Publications by authors named "Benjamin Lehner"

To mitigate the effects of climate change, a significant percentage of future energy generation is set to come from renewable energy sources. This has led to a substantial increase of installed offshore wind in the North Sea in the last years (28 GW in 2021) and is projected to further accelerate to an installed capacity of 212 GW by 2050. Increasing the renewable energy grid penetration brings challenges, including 1) limitations in space availability and 2) the reliability of renewable energy systems in terms of grid balancing.

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As renewed interest in human space-exploration intensifies, a coherent and modernized strategy for mission design and planning has become increasingly crucial. Biotechnology has emerged as a promising approach to increase resilience, flexibility, and efficiency of missions, by virtue of its ability to effectively utilize in situ resources and reclaim resources from waste streams. Here we outline four primary mission-classes on Moon and Mars that drive a staged and accretive biomanufacturing strategy.

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Finding sustainable approaches to achieve independence from terrestrial resources is of pivotal importance for the future of space exploration. This is relevant not only to establish viable space exploration beyond low Earth-orbit, but also for ethical considerations associated with the generation of space waste and the preservation of extra-terrestrial environments. Here we propose and highlight a series of microbial biotechnologies uniquely suited to establish sustainable processes for in situ resource utilization and loop-closure.

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Graphene oxide (GO) has immense potential for widespread use in diverse and biomedical applications owing to its thermal and chemical resistance, excellent electrical properties and solubility, and high surface-to-volume ratio. However, development of GO-based biological nanocomposites and biosensors has been hampered by its poor intrinsic biocompatibility and difficult covalent biofunctionalization across its lattice. Many studies exploit the strategy of chemically modifying GO by noncovalent and reversible attachment of (bio)molecules or sole covalent biofunctionalization of residual moieties at the lattice edges, resulting in a low coating coverage and a largely bioincompatible composite.

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In-situ resource utilization (ISRU) is increasingly acknowledged as an essential requirement for the construction of sustainable extra-terrestrial colonies. Even with decreasing launch costs, the ultimate goal of establishing colonies must be the usage of resources found at the destination of interest. Typical approaches towards ISRU are often constrained by the mass and energy requirements of transporting processing machineries, such as rovers and massive reactors, and the vast amount of consumables needed.

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Psychopathic offenders have a high propensity to violate social norms, as indicated for instance by their widespread lying and cheating behaviour. The reasons for their norm violations are not well understood, though, as they are able to recognise norms in a given situation and also punish norm violators. In this study, we investigated whether psychopathic offenders would violate fairness norms during a repeated trust game because of increased profit-maximising concerns.

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Graphene's maximized surface-to-volume ratio, high conductance, mechanical strength, and flexibility make it a promising nanomaterial. However, large-scale graphene production is typically cost-intensive. This manuscript describes a microbial reduction approach for producing graphene that utilizes the bacterium in combination with modern nanotechnology to enable a low-cost, large-scale production method.

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Article Synopsis
  • Biofilms are clusters of bacteria surrounded by a protective matrix, making them resistant to antibiotics, but they can be useful for environmental cleanup like water purification.
  • A new low-cost method for creating biofilms using a modified 3D printer with bacterial ink has been developed, which can lead to better antibacterial treatments and biofilm applications.
  • The process involves using engineered E. coli suspended in alginate that solidifies when in contact with calcium, allowing for the creation of precise biofilm patterns with various applications across different fields.
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Sustainable and personally tailored materials production is an emerging challenge to society. Living organisms can produce and pattern an extraordinarily wide range of different molecules in a sustainable way. These natural systems offer an abundant source of inspiration for the development of new environmentally friendly materials production techniques.

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