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

• Biorenewable, biodegradable plastic alternative synthesized
  Colorado State University polymer chemists have taken another step toward a future of high-performance, biorenewable, biodegradable plastics. Publishing in Nature Communications, the team led by...
• Safer component for lithium batteries
  The power source for implanted medical devices, electric cars, unmanned aerial vehicles and other such objects is vital to their performance. So, what would happen if that powerhouse of energy - a ...
• Teaching an enzyme a new trick, with potential for building new molecules
  Princeton chemists have found a way to make a naturally occurring enzyme take on a new, artificial role, which has significant implications for modern chemistry, including pharmaceutical production...
• On the path to an artificial cell
  It is hoped that cells created in a test tube can answer some of the major questions in biology. What is the minimum that a cell needs in order to live? And how did life on Earth begin? Researchers...
• A new way to detect bacterial activity using gold nanoparticles
  "Bacteria exist everywhere in an average person's daily life, and they usually develop into biofilms - a society of bacteria," explains Dr Huangxian Ju, director of the State Key Laboratory of Anal...
• New tool for checking the quality of biological samples and improving the reproducibility
  BBL (Integrated BioBank of Luxembourg) announces the launch of Findmyassay.com. The success of biomedical research is closely linked to the quality of the underlying biological samples (tissues, bl...
• Biological light sensor filmed in action
  Using X-ray laser technology, a team led by researchers of the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI has recorded one of the fastest processes in biology. In doing so, they produced a molecular movie that re...
• Electron microscopy images provide important insights into ribosome assembly
  Berlin-based researchers have produced snapshots of the 'protein factories' of the cell. Their findings could set us on the path towards a new class of antibiotics. The study - a basic science stud...
• Chemical fingerprint of North America's largest river
  Materials containing carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur build up, break down and transfer between the atmosphere, freshwater, the ocean and rocks. Dissolved sulfate is a key chemical compound in t...
• On the trail of chemical bonds
  Professor Paul Popelier is a computational and theoretical chemist at the University of Manchester. He spoke about a chemical concept called bond order, and explains how his research in this area w...
• Tracking down the reactivity of catalysts using NMR-spectroscopy
  About 90 percent of all chemical processes in industry depend on catalysts - molecules that enable or accelerate chemical reactions, thus allowing them to take place at lower temperatures. The anal...
• Neutrinos weighed by the world's most precise scale
  What is the mass of neutrinos? To answer one of the most fundamental and important open questions in modern particle physics and cosmology, the KATRIN Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino Ex-periment was de...
• Beat plastic pollution with ISO standards
  Plastic is an important material in our economy and daily lives. It has multiple functions that can help tackle a number of the challenges facing our society, be it packaging that ensures food safe...
• Quick identification of multidrug-resistant pathogens
  If doctors diagnose a patient with blood poisoning, the patient will immediately be administered a broad-spectrum antibiotic. In many cases, however, the drug is ineffective. Multidrug-resistant pa...
• Insight into life and death of a neutron
  Experiments on the lifetime of a neutron reveal surprising and unexplained deviations. In order to address this problem of subatomic physics, a team of physicists from Jülich, the UK, and the USA c...
• Surprising new behaviour in gels
  "Imagine putting a brick next to a stone and finding that the brick was moving into the stone, and vice versa" - this is how Professor David Smith of the University of York describes his latest pie...
• New material that changes colour under a flow of human breath
  Our clothes, food and everyday devices get their colour from dye or pigments that absorb light. These colours fade over time, as laundry detergent ads never fail to remind us. But a different, more...
• Observation of different reactivities of ortho- and para-water
  Water molecules exist in two different forms with almost identical physical properties. For the first time, researchers have succeeded in separating the two forms to show that they can exhibit diff...
• Understanding GDPR: new game from the JRC
  The JRC has just launched a mobile game to help raise awareness of privacy risks and data protection rights in a fun and interactive way. 'Cyber Chronix' has a special focus on the European General...
• Fundamental change in the International System of Units
  As of today, no one can say how much the small platinum cylinder in a safe in Sèvres near Paris is worth - yet, for over a century, this object has told the world what a kilogram is. Very soon, how...
• New EU rules to reduce marine litter
  With the amount of harmful plastic litter in oceans and seas growing ever greater, the European Commission is proposing new EU-wide rules to target the 10 single-use plastic products most often fou...