Researchers of FAU have developed special iron oxide nanoparticles they call “smart rust” that actually makes water cleaner. Smart rust can attract many substances, including oil, nano- and microplastics, as well as the herbicide glyphosate, depending on the particles’ coating. And because the nanoparticles are magnetic, they can easily be removed from water with a magnet along with the pollutants.
The aim is to gain a considerably better understanding of the underlying disease mechanisms in neurological RASopathies, and subsequently use this to create guidelines for improved diagnosis and effective, preferably non-invasive, treatments.
Since June 2023, Prof. Dr. Roland Nagy has been head of the flagship Institute of Applied Quantum Technologies at the Faculty of Engineering at FAU. In our interview, he gives a brief insight into his research.
The communication of the future is to become more secure with the help of light particles. This is the goal of the QuNET initiative by the BMBF. The initiative's partners have now taken an important step toward quantum-safe networks: With a key experiment.
A robot performing surgery on humans. What sounds like science fiction could provide support to physicians in the operating room in future. The project is set to receive around 2 million euros of funding from the Bavarian Research Foundation because of its innovative approach.
Volunteering in your free time is a good thing: It can strengthen the team spirit in a club, is beneficial to the environment and provides support to older people. A team of researchers at FAU and the digiDEM Bayern Digital Dementia Register has now discovered that voluntary work can have a positive effect on the cognitive abilities of the volunteers themselves.
Headaches, high blood pressure or digestive problems can be signs of many different medical conditions. Treatment is often aimed at alleviating symptoms. This is something experts at FAU hope to change.
Antibodies are crucial, not only for treating tumors and infections. Sometimes, however, the immune reaction they trigger can be too strong and end up causing more damage, for example in the case of people infected with Covid-19. Problems such as these can often be avoided by finetuning antibodies, as Prof. Dr. Falk Nimmerjahn from FAU and two of his colleagues in the Netherlands and in the UK have now reported in the journal Nature Immunology.
Organic electronics can make a decisive contribution to decarbonization and, at the same time, help to cut the consumption of rare and valuable raw materials. To do so, it is not only necessary to further develop manufacturing processes, but also to devise technical solutions for recycling as early on as the laboratory phase. Materials scientists from FAU are now promoting this circular strategy in conjunction with researchers from the UK and USA in the renowned journal “Nature Materials”.
The origins of a high-energy shower of relativistic particles that is constantly impacting the Earth’s atmosphere is one of the greatest mysteries of modern astroparticle physics. A team of researchers is now unlocking this mystery. With the IceCube detector at the Earth’s South Pole, they have been able to detect neutrinos from our Milky Way.
