Latest News Releases 31 March

Photovoltaic systems, battery storage units, and electric vehicles – private households are increasingly turning towards economical and climate-friendly technologies. However, the full potential of these technologies, can only be unleashed in combined use. RAZO Energy, a start-up founded at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), provides an intelligent energy management system that links energy sources and building technology, optimizes self-consumption, and increases overall efficiency. RAZO Energy will be present at the KIT booth in the “Energy Solutions” area of Hannover Messe from March 31 to April 4, 2025 (Hall 13, Booth C76).

In a National Science Review perspective, the research progress and future challenges of nuclear optical clocks are presented. The Th-229 clock, with a small nucleus and separated quantum states, may outperform atomic clocks. After 50-year research, key breakthroughs have been made, and solving remaining issues will revolutionize timekeeping and fundamental physics.

A pan-Canadian team has developed a new way to quickly find personalized treatments for young cancer patients, by growing their tumours in chicken eggs and analyzing their proteins. The team, led by researchers from the University of British Columbia and BC Children’s Hospital Research Institute, is the first in Canada to combine these two techniques to identify and test a drug for a young patient's tumour in time to be used for their treatment. Their success in finding a new drug for the patient, described today in EMBO Molecular Medicine, shows how the study of proteins, known as proteomics, can be a valuable complement to the established study of genes (genomics) in real-time cancer therapies.

Oceanic mesoscale eddies are fundamental components of ocean dynamic systems, typically spanning tens to hundreds of kilometers and persisting for weeks to several months. As key dynamic features governing ocean energy distribution, these eddies regulate oceanic energy budgets, heat redistribution and material transport processes. Recent technological advancements have substantially expanded our understanding of oceanic mesoscale eddies, which could help inform future research paths to better understand and predict the eddies, according to a team of researchers based in China.

The media, with the Internet at the forefront, has been expanding its area of influence and drastically homogenising the narratives through which we give meaning to the world, even beyond the media context. This phenomenon of contagion extends to diverse realms, from the private and the intimate to the political, the cultural and the artistic, in the form of a quasi-discursive monopoly. This is one of the main conclusions of a research project carried out by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) that uses communication theory to analyse the scope and effects of the mainstream discourse on and about the Internet, paying special attention to the phenomenon of social networks.

IOP Publishing (IOPP) is strengthening its support for open science by requiring authors publicly share the research data underpinning articles in two of its journals: Environmental Research: Food Systems (ERFS) and Environmental Research: Climate (ERCL).

A Nature Medicine paper by City of Hope and Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center outlines a new tool that measures blood inflammation as a marker for poor CAR T therapy outcomes