How can robots be integrated into workplaces to promote worker mental well-being and efficiency? The MindBot project is researching how a user-centered approach using collaborative robots can do just this.
Obesity increases the risk of numerous secondary diseases such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and mental illness. Prof. Dr. Kerstin Stemmer, Professor of Molecular Cell Biology at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Augsburg, explains the role of genetics in weight loss and the effect of GLP-1 weight loss medication . She is researching the extent to which fat cells can communicate directly with the pancreas in order to stimulate insulin production.
So-called Rayleigh–Bloch waves can release enormous amount of energy that can damage technical systems under certain circumstances. They only exist below a precisely defined cut-off frequency; above this they disappear abruptly. Strangely enough, however, there are isolated high frequencies at which they can also be detected. Mathematicians from the Universities of Augsburg and Adelaide have recently proposed an explanation for this puzzling phenomenon. Together with researchers from the University of Exeter, they have now been able to prove experimentally that their theory is indeed correct. The study has just been published in the journal Nature communications physics.
The Indian subcontinent is likely to experience an increasing number of extreme weather events in future. The fertile and densely populated plain around the Indus and Ganges rivers is therefore likely to become a climate change hotspot, which could have severe consequences for several hun-dred million people. This is the conclusion of a study conducted by re-searchers from the Indian Institute of Technology and the University of Augsburg, which has been published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology.
Researchers at the University of Augsburg and the University of Vienna have discovered co-existing magnetic skyrmions and antiskyrmions of arbitrary topological charge at room temperature in magnetic Co/Ni multilayer thin films. Their findings have been published in the renowned journal Nature Physics and open up the possibility for a new paradigm in skyrmionics research. The discovery of novel spin objects with arbitrary topological charge promises to contribute to advances in fundamental and applied research, particularly through their application in information storage devices.
Prof. Dr Elisabeth Naurath, a protestant religious education teacher and project leader of a research fellowship at the Jakob-Fugger-Zentrum of the University of Augsburg, has been awarded an Erasmus+ Cooperation Partnership. Together with international partners, it aims to develop models for integrating learnings from interreligious studies and environmental ethics into the education of religious education teachers from various religions.
As part of the EmmA project, the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Augsburg has developed a coaching assistant avatar designed to provide psychological support in times of occupational stress. It can recognise a user’s emotional moods via their mobile device and react appropriately in real time. The avatar is based on machine learning and complex data processing. The results of the project will be used in a follow-up study with people suffering from depression and is also part of an international collaborative project aimed at providing vulnerable people with access to personalised psychosocial services.
Scientists at the University of Augsburg and Helmholtz Munich have made an important breakthrough in better understanding early processes in the development of type 2 diabetes by identifying a previously unknown transmission of messenger substances from adipose tissue to the pancreas. In a publication in Nature Communication, the team led by Prof. Dr. Kerstin Stemmer was able to show that adipose cells release tiny lipid membrane particles known as extracellular vesicles into the blood, which can stimulate the release of the blood sugar-lowering hormone insulin from the pancreas.
In a recently published article in the leading physics journal "Nature Physics", a team of researchers with the participation of the University of Augsburg reports about unexpectedly universal correlations between the thermal expansion and the glass-transition temperature of glass-forming materials, providing new insights into the complex nature of the transition from the liquid into the solid glass.
If Germany is to achieve the UN Climate Change Conference’s target of reducing CO₂ emissions to limit global warming to 2 °C, the expansion of renewable energy is necessary. But which areas are suitable for wind turbines and solar parks and what are the economic, ecological, and social conditions and conflicts that accompany such locations? This is the focus of a new research project in geography funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) at the University of Augsburg.
