Improvement of crops with seeds from gene banks Securing plant production is a global task. Using a combination of new molecular and statistical methods, a research team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) was able to show that material from gene banks can be used to improve traits in the maize plant. Old varieties can thus help to breed new varieties adapted to current and future climates. The famous seed vault in Spitsbergen and national gene banks retain hundreds…

Imaging technology offers advantages for diagnostics, other uses. Current state-of-the-art techniques have clear limitations when it comes to imaging the smallest nanoparticles, making it difficult for researchers to study viruses and other structures at the molecular level. Scientists from the University of Houston and the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center have reported in Nature Communications a new optical imaging technology for nanoscale objects, relying upon unscattered light to detect nanoparticles as small as 25 nanometers in diameter. The…

Enzymatic photocaging for the study of gene regulation through DNA methylation. The addition and removal of methyl groups on DNA plays an important role in gene regulation. In order to study these mechanisms more precisely, a German team has developed a new method by which specific methylation sites can be blocked and then unblocked at a precise time through irradiation with light (photocaging). As reported in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the required regent is produced enzymatically, in situ. Although they…

Chemists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) have developed a way to integrate liquids directly into materials during the 3D printing process. This allows, for example, active medical agents to be incorporated into pharmaceutical products or luminous liquids to be integrated into materials, which allow monitoring of damage. The study was published in “Advanced Materials Technologies”. 3D printing is now widely used for a range of applications. Generally, however, the method is limited to materials which are liquefied through heat…

Researchers of Münster University reveal mechanobiological function of muscle-specific adhesion protein / Study published in “Nature Communications” The ability of cells to sense and respond to their mechanical environment is critical for many cellular processes but the molecular mechanisms underlying cellular mechanosensitivity are still unclear. Researchers at the University of Münster have now discovered how the muscle-specific adhesion molecule metavinculin modulates mechanical force transduction on the molecular level. The research results have just been published in the journal “Nature Communications”….

A scientific publication by researchers at Münster University rank among the best 30 research studies of the year 2020, rates “Optics & Photonics News”. With their annual special issue in December, the journal selects the highlights in optics and photonics of the past year. A publication by researchers led by physicist Prof. Cornelia Denz is among the world’s 30 most groundbreaking papers of 2020, according to the journal Optics & Photonics News. In its special annual end-of-year issue, the journal…

Biotechnologists measure the forces with which algae cells adhere to surfaces and move on them How can cells adhere to surfaces and move on them? This is a question which was investigated by an international team of researchers headed by Prof. Michael Hippler from the University of Münster and Prof. Kaiyao Huang from the Institute of Hydrobiology (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, China). The researchers used the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii as their model organism. They manipulated the alga by…

Graphene hybrid material reaches power density of batteries A team working with Roland Fischer, Professor of Inorganic and Metal-Organic Chemistry at the Technical University Munich (TUM) has developed a highly efficient supercapacitor. The basis of the energy storage device is a novel, powerful and also sustainable graphene hybrid material that has comparable performance data to currently utilized batteries. Usually, energy storage is associated with batteries and accumulators that provide energy for electronic devices. However, in laptops, cameras, cellphones or vehicles,…

An international team of researchers found that so-called photonic processors, with which data is processed by means of light, can process information very much more rapidly and in parallel than electronic chips. The results have been published in the scientific journal “Nature”. In the digital age, data traffic is growing at an exponential rate. The demands on computing power for applications in artificial intelligence such as pattern and speech recognition in particular, or for self-driving vehicles, often exceeds the capacities…

TU-scientists develop new material for tomorrow’s technology Smartphones with large glass housings and displays are impressive, but they are also very prone to get cracked and scratched. To prevent these kinds of damages, a material combining the hardness of diamond and the deformability of metals would be ideal – and is indeed considered the holy grail of structural materials. Professor Gerold Schneider of the Hamburg University of Technology and other Hamburg materials researchers, together with colleagues in Berkeley, California, have…

In experiments at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, an international research collaboration has measured the radius of the atomic nucleus of helium five times more precisely than ever before. With the aid of the new value, fundamental physical theories can be tested and natural constants can be determined even more precisely. For their measurements, the researchers needed muons – these particles are similar to electrons but are around 200 times heavier. PSI is the only research site in the world…

Researchers at Chemnitz University of Technology develop Ultra-wideband technology for precise indoor navigation even in complex buildings to market maturity The technology for navigation outside buildings is widely established and available. Until now, however, it has been a major technical hurdle to seamlessly continue navigation from outside inside buildings. That’s because while we are guided from Point A to Point B by GPS satellites outside. GPS-like positioning technology doesn’t exist inside buildings – until now. A team of researchers at…

A new method for constructing special solar cells could significantly increase their efficiency. Not only are the cells made up of thin layers, they also consist of specifically arranged nanoblocks. This has been shown in a new study by an international research team led by the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), which was published in the scientific journal “Nano Letters”. Commercially available solar cells are mostly made of silicon. “Based on the properties of silicon it’s not feasible to say…

DFKI presents method for image-based diagnosis of Corona Apart from the commonly used PCR tests for the diagnosis of infections with SARS-CoV-2, the Corona virus can also be detected on computed tomography scans. With a new method of automated image recognition, this form of diagnosis can be refined and made more comprehensible for medical staff. In an international cooperation, the DFKI research department Interactive Machine Learning (IML) has developed an interactive AI system that, with a success rate of 92…

Completion of Australian-led astronomy project sheds light on the evolution of the Universe. The complex mechanics determining how galaxies spin, grow, cluster and die have been revealed following the release of all the data gathered during a massive seven-year Australian-led astronomy research project. The scientists observed 13 galaxies at a time, building to a total of 3068, using a custom-built instrument called the Sydney-AAO Multi-Object Integral-Field Spectrograph (SAMI), connected to the 4-metre Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) at Siding Spring Observatory in…

The SKA Observatory, a new intergovernmental organisation dedicated to radio astronomy, was launched today following the first meeting of the Observatory’s Council. The new Observatory, known as SKAO, is the world’s second intergovernmental organisation to be dedicated to astronomy. Headquartered in the UK on the grounds of the Jodrell Bank UNESCO World Heritage Site with sites in Australia and South Africa, SKAO is tasked with building and operating the two largest and most complex radio telescope networks ever conceived to…

What does the internal structure of atomic nuclei look like? Physicists can approach this question by using precision measurements of the weight, size, and shape of atomic nuclei. An international research team, including physicists from Greifswald, has now studied the short-lived mercury isotopes 207Hg and 208Hg. For this purpose, they conducted laser-spectroscopy measurements at the European research centre CERN. Based on these measurements, researchers are able to confirm predictions about the forces and structures in these nuclei. The results of…

An electrode material with modified surface atoms generates more electrical current, which drives the sunlight-powered reactions that split water into oxygen and hydrogen–a clean fuel. -Scientists have demonstrated that modifying the topmost layer of atoms on the surface of electrodes can have a remarkable impact on the activity of solar water splitting. As they reported in Nature Energy on Feb. 18, bismuth vanadate electrodes with more bismuth on the surface (relative to vanadium) generate higher amounts of electrical current when…

New storage and information technology requires new higher performance materials. One of these materials is yttrium iron garnet, which has special magnetic properties. Thanks to a new process, it can now be transferred to any material. Developed by physicists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the method could advance the production of smaller, faster and more energy-efficient components for data storage and information processing. The physicists have published their results in the journal “Applied Physics Letters”. Magnetic materials play a…

Automated approach transformative for computational materials science. A revolutionary machine-learning (ML) approach to simulate the motions of atoms in materials such as aluminum is described in this week’s Nature Communications journal. This automated approach to “interatomic potential development” could transform the field of computational materials discovery. “This approach promises to be an important building block for the study of materials damage and aging from first principles,” said project lead Justin Smith of Los Alamos National Laboratory. “Simulating the dynamics of…