Research news

Physicists identify a fundamental mechanism

We all know that when held up to a mirror a right hand looks like a left hand – and that a right hand and a left hand differ in that they cannot be superposed on each other. This absence of left–right (mirror) symmetry is known as chirality and is ubiquitous in nature: from the coiling of snail shells to the double helix of DNA. Despite its importance, chirality has largely been missing from theoretical descriptions of interacting active matter.
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In a new research project led by the Central Institute of Mental Health (CIMH) in Mannheim, scientists are investigating how insights into learning processes in animal brains can be used to make artificial intelligence (AI) systems more flexible and efficient. Jonas-Frederic Sauer, Professor of Physiology at Saarland University, is involved in the project and conducts research at the Center for Integrative Physiology and Molecular Medicine (CIPMM) on the Homburg campus. [...]

Verletzungen wie Kreuzbandrisse oder Meniskusschäden gehören zu den größten Risiken im Jugendfußball. Sie führen oft zu monatelangen Pausen und können die sportliche Entwicklung nachhaltig beeinträchtigen und Karrieren bereits zu einem frühen Zeitpunkt beenden. Ein internationales Forschungsteam hat nun herausgefunden, dass ein spezielles Aufwärm- und Trainingsprogramm namens „FUNBALL“ diese Gefahr deutlich verringern kann. Die Studie wurde im Fachmagazin Sports Medicine - Open veröffentlicht. [...]

Wie lassen sich künftige Pandemien früher erkennen? Welche Daten helfen wirklich bei präzisen Prognosen? Und wie kann menschliches Verhalten in Vorhersagemodelle integriert werden? Mit dem Forschungsprojekt DREAM EP möchte die Technische Universität Dresden gemeinsam mit einem Konsortium führender Wissenschaftler diese und weitere Fragen beantworten. Mit dabei ist Thorsten Lehr, Professor für Klinische Pharmazie der Universität des Saarlandes. Das Projekt wird mit 1,8 Millionen Euro gefördert. [...]

On 16 and 17 January, a symposium at the Medical Campus in Homburg will be exploring how AI-based technologies are reshaping healthcare. The symposium ‘Artificial Intelligence in Medicine’ is hosted by the Health.AI network, Saarland University, Saarland University Medical Center and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). It is aimed at clinicians, healthcare professionals, and researchers, as well as anyone with an interest in the topic. [...]

A team of researchers from Saarbrücken and Leipzig has examined around 1,700 languages to identify structures that might occur universally. Of 191 grammatical patterns – known as linguistic universals – one third were found to be present in the languages studied. The team, led by Annemarie Verkerk of Saarland University and Russell Gray from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, has published its findings in Nature Human Behaviour. [...]

Researchers from Saarland University and the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems have, for the first time, shown that the reactions of humans and large language models (LLMs) to complex or misleading program code significantly align, by comparing brain activity of study participants with model uncertainty. Building on this, the team developed a data-driven method to automatically detect such confusing areas in code — a promising step toward better AI assistants for software development. [...]

With some 5,000 grades of steel available today, the steel manufacturing process hinges on fine nuances. To create new properties or to ensure consistent material quality, steels are analysed using a range of imaging techniques. Over many years, Professor Frank Mücklich and his research team have built extensive expertise in this field. Using their data from microscopy-based analyses, they have trained an AI to detect the smallest of changes in steel. [...]

On 27 and 28 November, experts from Italy, France, Sweden, Great Britain and Germany will meet at the Saarbrücken campus for a conference to discuss the status and prospects of digital historical word research. The topic is a central focus of research and of the teaching curriculum at Saarland University’s Chair of Romance Philology. [...]

Human languages are complex, rich and varied. From an information-theoretic perspective, however, they could convey the same information in a much more compact form. So why don't we speak 'digitally', encoding information in strings of ones and zeros like a computer? Michael Hahn, a linguist from Saarbrücken, has explored this question together with a research colleague from the US. They have developed a model that explains why we speak the way we do. [...]