Search Latest News

Latest news from laboratory, environment, chemistry, life science and quality control

• Nanosafety research - there's room for improvement
  Empa toxicologist Harald Krug has lambasted his colleagues in the journal Angewandte Chemie. He evaluated several thousand studies on the risks associated with nanoparticles and discovered no end o...
• Watching the interplay of molecules
  Imagine a soccer season when no one watches the matches - f ans only see results and league tables. It doesn't sound like much fun, right? It wouldn't give much insight into how the players perform...
• 125 Years of Liquid Crystal Research - Appreciation for German Physicist Otto Lehmann
  Flat-screen TVs, digital and mobile phone displays are common technologies today. The liquid crystals inside allow for a flat and energy-efficient construction of these modern devices. The basis of...
• Water filter made from bioplastic received several awards
  It all started with an "oops." When Mike Del Ponte, founder of Soma, hosted a dinner party, he was unwilling to place a cheap plastic water filter on his nicely set table. Instead, he decided to po...
• Single-proton spin detection by diamond magnetometry
  For the first time, researchers have succeeded to detect a single hydrogen atom using magnetic resonance imaging, which signifies a huge increase in the technology's spatial resolution. In the futu...
• New mass spectrometric method could revolutionize breast cancer treatment
  Stroma cells are derived from connective tissue and may critically influence tumour growth. This knowledge is not new. However, bioanalyst Christopher Gerner and an interdisciplinary team from the ...
• Cryo-electron microscope helps to reveal the structural changes of bacteria in the development of resistance
  Multiresistant bacterial pathogens that are insensitive to virtually all available antibiotics are one of the major public-health challenges of our time. The question of how resistance to various a...
• Usable method for detecting extremely rare inert gas isotopes for water dating developed
  In the earth and environmental sciences, radioactive isotopes, atom variants that decay over time, play a major role in age determination. A radioactive isotope of the inert gas argon (³⁹Ar), for e...
• A synthesized ferromagnetic superconducting compound is opening the route to detailed studies of this physical properties
  Superconductivity and ferromagnetism - the "normal" form of magnetism, such as that found in the familiar horseshoe magnet - are like chalk and cheese: They generally don't go together. Ferromagnet...
• Decay rates of radioactive substances are constant
  The distance between the Earth and the Sun has no influence on the decay rate of radioactive chlorine. You could ask: "And why should it anyway?", because it is well known that the decay of radionu...
• Better knowledge on interpretation of RIXS-spcetra
  RIXS-spectroscopy is a powerful method to gain insights into molecular and electronic structures in complex samples, liquid or solid. HZB scientists now know even a bit better how to interpret the ...
• Rare molecules reveal new quantum properties of H2O and H2
  Neutron scattering experiments at the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) have uncovered the first known quantum selection rule in molecules, a law of nature that prevents certain transitions between diff...
• Trace level determination of heavy metals in fish for human consumption
  A research paper recently published by Jafari and Sobhanardakani in Current World Environment suggests voltammetry as a viable method for the determination of the heavy metals Cu, Pb, and Zn at tra...
• Mechanism for aroma formation in wine pinpointed
  The majority of wines are produced from around 20 different types of grape, all of which have their own typical aroma. This is due to the terpenes, a diverse category of chemical substances includi...
• New microscope allows directly imaging the super-fast motion of electrons
  Physicists from the University of Regensburg have developed a novel microscope that allows them to record slow-motion movies of tiny nanostructures with groundbreaking time resolution - faster even...
• New, more powerful zeolite catalysts developed
  The world would come to a standstill without zeolites. They play a crucial role in the production of petrol, are used in washing powder to remove calcium from water, dry dishes in dishwashers and a...
• Nobel Prize 2014 in Physics: New light to illuminate the world
  This year's Nobel Laureates are rewarded for having invented a new energy-efficient and environment-friendly light source - the blue light-emitting diode (LED). In the spirit of Alfred Nobel the Pr...
• Nobel Prize 2014 in Chemistry: Surpassing the limitations of the light microscop
  For a long time optical microscopy was held back by a presumed limitation: that it would never obtain a better resolution than half the wavelength of light. Helped by fluorescent molecules the Nobe...
• Organic tin in polymers increases their light absorption
  Researchers of the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel (CAU), Germany, successfully integrated organic tin into semiconducting polymers (plastics) for the first time. Semiconducting polymers can...
• Dynamic Biosensors' switchSENSE technology receives second major laboratory award
  For the second time this year, Dynamic Biosensors GmbH was honoured for its innovative switchSENSE™ technology for molecular interaction analysis and biophysical characterization. During the 2014 M...
• Cost-efficient method for magnetic resonance imaging developed
  An international research team led by Dr. Jan-Bernd Hövener from the Medical Physics Section of the Department of Radiology at the Medical Center - University of Freiburg has developed a new, cost-...
• Lighter elements precisely detected using scanning electron microscopy
  Reflection zone plates produced by HZB enable lighter elements in material samples to be efficiently and precisely detected using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) by providing high resolution in ...
• Detection of iso-propyl cyanide in the interstellar medium
  Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (Bonn, Germany), Cornell University (USA), and the University of Cologne (Germany) have for the first time detected a carbon-bearing mol...