Working together with Chinese researchers, Münster physicists and chemists have, for the first time, produced long-chain mobile polymers on metallic surfaces, doing so by means of ballbot-type molecules which glide over the surface. Details of the work have been published in the journal “Nature Chemistry”. N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) are small, reactive ring molecules which bond well with metallic surfaces and which, over the past few years, have attracted a great deal of interest in the field of the stable chemical…

Joint project develops open and certifiable sensor platform for IoT applications. Digitization is increasingly permeating all aspects of our lives. Thanks to the “Internet of Things” (IoT), objects can now be connected in ways that simplify our daily routines in many ways. However, there are significant risks associated with handling private data and devices used in sensitive settings. In the SASPIT project, a consortium led by the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) aims to develop a certifiable IoT…

… being developed at University of Houston. With an increasing number of severe accidents in the global oil and gas industry caused by damaged pipelines, University of Houston researchers are developing an autonomous robot to identify potential pipeline leaks and structural failures during subsea inspections. The transformative technology will make the inspection process far safer and more cost effective, while also protecting subsea environments from disaster. Thousands of oil spills occur in U.S. waters each year for a variety of…

Thermophotovoltaics: Researchers develop new resistant emitter based on iridium. Together with the Technical University of Hamburg and Aalborg University, researchers from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon have developed a new selective emitter based on iridium for thermophotovoltaics. Iridium was thus used for the first time as a material for an emitter, and in the experiments, it showed particular endurance at high temperatures around 1000 °C. Their study results were published today in the journal Advanced Materials and open up new perspectives for…

Ultra-low radiation cables reduce background noise for neutrino and dark matter detectors. Imagine trying to tune a radio to a single station but instead encountering static noise and interfering signals from your own equipment. That is the challenge facing research teams searching for evidence of extremely rare events that could help understand the origin and nature of matter in the universe. It turns out that when you are trying to tune into some of the universe’s weakest signals, it helps…

Research project DAIOR: A research team of scientists from the Fraunhofer IPA, the Bosch Digital Innovation Hub at Bosch Health Campus and the Institute of Image-Guided Surgery (IHU) of Strasbourg has jointly launched the DAIOR project (»Distributed Artificial Intelligence for the Operating Room«). Within the framework of the project, the project partners are working on realizing the operating room (OR) of the future with help of artificial intelligence (AI) and robot assisted telemedicine. To achieve this, the research team is…

… might be used as a sustainable source of nitrogen. KIT researchers present new system for activation and catalytic transfer of ammonia – catalysis is based on main group elements. The ammonia molecule (NH3), a compound of nitrogen and hydrogen, is one of the most frequently produced chemicals worldwide and it is also used for the production of many other nitrogen-containing compounds. If amines could be produced by the simple addition of ammonia to unsaturated hydrocarbons, this would be a…

Mozambique Faces Alarming Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis Epidemic. New study from the Research Center Borstel, Leibniz Lung Center reveals urgent threat to public health by the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis in Mozambique. With one of the highest tuberculosis (TB) incidences (368 cases/100,000 population) in the African region, Mozambique is particularly affected by the TB epidemic. Drug-resistant TB is also a major problem, with an estimated 4800 new cases of multidrug resistant (MDR)/rifampicin-resistant TB in the country by 2021. Even more worrisome, researchers…

Key to better manufacturing… Artificial Intelligence methods guide researchers in developing improved manufacturing processes for highly efficient solar cells – a blueprint for other research areas. Perovskite tandem solar cells combine a perovskite solar cell with a conventional solar cell, for example based on silicon. These cells are considered a next-generation technology: They boast an efficiency of currently more than 33 percent, which is much higher than that of conventional silicon solar cells. Moreover, they use inexpensive raw materials and…

Physicists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and Central South University in China have demonstrated that, combining specific materials, heat in technical devices can be used in computing. Their discovery is based on extensive calculations and simulations. The new approach demonstrates how heat signals can be steered and amplified for use in energy-efficient data processing. The team’s research findings have been published in the journal “Advanced Electronic Materials”. Electric current flow heats up electronic device. The generated heat is dissipated…

KIT researchers present new method of high dose efficiency and micrometer resolution for biology and biomedicine. X-ray imaging visualizes hidden structures and processes in living cells and organisms. The radiation that consists of highly energy-rich electromagnetic waves, however, has an ionizing effect and may damage the genetic material. This limits the possible observation period. While conventional X-ray images of soft tissue are of low contrast, phase contrast methods produce far better image contrasts at a reduced radiation dose. With higher…

New process enhances sustainability of pig iron production. Researchers of KIT and Partners Demonstrate a Process that Reduces Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Conventional Steel Production. Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the SMS group have developed a new process to reduce CO2 emission of worldwide steel production by several hundred million tons per year. It is based on modernizing blast furnace technology with moderate investments and has already been demonstrated successfully in a pilot plant. The researchers report…

Decisions on treatment for leukemia patients are based, among other things, on a series of certain genetic features of the disease. IT specialists and physicians at the University of Münster have now published a study showing how a method based on artificial intelligence can be used to predict various genetic features on the basis of high-resolution microscopic images of bone marrow smears. The results have been published in the journal “Blood Advances”. Decisions on treatment for patients with acute myeloid…

International research team measures isotopic composition of lunar rocks. An international team of geoscientists from the Universities of Münster and Bristol in England have explained why a large part of the moon is made up of unique rocks that do not occur on Earth. The results have now been published in the scientific journal “Nature Geoscience”. Their high Ti contents are ultimately believed to be derived from a distinct mineralogical layer formed as part of the unstable crystal pile that…

For the first time without any chemical treatment, a research team analyses extraterrestrial amino acids and other organic compounds in an English meteorite fall. Meteorites are fragments of asteroids which find their way to Earth as shooting stars and provide information on the origins of our solar system. A team of researchers has examined the so-called Winchcombe meteorite and demonstrated the existence in it of nitrogen compounds such as amino acids and heterocyclic hydrocarbons – without applying any chemical treatment…

A first success in the Excellence Strategy competition. Within the framework of the University Alliance Ruhr, the three universities in Duisburg-Essen, Dortmund and Bochum jointly advanced their research strategically, for example by establishing the joint Research Center One Health Ruhr. The University of Duisburg-Essen and its partner universities’ excellent water research is part of this Research Center and has now prevailed in the first round of the two-stage competition as part of the Excellence Strategy from the federal and state…

Individually tailored RNA or DNA-based molecules are able to reliably fight off viral infections in plants, according to a new study by the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), which was published in the “International Journal of Molecular Sciences”. The researchers were able to fend off a common virus using the new active substances in up to 90 per cent of cases. They also developed a method for finding substances tailored specifically to the virus. The team has now patented the…

LSU quantum researchers uncover important implications for quantum technology. In a recent publication in Nature Physics, the LSU Quantum Photonics Group offers fresh insights into the fundamental traits of surface plasmons, challenging the existing understanding. Based on experimental and theoretical investigations conducted in Associate Professor Omar Magaña-Loaiza’s laboratory, these novel findings mark a significant advancement in quantum plasmonics, possibly the most noteworthy in the past decade. While prior research in the field has predominantly focused on the collective behaviors of plasmonic systems, the…

– vacuum process may offer a short track to commercialization. A large variety of fabrication processes are investigated in research and industry – comparative study assesses options for mass production. Over the past decade, perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells have demonstrated a stunning development. In research, efficiencies of more than 33 percent have been shown, exceeding by far those of conventional silicon-based solar cells. However, yet the technology has not reached the market. One of the major challenges is the unresolved…

There are large accumulations of plastics in the ocean, even outside so-called garbage patch. A UFZ study reveals microplastics in remote marine protected area. “Plastics in the ocean are a serious problem. Every year, millions of tonnes of plastics end up in the ocean via rivers and wind as well as from shipping and fishing – and it remains there. It is still difficult to assess the consequences for the ocean ecosystem”, says UFZ environmental chemist Prof Annika Jahnke, coordinator…