Research

Lots of little dots with no apparent pattern: where laypeople may just see milky gray photos sprinkled with what looks like random crumbs, it is enough to make astronomers’ hearts miss a beat. We are talking about historical photographic plates showing negatives of the night sky. Together with the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam and the universities of Hamburg and Tartu (Estonia), researchers at FAU have now digitized the astronomical images and published them online at  www.plate-archive.org.

Until now, the main means of diagnosing Parkinson’s has been restricted to the typical movement disorders such as tremors, slowing movements and stiffening of muscles. The disease begins up to 20 years before these symptoms appear, however. Until now there have been no blood indicators or imaging pr...

Researchers in the group led by Prof. Dr. Karl Mandel, Professorship for Inorganic Chemistry at FAU, have succeeded in developing a novel temperature indicator in the form of a micrometer-sized particle whose central component is rust.

The German federal government introduced the ‘fuel discount’ on June 1, 2022. A team of researchers from FAU have now investigated to what extent the oil companies pass on the tax cuts and what impact the fuel discount is actually having on consumers’ wallets. 

Emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from human activity cause ocean warming, acidification, oxygen loss, and other physical and chemical changes that are affecting marine ecosystems around the world. At the same time, natural climate variability and direct human impacts, such as overfishing and pollution, also affect marine ecosystems locally, regionally and globally. These climatic and non-climatic factors mutually reinforce each other.

The supercomputers Alex and Fritz at the Erlangen National High-Performance Computing Center are among the world’s fastest (TOP500) and energy-efficient systems (Green500) in current rankings. Alex secured 184th place and Fritz achieved 323rd place in the TOP500.

Constant stress can cause physical and psychological illness. The Chair for Health Psychology at FAU have investigated how stress and physical illnesses are connected. In a study now underway, scientists led by Dr. Johanna Janson-Schmitt and Prof. Dr. Nicolas Rohleder are looking specifically at how and which inflammatory responses are triggered by stress.

FAU once more proves its excellence in research in quantum technologies: The Bavarian State Ministry of Science and the Arts is providing funding around four million euros from the High-Tech Agenda Bavaria for the Professorship for Applied Quantum Technologies at FAU.

The ability to predict when and where materials will fracture is of immense importance for industrial applications– companies can use this information to maintain devices and components more efficiently and cost effectively. A research team from FAU and the University of Milan has shown that artificial intelligence can predict when quartz glass will break.

Physicists at FAU have designed a framework that allows scientists to observe interactions between light and electrons using a traditional scanning electron microscope. The procedure is considerably cheaper than the technology that has been used to date, and also enables a wider range of experiments. The researchers have published their findings in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters.