Good news for the German research fleet, German shipbuilding, and international polar research alike: the new Polarstern will be constructed in Wismar by thyssenkrupp Marine Systems. The company received the official contract to construct a new research icebreaker from the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) today, marking the end of a two and a half-year-long Europe-wide call for tenders. The new flagship of German climate research will cost an estimated 1.185 billion euros. Following five years of construction, she is to…
A new radio telescope on the top of Germany’s Zugspitze mountain will help unravel the secrets of the universe. The project is led by the Chair for Astronomy at the University of Würzburg. Thorsten Glauber, State Minister in the Bavarian State Ministry of the Environment and Consumer Protection, spoke of a “new chapter in space research”. And of a further step “to consolidate Bavaria’s place in the premier league of research“. What made the minister so enthusiastic is a state-of-the-art…
In the VALPEATS project, Fraunhofer researchers are working with project partners to develop a monitoring platform to collect information and evaluate the condition of peatlands. Peatlands are drying out due to conversion to agricultural land and climate change, releasing huge quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere in the process. The project involves an interdisciplinary team of specialists in the field along with a network of sensors, drones, and AI tools. VALPEATS is laying the groundwork for protecting peatlands and planning…
Cell division, cell differentiation, cell repair and cell death play fundamental roles in the human organism, its development, health and reproduction. Cellular transformation processes are governed by two regulatory mechanisms: chromatin modifications and cell signaling networks. The EpiSignal Research Training Group sheds light on the hitherto little-researched interplay between these two complex systems. The German Research Foundation (DFG) has recently approved a further Research Training Group (RTG) at the University of Stuttgart. The Research Training Group “EpiSignal – Crosstalk of…
The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 1454 “Metaflammation and Cellular Programming” for a second funding period. The research network will focus on investigating the links between western lifestyles and chronic inflammatory diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases and the metabolic syndrome. The Department of Biochemistry and Bioinformatics at TU Braunschweig is contributing to the scientific progress of the CRC in two projects with its expertise in the field of immune cell metabolism (immunometabolism)…
MHH team successfully uses foreign immune cells against the human JC virus to cure seriously ill patients. Progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) is a rare but serious brain infection. It gradually destroys brain tissue and often leads to death within a few weeks. It is caused by the human polyomavirus 2 – also known as the John Cunningham (JC) virus. In 2021, an interdisciplinary team at the Hannover Medical School (MHH) led by Professor Dr Thomas Skripuletz, senior physician at the…
Google Quantum AI and quantum physicists at Freie Universität Berlin publish groundbreaking results on Hamiltonian operators. A research team including researchers at Freie Universität Berlin and Google Quantum AI has developed an innovative new method for estimating the parameters of Hamiltonian operators. The scientists have proposed a new technique that could be scalable and applicable to large quantum processors. As such, this method could enable quantum simulations to be carried out in a more precise manner in the future. The…
Mechanical engineering PhD candidate Arman Tekinalp, fellow graduate student Seung Hyun Kim, Professor Prashant Mehta, and Associate Professor Mattia Gazzola, all from the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS). Their interdisciplinary collaboration also included Assistant Professor Noel Naughton (formerly a Beckman fellow) from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech alongside researchers from the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology at Illinois and others from the University of North…
Fraunhofer IWS Combines Nature-based Concepts with Sensor Technology and 3D Printing. Making harvesting robots, submarine grippers, and autonomous rovers on distant planets more universally applicable and autonomous in the future – researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Material and Beam Technology IWS in Dresden work on enabling them to “feel”: In various projects, they are working with academic and industrial partners on biomimetic artificial grippers. Combining 3D and dispensing printing with other technologies shall achieve this – fish also have…
Personalized medicine with individually tailored therapies is becoming more and more a reality in cancer. This requires a precise look into the genetic material of tumors, a molecular diagnostic tumor profile. A research group from the German Network for Personalized Medicine (DNPM) has recorded the quality standards according to which genome analyses are carried out in Germany. The data is a prerequisite for integrating gene sequencing into routine care. The working group led by Professor Albrecht Stenzinger from the Medical…
How can computer models help design microbial communities? Within the framework of the Collaborative Research Centre CRC1535 “MibiNet” coordinated by Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU), a research team comprising members from Aachen, Düsseldorf and East Lansing/USA examined the development perspectives of so-called synthetic biology. In the scientific journal Synthetic Biology, they explain why computer-aided biology has an important role to play. Biology: Publication in Synthetic Biology Communities of microorganisms – bacteria, fungi and viruses – can be found everywhere, also…
Exploring a valley and caves on Mars, searching for life: These are the goals of the German research initiative VaMEx. The Professorship for Space Technology at the University of Würzburg is involved. An enormous canyon stretches across Mars: Valles Marineris is 3,000 kilometres long, 600 kilometres wide and on average eight kilometres deep. Its Latin name goes back to the Mars orbiter “Mariner”, which discovered the valley in the early 1970s. Since 2012, this largest known canyon in the solar…
Interdisciplinary research team uses DNA microbeads to control the development of cultivated tissue. A new molecular engineering technique can precisely influence the development of organoids. Microbeads made of specifically folded DNA are used to release growth factors or other signal molecules inside the tissue structures. This gives rise to considerably more complex organoids that imitate the respective tissues much better and have a more realistic cell mix than before. An interdisciplinary research team from the Cluster of Excellence “3D Matter…
Human-made climate change is not confined by national borders. The AGELESS Consortium explores the question of how marine life affected by climate change can be protected beyond areas of national jurisdiction. The Federal Government funds the interdisciplinary project with 2.5 million euros over a three-year period. The open ocean, which, for the most part, lies beyond national jurisdiction, is just as severely impacted by climate change as are nationally regulated coastal waters. With the new international Agreement on Marine Biodiversity…
A multidisciplinary research team based across China and Brazil has used a dog-like robot and AI to create a new way to find fire ant nests. Published in the SCI journal Pest Management Science, the study highlights how a ‘CyberDog’ robot integrated with an AI model can automate the identification and control of Red Imported Fire Ants (RIFA), a globally destructive pest. Field tests carried out by the researchers reveal the robotic system can significantly outperform human inspectors, identifying three…
Researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have made groundbreaking advancements in the field of soft robotics by developing film-balloon (FiBa) soft robots. These innovative robots, designed by a team led by Dr Terry Ching and corresponding author Professor Michinao Hashimoto, introduce a novel fabrication approach that enables lightweight, untethered operation with advanced biomimetic locomotion capabilities. The core innovation for these robots involves the development…
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