news 2017

Research news Five years ago the Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner broke the sound barrier during his free fall from an altitude of almost 39 kilometers. Now researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have analyzed the fluid dynamics of his descent. The surprising result: Baumgartner, with his irregularly shaped equipment, fell faster than a smooth, symmetrical body would have.

How sensitive is the human sense of touch? Sensitive enough to feel the difference between surfaces that differ by just a single layer of molecules, a team of researchers at the University of California San Diego has shown. "This is the greatest tactile sensitivity that has ever been shown in humans," said Darren Lipomi, a professor of nanoengineering and member of the Center for Wearable Sensors at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, who led the interdisciplinary project with V. S.

Josh Tenenbaum, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, directs research on the development of intelligence at the Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines, a multiuniversity, multidisciplinary project based at MIT that seeks to explain and replicate human intelligence.

Experiments and modeling at Berkeley Lab help to reveal new details about material that holds promise for driving electric vehicles farther Note: This press release is adapted from the original release by SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. View the original release. -By Glennda Chui/SLAC This movie introduces LCLS-II, a future X-ray light source.

Imagine that instead of switching on a lamp when it gets dark, you could read by the light of a glowing plant on your desk. MIT engineers have taken a critical first step toward making that vision a reality. By embedding specialized nanoparticles into the leaves of a watercress plant, they induced the plants to give off dim light for nearly four hours.

An international study on glass led by ANU and the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris in France could lead to the development of shatter-proof mobile phone screens. Lead researcher Dr Charles Le Losq from ANU said the new knowledge, based on experiments and computer modelling, could be used to alter the structure of glass to improve resistance to fractures.

Sexualized representations, especially the emphasis of secondary sexual characteristics, can change the way we perceive an individual. An international team of researchers led by Giorgia Silani from the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Vienna has shown that empathic feelings and brain responses are reduced when we observe the emotions of sexualized women.

Empa researchers, together with researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz and other partners, have achieved a breakthrough that could in future be used for precise nanotransistors or - in the distant future - possibly even quantum computers, as the team reports in the current issue of the scientific journal «Nature».

Understanding the nature and origin of cosmic rays is a major goal of modern astrophysics and one that the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Observatory is committed to contribute to. In a study published today in the journal Physical Review D , HAWC announces a measurement of the cosmic-ray energy spectrum in the energy range of 10 to 500 TeV, bridging measurements at higher energy usually performed by ground based detectors and measurements at lower energy that previously had been conducted by detectors on satellites and balloons.

Our physical attraction to hot bodies is real, according to UC Berkeley physicists. To be clear, they're not talking about sexual attraction to a "hot” human body. But the researchers have shown that a glowing object actually attracts atoms, contrary to what most people - physicists included - would guess.

A space mission to test how objects fall in a vacuum has released its first results, providing an improved foundation for Einstein's famous theory. The first results of the 'Microscope' satellite mission were announced today by a group of researchers led by the French space agency CNES and including Imperial scientists.

Berkeley Lab scientists are using powerful X-rays at the Advanced Light Source to study how gas mask filters handle chemical warfare agents. The work could eventually lead to more advanced gas masks for both military and civilian applications.

The years of careful planning and construction have paid off: At the newest large-scale research facility of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI - the free-electron X-ray laser SwissFEL - the first experiment has been carried out successfully. With that, two goals have been achieved: First, a new scientific result is already expected.

Software developed by Stanford astrophysicist Giacomo Vianello models and combines otherwise incompatible astronomical observations. It contributed to recent research into the origin of antimatter near Earth. A recent study in Science cast doubt on one formerly favored explanation for why an abundance of positrons - the antimatter counterparts of electrons - has been found near Earth.

Research news It is the double strands of our genes that make them so strong. Using a technique known as DNA origami, biophysicist Hendrik Dietz has been building nanometer-scale objects for several years at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). Now Dietz and his team have not only broken out of the nanometer realm to build larger objects, but have also cut the production costs a thousand-fold.

In 2006, Caltech's Paul Rothemund (BS '94)-now research professor of bioengineering, computing and mathematical sciences, and computation and neural systems-developed a method to fold a long strand of DNA into a prescribed shape. The technique, dubbed DNA origami, enabled scientists to create self-assembling DNA structures that could carry any specified pattern, such as a 100-nanometer-wide smiley face.

A team of astronomers, including two from MIT, has detected the most distant supermassive black hole ever observed. The black hole sits in the center of an ultrabright quasar, the light of which was emitted just 690 million years after the Big Bang. That light has taken about 13 billion years to reach us - a span of time that is nearly equal to the age of the universe.

Scientists at Freie Universität Berlin and Ruhr-Universität Bochum investigate biological production of "energy source of the future" No 337/2017 from Dec 06, 2017 Researchers at Freie Universität Berlin and the Ruhr-Universität Bochum have uncovered a crucial reaction principle of hydrogen-producing enzymes.

Research news When lithium-ion batteries are charged too quickly, metallic lithium gets deposited on the anodes. This reduces battery capacity and lifespan and can even destroy the batteries. Scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Forschungszentrum Jülich have now presented a process that, for the first time ever, allows this so-called lithium plating process to be investigated directly.

EPFL researchers have successfully measured some of the quantum properties of electrons in two-dimensional semiconductors. This work in the field of spintronics could one day lead to chips that are not only smaller but that also generate less heat. A group of spintronics researchers at EPFL is using new materials to reveal more of the many capabilities of electrons.