news 2017

Dyslexia is a learning difficulty which affects the ability to adopt the automatic reflexes needed to read and write. Several studies have sought to identify the source of the problems encountered by individuals with dyslexia when they read. Little attention, however, has been paid to the mechanisms involved in writing.

Dropping a smartphone on its glass screen, which is made of atoms jammed together with no discernible order, could result in it shattering. Unlike metals and other crystalline material, glass and many other disordered solids cannot be deformed significantly before failing and, because of their lack of crystalline order, it is difficult to predict which atoms would change during failure.

Babies as young as 10 months can assess how much someone values a particular goal by observing how hard they are willing to work to achieve it, according to a new study from MIT and Harvard University. This ability requires integrating information about both the costs of obtaining a goal and the benefit gained by the person seeking it, suggesting that babies acquire very early an intuition about how people make decisions.

Research news Childhood obesity is often attributed to a lack of exercise. So what about sports among elementary school students' A team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) pursued this question and collected the results of fitness tests for first-year students over a period of one decade. Their study shows that students did not lose their strength.

New research suggests vertical axis turbines, which may have fewer impacts on birds and the environment, could increase public support for new wind energy installations. With global carbon emissions on the rise, wind power continues to be an attractive option for states and countries looking to limit fossil fuel use and increase renewable energy.

Each of your cells contains two copies of 23 chromosomes, one inherited from your father and one from your mother. Theoretically, when you create a gamete - a sperm or an egg -  each copy has a 50-50 shot at being passed on. But the reality isn't so clearcut. Scientists have observed that chromosomes can "cheat," biasing the chance that they will make it into a sex cell.

Charging drivers at peak times could be the best way to help ease Melbourne's traffic woes, according to new research by the University of Melbourne. In a working paper,  Can Road Changes Alleviate Congestion , researchers Dr Leslie Martin and Mr Sam Thornton, from the Faculty of Business and Economics, analysed the economic and social impact of different charges levied on road use in Victoria.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's College of Engineering are taking a multidisciplinary approach to building synthetic muscles for applications in regenerative medicine and robotics. Each time a bicep flexes, millions of molecular motors work together in a complex process. These motors - called myosin - are chemically powered proteins.

When freezing droplets impact a surface, they generally either stick to it or bounce away. Controlling this response is crucial to many applications, including 3-D printing, the spraying of some surface coatings, and the prevention of ice formation on structures such as airplane wings, wind turbines, or power lines.

Research news More than 125 years ago, Otto Lilienthal laid the foundation for modern aviation with his innovative gliding apparatus, the "Normal Segelapparat". Only four specimens of the gliding apparatus have survived to this day, one of them at home in Deutsches Museum in Munich. Computer tomography investigations carried out by researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) in collaboration with Airbus have for the first time provided a glimpse into the inner workings of the construction design.

Research news After a stroke, many people are unable to successfully perform basic hand movements in everyday life. The reason are symptoms of hemiparesis resulting from damage to the brain. These very frequently affect fine motor skills. A team from the Technical University of Munich (TUM) is now paving the way to better diagnosis and more targeted therapy.

Motorised molecules driven by light have been used to drill holes in the membranes of individual cells, including cancerous ones. The technique shows promise for either bringing therapeutic agents into the cells or directly inducing the cells to die. Dr Robert Pal at Durham University worked with researchers at Rice and North Carolina State universities in the USA to demonstrate in laboratory tests how rotors in single-molecule nanomachines can be activated by ultraviolet light to spin at two to three million rotations per second and open membranes in cells.

When many people try to squeeze through a passageway at the same time, it creates a bottleneck that slows everyone down. It turns out the reverse is true for electrons, which can move through small openings more quickly when travelling in large groups than when flying solo. The theory of so-called superballistic flow predicts that electrons can pass more easily through constrictions by interacting with one another, and thereby "cooperating," than they can individually.

Engineers have developed prototype technology that uses controlled burning to partially reveal landmines buried in peat soil. The researchers from Imperial College London have developed technology called O-Revealer that ignites peat, causing a smouldering fire that strips the upper layer of soil to reveal the landmines - making it easier to dispose of them.

Sensitive sensors must be isolated from their environment as much as possible to avoid disturbances.

Not only muscle cells, but also all other cell types continually generate forces in the human body. An interdisciplinary cooperation of biologists and physicists including Heidelberg researcher Ulrich Schwarz now succeeded in performing high-resolution measurements of cell forces using light to switch them on and off in a controlled manner.

Scientists have discovered how certain forms of motor neuron disease begin and progress at cellular and molecular levels, revealing potential new ways to slow down or even stop this process. The team are already working closely with pharmaceutical companies to use this knowledge to develop new treatments for motor neuron disease and other neurodegenerative conditions.

ANN ARBOR?Mobility researchers at the University of Michigan have devised a new way to test autonomous vehicles that bypasses the billions of miles they would need to log for consumers to consider them road-ready. The process, which was developed using data from more than 25 million miles of real-world driving, can cut the time required to evaluate robotic vehicles' handling of potentially dangerous situations by 300 to 100,000 times.

Scientists from Freie Universität, University of Innsbruck, University of Cologne, and University of Sydney Developed New Method ' 123/2017 from May 17, 2017 Together with colleagues from Germany, Austria, and Australia, scientists from Freie Universität Berlin developed a new method for investigating quantum mechanical processes, and they tested their method experimentally.