis plays a preponderant role in the regulation of sugar in the blood. When we eat,…
A Purdue University team has developed a novel testing platform to evaluate how breast cancer cells respond to the recurrent stretching that occurs in the lungs during breathing. The technology is designed to better understand the effects that the local tissue has on metastatic breast cancer to study how metastases grow in a new tissue. “One of the key features of breast cancer is that most patients survive if the disease stays local, but there is a greater than 70%…
C3PO Project The Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems ISE has developed an alternative process for producing solar cell contacts. The laser transfer and firing (LTF) technique offers several advantages compared to conventional processes, particularly for specific solar cell surfaces. Together with industry partners in the joint project “C3PO”, the Fraunhofer researchers in Freiburg have realized a fully automated LTF process for the first time on a system from Pulsar Photonics GmbH. Now the process can be systematically tested and…
Evolution in Action A new plant species named “Cardamine insueta” appeared in the region of Urnerboden in the Swiss alps, after the land has changed from forest to grassland over the last 150 years. The inheritance of two key traits from its parent plants enabled the newly emerged species to grow in a distinct environmental niche, as researches from the University of Zurich now show. The emergence of a new species is generally thought to occur over long periods of…
An international research team with CAU participation observes hot dust rings around stars in a new wavelength range So close to stars that they can reach temperatures of up to 1,000 degrees Celsius: The phenomenon of hot dust rings – an accumulation of submicrometer-sized particles in the immediate vicinity of stars – was first discovered outside our solar system in 2006. However, due to their small size, the dust particles are difficult to observe and their origin is still unknown….
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