The evolution of TB, the earliest confirmed presence of the causative agents in human remains. Recent research suggests that the emergence of tuberculosis infection in human populations dates back tens of thousands of years earlier than previously known cases in the Middle East. In collaboration with an international research team, Hungarian researchers have edited and published a special issue of the journal Tuberculosis. In July 2022, the Department of Anthropology of the University of Szeged organised a conference on the…

Researchers at Friedrich Schiller University Jena Develop Sustainable Catalyst System for Hydrogen Production Using Light Energy. For hydrogen to be sustainably produced using sunlight, it’s not just an efficient catalyst system that’s needed – it must also be economical, readily available, and resource-efficient. A team led by chemist Prof. Dr Kalina Peneva from the Institute of Organic Chemistry and Macromolecular Chemistry at the University of Jena has made a step in this direction. In their research, the group developed dyes…

Phosphorus chemist Prof. Jan J. Weigand from the Dresden University of Technology, in collaboration with an interdisciplinary team, has developed a groundbreaking method to introduce phosphorus and nitrogen atoms into polycyclic molecules. This method holds the potential to pave the way for the development of new materials with specific optoelectronic properties, ideal for applications in organic semiconductor technologies such as OLEDs and sensors. The results of this promising endeavour were published this week in the prestigious journal CHEM.  © Jannis…

Universal device will allow transdisciplinary collaboration globally. Spurred by the current climate crisis, there has been a heightened attention within the scientific community in recent years to how past climate variation contributed to historic human migration and other behaviors. Now, an international group of scientists — including archaeologists, historians, climate scientists, paleo-scientists, a volcanologist and others — are calling for a strengthened commitment to transdisciplinary collaboration to study past and present human-environmental interactions, which they say will advance our understanding…

Humboldt fellow Shailja Jain is investigating catalysts for green chemistry. She uses quantum technologies for observing molecules: Computational chemist Shailja Jain is visiting the Institute for Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Stuttgart for two years as a Humboldt postdoctoral fellow. In the team of Professor Johannes Kästner, she wants to advance the development of a new generation of catalysts for sustainable chemical processes. “I want to shed light on the structures, bonding, and reaction dynamics of metal-free small molecule…

Successful trial installation in Erlangen… The fully automated measurement of the biophysical properties of hundreds of cell samples in just a few days is the goal of the cooperative project “AutoRAPID,” involving scientists from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) in Erlangen and the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology and Automation IPA in Mannheim. For the first time, the biophysicists and automation engineers have assembled their individual components in a setup in Erlangen. Researchers from the…

A team from the Vehicle Safety Institute at TU Graz has used Human Body Models to investigate accidents involving electric scooters and identified the most important factors for preventing serious injuries. The use of e-scooters has increased significantly in recent years, but so has the number of accidents involving this relatively new form of transport. At the same time, knowledge about injury mechanisms in this area was still very limited. In the project SURF, funded by Zukunftsfonds Steiermark, the Vehicle…

Dark excitons emerge exclusively at the top layer of bi-layered transition metal dichalcogenide heterostructures when the stacking order of the layers is changed. Transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) semiconductors are special materials that have long fascinated researchers with their unique properties. For one, they are flat, one-atom-thick two-dimensional (2D) materials similar to that of graphene. They are compounds that contain different combinations of the transition metal group (e.g., molybdenum, tungsten) and chalcogen elements (e.g., sulfur, selenium, tellurium). What’s even more fascinating…

Leipzig scientists publish largest meta-analysis on language processing to date. A new study has provided the first clear picture of where language processes are located in the brain. The findings may be useful in clinical trials involving language recovery after brain injury. Dr Sabrina Turker, Dr Philipp Kuhnke and Professor Gesa Hartwigsen from the Wilhelm Wundt Institute of Psychology at Leipzig University and the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences conducted the meta-analysis in collaboration with researchers…

Bayreuth animal ecologists study the effects on bumblebees for the first time. The decline of insects threatens many ecosystems worldwide. While the effects of pesticides are well researched, there has been a lack of knowledge about the effects of other anthropogenic pollutants. Animal ecologists at the University of Bayreuth have now studied the effects of diesel exhaust particles on bumblebees for the first time. In two new studies, they show that these fine dust particles can significantly damage the organism…

A study of nearly 500,000 people has shown that smoking shortens the end fragments of chromosomes in the white blood cells of our immune systems. The length of these end fragments, called telomeres, is an indicator of how quickly we age and our cells’ ability to repair and regenerate. In her presentation to the European Respiratory Society International Congress in Milan, Italy [1], Dr Siyu Dai, who is an assistant professor in the School of Clinical Medicine, Hangzhou Normal University,…

In a new interdisciplinary project between BTU Cottbus and TU Dresden, researchers are investigating the use of novel enzymes to remove micropollutants from municipal wastewater. Medicines are good for our bodies. However, depending on the type of drug, up to 90 percent of the active ingredient is excreted unchanged and thus ends up in wastewater. Improper disposal of pharmaceutical products in toilets and washbasins also leads to residues that can only be partially intercepted in wastewater treatment plants. The remaining…

An interdisciplinary research team from Bochum, Duisburg and Zurich has developed a new approach to construct modular optical sensors which are capable of detecting viruses and bacteria. For this purpose, the researchers used fluorescent carbon nanotubes with a novel type of DNA anchors that act as molecular handles. The anchor structures can be used to conjugate biological recognition units such as antibodies aptamers to the nanotubes. The recognition unit can subsequently interact with bacterial or viral molecules to the nanotubes….

On-chip laser diodes based on quantum well (QW) and quantum dot (QD) semiconductor materials have become the primary candidates for several applications due to their excellent characteristics, including high power efficiency, high-temperature operation, and small form-factors. Although QWs have been extensively used in commercial products, QDs have emerged as an attractive alternative due to their unique zero-dimensional density of states and atom-like degeneracy. Heterogeneous integration of III-V lasers with SiN microresonators, aided by self-injection locking, not only provides intrinsic advantages…

Large collaboration at ISTA yields an unprecedented “live” view into the brain’s complexity. In a new paper published today in the journal Nature Methods, an interdisciplinary team of scientists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) has come together to present a new way to observe the brain’s structure and dynamics – in a high resolution and without damaging the tissue. Brain tissue is one of the most intricate specimens that scientists have arguably ever dealt with. Packed…

A clinical trial under MHH leadership is testing a new therapy with immune cells against the JC virus. The aim is to cure the fatal disease PML. Human polyomavirus 2 – formerly called John Cunningham (JC) virus – infects about 70 to 90 percent of all people worldwide without most even noticing it. But once it enters the body, the genetic material of the pathogen remains dormant there. If the immune system is weakened or shut down by a serious…