Integrating ground source heat pumps and energy piles is a promising approach to address the issue of energy efficiency for developing smart cities in the future. Recently, a team of researchers from Shibaura Institute of Technology has comprehensively reviewed this dual technology, highlighting its features and benefits. The proposed technology not only reduces electricity consumption and operating costs but also mitigates the urban heat island effect.

The CEDITRAA research project, short for “Cultural Entrepreneurship and Digital Transformation in Africa and Asia”, has been investigating since 2021 how cultural productions in Africa and Asia are created and what role digital media have played in their global dissemination. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has now extended the project – led jointly by Goethe University Frankfurt, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Pan-Atlantic University in Lagos, Nigeria – for three years, and included an expanded research question.  

On February 2, 1887, residents of Punxsutawney Pennsylvania consulted a large rodent regarding the arrival of spring, marking the first official celebration of Groundhog Day. Our ability to predict the timing of seasons hasn’t improved much since then, but a new study is set to make seasonal forecasting a lot more reliable.

A study is the first-of-its-kind to recognize American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet gestures using computer vision. Researchers developed a custom dataset of 29,820 static images of ASL hand gestures. Each image was annotated with 21 key landmarks on the hand, providing detailed spatial information about its structure and position. Combining MediaPipe and YOLOv8, a deep learning method they trained, with fine-tuning hyperparameters for the best accuracy, represents a groundbreaking and innovative approach that hasn’t been explored in previous research.

Food allergies affect millions of people worldwide, and flavonoids are promising natural compounds to help modulate the immune response and treat inflammation caused by these allergies. In a recent study, researchers from Japan have identified that kaempferol, a flavonoid, produces an anti-inflammatory effect through regulatory T-cell development. This occurred through increased RADLH2 expression in dendritic cells via AhR-mediated and PU.1/IRF-4 dependent mechanisms. Additionally, kaempferol suppressed several allergic symptoms in mice with food allergies.