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

• New Sensor Materials Heal Wounds
  Custom-developed polymers developed at the Johannes Kepler University Linz could revolutionize sensor technology. These sensors not only react to, but also sense, biological material, forming the b...
• Patterns of biodiversity unveiled
  Understanding the origins and preservation of biodiversity is crucial as human impact continues to threaten our planet's rich variety of life. Often overlooked, narrow-ranged and evolutionary uniqu...
• Biosurfactants might offer an environmentally friendly solution for tackling oil spills
  Oil leaks into the oceans are estimated at approximately 1500 million liters annually worldwide. This leads to globally significant environmental pollution, as oil contains hazardous compounds such...
• A safe, easy, and affordable way to store and retrieve hydrogen
  Researchers at the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS) in Japan have discovered a compound that uses a chemical reaction to store ammonia, potentially offering a safer and easier way to...
• Artificial rocks from macroplastics threaten ocean health
  Plastic waste is a problem on our beaches. Hence, it is largely removed in a coordinated manner within a few weeks. However, it can litter other coasts of the world for many months to years due to ...
• A circular economy for rare-earth elements: How could it work?
  Rare-earth elements (REEs) are found in smartphones, camera lenses, plasma screens, hard drives and even artificial joints. They play an essential role in the production of clean energy and thus in...
• PFAS reduce the activity of immune cells
  Because they are persistant, per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are also known as "chemicals for eternety". They can lead to liver damage, thyroid disorders, obesity, hormonal disorders, an...
• High-performance digital system for tailoring polymers
  Polymers have become an indispensable part of everyday life. However, the current polymers represent only a small fraction of the huge number of polymers that theoretically exist. Prof. Dr. Christo...
• Microbial life on nitric oxide respiration
  In a long-term culture, scientists find and characterize two new microorganisms growing on the toxic gas nitric oxide, reducing it completely to N₂. Nitric oxide is a central molecule in the glo...
• Microplastic pollution: some lakes are worse impacted than oceans
  Microplastics are found in lakes and reservoirs around the world. Pollution reaches even the most secluded places where human influence is minimal. Moreover, concentrations of microplastics in fres...
• Organic electronics: Sustainability during the entire lifecycle
  Organic electronics can make a decisive contribution to decarbonization and, at the same time, help to cut the consumption of rare and valuable raw materials. To do so, it is not only necessary to ...
• Pipette tips made from cooking oil
  Ever since vessels made of glass were replaced by fossil-based plastic vessels, these have been irreplaceable in laboratories world-wide. This is because they provide the required quality standards...
• Affordable and available technologies can curb rising nitrous oxide emissions
  Researchers from IIASA and the University of Maryland in the US have found that nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas and stratospheric ozone-depleting substance, could be readily abated with exis...
• New technique reveals insights on Vitamin B12
  Researchers have implemented a new technique, based on the European XFEL's ultrashort pulses, to gain insights into two compounds featuring vitamin B12. B12 is an important compound in many biologi...
• Bismuth goes "radical" to mimic the behavior of transition metals
  So-called "cross-coupling reactions" are one of the most important modern tools for making new bonds in synthetic organic chemistry. They are used as key step in the preparation of drugs. Tradition...
• Innovative paper-like, battery-free, AI-enabled sensor for holistic wound monitoring
  Timely and effective monitoring of wound healing status is critical to wound care and management. Impaired wound healing, such as chronic wounds (i.e. those that do not heal after 3 months) and pos...
• The next generation of antimicrobial coating technologies
  The transmission of pathogenic microorganisms, such as bacteria, viruses or parasites, can happen rapidly with catastrophic and long-term consequences - as SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the...
• Puzzling glass vibrations
  Sometimes the knowledge is already there - it has just been overlooked. For about half a century, physicists have puzzled over vibrations in glass at low temperatures. The reason: Glass carries sou...
• Parallels between cat noses and gas chromatography
  Scientists have found the secret to felines' finesse at sniffing out food, friends and foes. A complex collection of tightly coiled bony airway structures gets the credit, according to the first de...
• How the use of chemicals and biodiversity loss are connected
  Science does not take a deep enough look at chemicals in the environment as one of the causes of the decline in biodiversity. Forty scientists in the RobustNature research network of Goethe Univers...
• A new method for water splitting
  Hydrogen is seen as an energy source of the future - at least, when it is produced in a climate-friendly way. Hydrogen can also be important for the production of active ingredients and other impor...