Microplastic researchers compare health risks of microparticles. Researchers at the University of Bayreuth want to find out the consequences of inhaled microplastics. In order to better understand them, they have conducted an interdisciplinary study to find out how the health risks of particles such as soot, grinding dust or asbestos are related to their physical properties. By comparing them with the properties of microplastic particles, more precise statements can be made about their potentially hazardous effects on health. Microplastics are…

Young research team publishes new method for accurate prediction of epidemic dynamics. Country comparisons included. The COVID-19 pandemic still poses major challenges in crisis management to governments and health systems. Epidemiologic models play a critical role in this effort, supporting policymakers by predicting future infection progression and hospitalization rates. A key challenge here is to determine non-measurable epidemiological states such as susceptibility to infection in real time. Young researchers at TU Wien have now published a new method that can…

Scientists from the University of Münster have developed a method to measure the full extent of eye movements during blinks for the first time. The new method uses Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), to take many fast measurements of an entire cross-section of the eye, unlike most common eye tracking that measures only the front of the eyeball. Scientists from Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität (WWU) Münster have developed a method to measure the full extent of eye movements during blinks for the first…

Researchers make new discoveries about “megaripple” grain composition. An interdisciplinary team including researchers from Leipzig University has analysed an extensive collection of sand samples from so-called megaripple fields around the world and gained new insights into the composition of these sand waves. These could help settle debates about the mechanistic origin of some recently discovered enigmatic extraterrestrial sand structures and improve our ability to infer information about past weather and climate events from sediment records. The results of their investigations…

During long portions of the past 2.4 billion years, the Earth may have been more  inhospitable to life than scientists previously thought, according to new computer simulations. Using a state-of-the-art climate model, researchers now believe the level of ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaching the Earth’s surface could have been underestimated, with UV levels being up to ten times higher. UV radiation is emitted by the sun and can damage and destroy biologically important molecules such as proteins. The last 2.4 billion years represents an important chapter in the…

More than 66 million years ago, an asteroid impact led to the extinction of almost three-quarters of life on Earth. The little life that was left had to struggle, and research into its tenacity can provide key insights into how organisms survive environmental challenges. In a new study, scientists at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences discovered how some species of single-celled algae lived through the mass extinction, a finding that could change how we understand global ocean processes. Coccolithophores, like…

Mathematical simulations show the new approach may offer faster, cheaper, and more accurate detection, including identifying new variants. A novel approach to testing for the presence of the virus that causes Covid-19 may lead to tests that are faster, less expensive, and potentially less prone to erroneous results than existing detection methods. Though the work, based on quantum effects, is still theoretical, these detectors could potentially be adapted to detect virtually any virus, the researchers say. The new approach is…

Across a vast array of robotic hands and clamps, there is a common foe: the heirloom tomato. You may have seen a robotic gripper deftly pluck an egg or smoothly palm a basketball – but, unlike human hands, one gripper is unlikely to be able to do both and a key challenge remains hidden in the middle ground. “You’ll see robotic hands do a power grasp and a precision grasp and then kind of imply that they can do everything…

How can humans instantly estimate the slipperiness of a surface and adjust their gripping, for instance when picking up a wet glass? Researchers from Delft University of Technology have, together with French and Australian colleagues, demonstrated that a (radial) strain of the skin of the fingertip is involved in the perception of slipperiness during initial contact. Robotics could use this information, for instance to improve prosthetics and grippers. The results have been been published in PNAS. Slippery ‘Humans have the…

Three in four sepsis survivors experience new-onset memory problems, psychological impairments or physical diagnoses. This also applies to more than half of sepsis survivors under the age of 40 at the time of their discharge from hospital. These are just two of the findings of a retrospective analysis of anonymized health claims data conducted by a team of researchers from Jena University Hospital, Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Research Institute of the Local Health Care Funds (AOK). The study,…

Flue gas level low-concentration carbon dioxide high-efficiency conversion made possible. Economically feasible electrochemical carbon dioxide conversion achieved. A Korean research team has developed a technology that can produce carbon monoxide (CO), which has various applications in industry, by direct conversion of flue gas level low-concentration carbon dioxide (CO2). The Korean Institute of Science and Technology (KIST, President Seok-jin Yoon) announced that the research team of Dr. Da Hye Won and Dr. Ung Lee at Clean Energy Research Center and Professor…

Swanson School collaborators Kurt Beschorner and Tevis Jacobs will use a NIOSH award to measure floor-surface topography and create a predictive model of friction. Friction is the resistance to motion of one surface or object moving relative to another. The frictional relationship between two objects has beneficial effects: when you strike a match, friction lights a flame; when you use your vehicle’s brakes, friction helps bring it to a stop. This same relationship, when leveraged properly, can help prevent slips…

A new study from Swansea University has introduced a framework to calculate the material properties of a new class of two-dimensional curved hexagonal lattices that could be used in the production of improved mechanical metamaterials found in bio-engineering, stretchable electronics, impact absorption and soft robots. The research published in the Composite Structures journal, outlines how the research team from the university’s Faculty of Science and Engineering pioneered the new framework of calculations, known as generalised closed-form expressions. Dr Shuvajit Mukherjee who…

Monsoons are not found only in South Asia, but they are part of a global-scale circulation that affects almost all tropical regions (e.g. Australian monsoon, African monsoon, etc.). One occurs in North America too, the North American monsoon, which affects western Mexico and the southwestern United States, in particular, Arizona and New Mexico. To date, this monsoon was considered similar to other monsoons, although smaller. However, new research published in Nature by two scientists from the University of California, Berkeley…

A new NASA-led study is the first to document changing atmospheric ammonia (NH3) concentrations in Africa over an extended period. Ammonia is an air pollutant which can lead to heart and lung related illness. When present in excess in an ecosystem, it can make soil more acidic and hinder plant growth. Ammonia is emitted naturally from soils and vegetation fires, but agricultural activities such as raising livestock and using fertilizer are also major sources. As agriculture scales up to meet…

Until now, observing subatomic structures was beyond the resolution capabilities of direct imaging methods, and this seemed unlikely to change. Czech scientists, however, have presented a method with which they became the first in the world to observe an inhomogeneous electron charge distribution around a halogen atom, thus confirming the existence of a phenomenon that had been theoretically predicted but never directly observed. Comparable to the first observation of a black hole, the breakthrough will facilitate understanding of interactions between…