Environment Panama  PANAMÁ 18/01/2022

A group of high school students describe how 'Azteca alfari' ants respond to damage to their host plant

Fortuitous discovery: accidental tree wound reveals novel symbiotic behavior

One afternoon, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in Panama, a bored teenager with a slingshot and a clay ball accidentally shot entry and exit holes in a Cecropia tree trunk. These are “ant-plant” trees, which famously cooperate with fierce Azteca ants; the trees provide shelter and food to the ants, and in exchange the ants defend their leaves against herbivores. The next morning, to his surprise, the Azteca alfari ants living within the Cecropia trunk had patched up the wound.

  
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Space Chile  ATACAMA 17/01/2022

ALMA catches “intruder” redhanded in rarely detected stellar flyby event

While such intruder-based flyby events have previously been witnessed with some regularity in computer simulations of star formation, few convincing direct observations have ever been made

Scientists using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) made a rare detection of a likely stellar flyby event in the Z Canis Majoris (Z CMa) star system. An intruder—not bound to the system—object came in close proximity to and interacted with the environment surrounding the binary protostar, causing the formation of chaotic, stretched-out streams of dust and gas in the disk surrounding it.

 

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 13/01/2022

A new biochip that reduces the cost of manufacturing in vitro skin has been developed

A device simplifies the process of manufacturing in vitro skin in the laboratory and other complex multi-layer tissues

Researchers from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) and other entities have designed a new biochip, a device that simplifies the process of manufacturing in vitro skin in the laboratory and other complex multi-layer tissues. Human skin modelled using this device could be used in medicine and cosmetic testing, which would reduce the cost of these preclinical trials.

  
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Environment Panama  PANAMÁ 22/12/2021

Engineering drought-resistant plants may be more difficult than it seems

The adaptation of certain plants to drought and high temperatures involves a fundamental reprogramming of their metabolism, not just a simple adjustment that can be made by regular plants

Drought and high temperatures often cause significant yield losses in valuable food crops. As climate change increases the frequency of weather extremes, interest has been growing in bioengineering crop plants with the same drought-tolerance mechanisms present in plant species from very hot areas. But is it really possible to achieve this? Understanding the evolution of plants’ abilities to survive these extremes is part of a new study by Klaus Winter, senior staff scientist at Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, and J. Andrew C. Smith at the University of Oxford. Their findings indicate that bioengineering drought-resistant plants may not be as easy as some scientists have proposed.

 

  
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Health Spain  MADRID 22/12/2021

An aptasensor has been designed to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus in saliva

This sensor is more sensitive that antigen-based sensors and detects the virus more quickly and cheaply than PCR tests

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Technology Spain  MADRID 21/12/2021

Narseo Vallina-Rodríguez and Guillermo Suárez-Tangil, awarded Ramón y Cajal research grants

Two researchers from IMDEA Networks Institute receive grants from the most competitive call for proposals to attract talent from experienced researchers at the national level

IMDEA Networks researchers Narseo Vallina-Rodríguez, Research Associate Professor, and Guillermo Suárez-Tangil, Research Assistant Professor, have been awarded Ramón y Cajal grants from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. These grants promote the incorporation of national and foreign researchers with an outstanding career in R&D centers. They are grants for employment contracts, for the creation of permanent jobs, and their subsequent incorporation into the agents of the Spanish Science, Technology and Innovation System who are beneficiaries of these grants. This is a recognition of the work of technology transfer and the practical impact on society of institutions such as IMDEA Networks.

 

  
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Health Portugal  PORTUGAL 21/12/2021

Unfolding the blindness proteins through fly eyes

IGC and ITQB NOVA researchers identify a new production mechanism for a critical protein for vision in Drosophila fruit flies

Every 6 minutes someone is told they’re going blind. One of the major causes of human blindness is a disease called Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP), which causes progressive degeneration of the retina and vision loss. Approximately one-tenth of Retinitis Pigmentosa cases worldwide are caused by mutations in the rhodopsin gene. Researchers from ITQB NOVA and Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência had now identified a crucial mechanism for the production of Rhodopsin, the light-sensitive protein of photoreceptors, using fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) and human cells as models.

 

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 15/12/2021

A study involving IMDEA Networks detects cheating in video games

Researchers have observed how the hackers have built a very active online community where they share knowledge and trade products and services

Cheats in video games occur frequently. However, in recent times the techniques for creating them have been perfected, acting in a similar way to malware, which makes the work of companies creating anti-cheat mechanisms more difficult. A group of international researchers, including IMDEA Networks professor Guillermo Suárez-Tangil, has conducted a study that helps game developers and the anti-cheat industry to identify attack vectors more quickly.

 

  
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Environment Panama  PANAMÁ 10/12/2021

Secondary forests restore fresh water sources in degraded landscapes

Analyses of microbial communities in streams across different land use types suggests that passive reforestation rapidly restores water quality in lowland tropical watersheds

New research, published in Scientific Reports by Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) postdoctoral fellow Karina Chavarria and colleagues, shows that bacterial communities in streams adjacent to young secondary forests recover to resemble those of mature forest streams in as little as a decade after cattle has been removed from the land, and that these communities are robust throughout the year.

 

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 10/12/2021

A system that combines solar energy and a chemical reactor to get more from biomass has been designed

A new system allows more to be got from biomass, such as forest and agricultural waste

Researchers at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and the University of Rome "Tor Vergata” (Italy) have designed a new system that allows more to be got from biomass (such as forest and agricultural waste) thanks to a chemical reactor that works with a small solar power facility.

  
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Space Chile  ATACAMA 03/12/2021

Stellar cocoon with organic molecules at the edge of our galaxy

The discovery, which revealed the hidden chemical complexity of our Universe, appears in a paper in 'The Astrophysical Journal'

For the first time, astronomers have detected a newborn star and the surrounding cocoon of complex organic molecules at the edge of our Galaxy, which is known as the extreme outer Galaxy. The discovery, which revealed the hidden chemical complexity of our Universe, appears in a paper in The Astrophysical Journal.

 

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 02/12/2021

Facebook advertising can be targeted at a specific person

According to a study the UC3M has participated in

A piece of research undertaken by scientists at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) and the Graz University of Technology (Austria) shows that an advertising campaign on Facebook can target a specific person, with the campaign being based only on four unique interests assigned to the user by the social network.

  
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Environment Chile  CHILE 02/12/2021

What genetic drivers control the longevity of a species?

That was the central question of a new study published this month in the Science journal. And one of the authors was our UC Chile professor Juliana Vianna

A group of scientists of various universities studied the lifespan of fish. Why? Because some species have wide variations in lifespan even though they are the same family: rockfish.

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 30/11/2021

Arturo Azcorra has been elevated to IEEE Fellow in the category of "Technical Leader"

For the scientific and industrial impact of his research contributions to the development of 5G technology

Arturo Azcorra, founding director of IMDEA Networks and professor in the Department of Telematics Engineering at the University Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M), has been elevated to the rank of IEEE Fellow in the “Technical Leader” category, for the scientific and industrial impact of his research contributions to the development of 5G technology. In this way, he becomes the first scientist in Spain to be designated IEEE Fellow in the “Technical Leader” category.

 

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 30/11/2021

Breaking the symmetry of sound waves allows the sound to be directed to a certain place

According to UC3M research

Research undertaken by the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) has concluded that sound can be directed to a certain place if the sound waves’ symmetry is broken. In order to carry out this work, recently published in the Nature journal, researchers used the whispering gallery phenomenon, a circular, vaulted room in which you can hear what is being said in a specific part of the room from anywhere, even if it is being whispered.

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 23/11/2021

Robotics and artificial intelligence to improve health rehabilitation

A Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) spin-off developed a robotic device that provides an innovative motor and cognitive rehabilitation service

A Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) spin-off, Inrobics Social Robotics, S.L.L., has developed a robotic device that provides an innovative motor and cognitive rehabilitation service that can be used at health centres as well as at home. Inrobics was created using research results from the University’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering.

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 16/11/2021

Protecting the spectrum users with Internet of Things

The SOCRATES project has demonstrated that it is possible to protect the spectrum from malicious intruders by identifying and locating unauthorized transmissions

Led by IMDEA Networks Institute (a networking research organization based in Leganés, Madrid, Spain), the SOCRATES project concluded successfully at the end of October 2021, experimentally showing that a novel Internet of Things network can be used to protect the spectrum, identifying and localizing unauthorized transmissions. The project received funding from NATO’s Emerging Security Challenges Division – Science for Peace and Security Programme (SPS). The two other collaborating partners on the project were the ElectroSense, a not-for-profit association in Switzerland (a crowd-sourcing initiative that collects and analyses spectrum data), and Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven in Belgium.

 

  
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Environment Panama  PANAMÁ 12/11/2021

Orchid bees show remarkable resistance to major climate events

The longest continuous study of euglossines in the tropics found relatively stable populations of these wild bees over four decades

In the tropical forest of Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Panama, metallic blue, green, gold and red bees follow the fragrances of flowering orchids. Male euglossine, or orchid bees, are wild New World bees attracted to the strong scents produced by flowers, fungi and fruit in nature. These pollinators’ populations, and their response to major climatological events, are the focus of long-term studies by David Roubik and Yves Basset, both staff scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI).

 

  
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Technology Spain  MADRID 29/10/2021

Wireless communication devices without batteries? Research and sustainability, united through light

A research team of IMDEA Networks Institute has introduced Internet of Things (IoT) devices that communicate without any batteries and harvest energy and receive data through visible light

A team of researchers, led by Domenico Giustiniano, Research Associate Professor at IMDEA Networks Institute, Madrid, has presented important advances in the creation of sustainable wireless communication systems. This represents a new step towards making battery-free devices a reality, through the convergence of two emerging technologies: LiFi and radio frequency (RF) backscatter. Potential applications include smart homes, smart cities, and smart agriculture.

  
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Environment Panama  PANAMÁ 08/10/2021

Vine takeover

The accelerated proliferation of these woody vines, due to natural disturbance, is altering forest structure, regeneration and functioning

Lianas are the bridges of the tropical forest. These long, woody vines contribute to the high diversity of tropical plants and, by linking forest trees together, they also help animals move about the canopy. However, their abundance is increasing dramatically, which may be linked to natural forest disturbance. To test this hypothesis, a team led by Stefan Schnitzer, a Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), followed the fate of more than 117,000 rooted liana stems over a 10-year period in a 50-ha area of old-growth forest in Panama’s Barro Colorado Island (BCI).

  
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