A new type of diversity on R&D teams? Late last year, I attended an excellent CDX conference at Georgia Tech that was focused on digital transformation. There were speakers from all sorts of well-known organizations, from Accenture to Verizon. But all of these months later, I’m still struck by the intriguing talk from Rajesh Anandan…
Mass Photometry: revolutionary biotech by Refeyn Ltd. wins prestigious awards
Refeyn Ltd., a spinout from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford, has been recognized by two prestigious science and innovation awards for its revolutionary mass photometry technology. Refeyn’s first instrument, the Refeyn OneMP, enables users to measure the mass of single molecules in solution – quickly, simply and accurately. The company’s proprietary…
Horizon Discovery divests animal models business to Envigo
Animal model operations to be transferred to Envigo ownership Divestment in line with Horizon’s corporate strategy to focus on its core markets Envigo, a leading global research model supplier, enters the gene-edited research model field with the addition of Horizon’s business Horizon and Envigo to collaborate on providing CRISPR screening services Horizon Discovery Group plc (LSE:…
TrialScope Acquires Clinical Trial Connect
Founder Mike Wenger to Join Staff as Vice President of Patient Engagement TrialScope, the global leader in transparency and disclosure compliance solutions, has acquired Clinical Trial Connect, a platform used by disease foundations and advocacy groups that connects their community members to relevant clinical trials. As part of the acquisition, founder Mike Wenger will share…
Coherent poly propagation materials with 3-dimensional photonic control over visible light
By: Dr. Michelle R. Stem Three-dimensional visible light photonic control is accomplished via the newly identified property of coherent poly propagation (CPP). This property is exhibited by a special silicate that is a rare form of a gemstone found in nature – opal. Dr. Michelle R. Stem discovered and examined several specimens of this material.…
Laser Trick Produces High-Energy Terahertz Pulses
A team of scientists from DESY and the University of Hamburg has achieved an important milestone in the quest for a new type of compact particle accelerator. Using ultra-powerful pulses of laser light, they were able to produce particularly high-energy flashes of radiation in the terahertz range having a sharply defined wavelength (colour). Terahertz radiation…
Scientists Investigate Climate and Vegetation Drivers of Terrestrial Carbon Fluxes
A better understanding of terrestrial flux dynamics will come from elucidating the integrated effects of climate and vegetation constraints on gross primary productivity (GPP), ecosystem respiration (ER), and net ecosystem productivity (NEP), according to Dr. Shutao Chen, Associate professor at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology. Dr. Chen and his team–a group of researchers…
One-Two-Punch Catalysts Trapping Carbon Dioxide For Cleaner Fuels
Copper and platinum nanoparticles added to the surface of a blue titania photocatalyst significantly improve its ability to recycle atmospheric carbon dioxide into hydrocarbon fuels. The modified photocatalyst was developed and tested by researchers at the Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), with colleagues in Korea, Japan, and the US. It converted sunlight…
Fast and Furious: Detection of Powerful Winds Driven by a Supermassive Black Hole
Carbon Nanotubes Grown with the Help of Pantry Staples
Baking soda, table salt, and detergent are surprisingly effective ingredients for cooking up carbon nanotubes, researchers at MIT have found. In a study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie, the team reports that sodium-containing compounds found in common household ingredients are able to catalyze the growth of carbon nanotubes, or CNTs, at much lower temperatures…
Polymers Jump Through Hoops on Pathway to Sustainable Materials
Recyclable plastics that contain ring-shaped polymers may be a key to developing sustainable synthetic materials. Despite some promising advances, researchers said, a full understanding of how to processes ring polymers into practical materials remains elusive. In a new study, researchers identified a mechanism called “threading” that takes place when a polymer is stretched – a…
Breakthrough Technique For Studying Gene Expression Takes Root in Plants
An open-source RNA analysis platform has been successfully used on plant cells for the first time – a breakthrough that could herald a new era of fundamental research and bolster efforts to engineer more efficient food and biofuel crop plants. The technology, called Drop-seq, is a method for measuring the RNA present in individual cells,…
Artificial Intelligence Tool Vastly Scales Up Alzheimer’s Research
A New Filter to Better Map the Dark Universe
The earliest known light in our universe, known as the cosmic microwave background, was emitted about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The patterning of this relic light holds many important clues to the development and distribution of large-scale structures such as galaxies and galaxy clusters. Distortions in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), caused by…
Development of ‘Transparent and Flexible Battery’ For Power Generation and Storage at Once
Various use of electronics and skin-attachable devices are expected with the development of transparent battery that can both generate and store power. DGIST announced on Tuesday, April 23 that Senior Researcher Changsoon Choi’s team in the Smart Textile Research Group developed film-type graphene based multifunctional transparent energy devices. Senior Researcher Changsoon Choi’s team actively used…
Integrated Sensors for Direct Control
A team of Fraunhofer researchers has succeeded in significantly enhancing the functionality of GaN power ICs for voltage converters: the researchers at Fraunhofer IAF integrated current and temperature sensors onto a GaN-based semiconductor chip, along with power transistors, freewheeling diodes and gate drivers. This development paves the way for more compact and efficient on-board chargers…
Stretchy, Protective Artificial Tissue Made from ‘Nanofiber Yarn’
The human body is held together by an intricate cable system of tendons and muscles, engineered by nature to be tough and highly stretchable. An injury to any of these tissues, particularly in a major joint like the shoulder or knee, can require surgical repairs and weeks of limited mobility to fully heal. Now MIT…
Slippery Surfaces Permit Sticky Pastes and Gels to Slide
An MIT research team that has already conquered the problem of getting ketchup out of its bottle has now tackled a new category of consumer and manufacturing woe: how to get much thicker materials to slide without sticking or deforming. The slippery coatings the team has developed, called liquid-impregnated surfaces, could have numerous advantages, including…
Marine Skin Dives Deeper For Better Monitoring
A new and greatly improved version of an electronic tag, called Marine Skin, used for monitoring marine animals could revolutionize our ability to study sea life and its natural environment, say KAUST researchers. Marine Skin is a thin, flexible, lightweight polymer-based material with integrated electronics which can track an animal’s movement and diving behavior and…
Observing a Molecule Stretch and Bend in Real-Time
Being able to watch how molecules bend, stretch, break, or transform, during chemical reactions requires, to an extent, state-of-the-art instruments and techniques that can observe and track, with sub-atomic spatial and few-femtoseconds temporal resolution, all the atoms within a molecule and how they behave during such a change. About 20 years ago, scientists came up…
What Happened Before the Big Bang?
A team of scientists has proposed a powerful new test for inflation, the theory that the universe dramatically expanded in size in a fleeting fraction of a second right after the Big Bang. Their goal is to give insight into a long-standing question: what was the universe like before the Big Bang? Although cosmic inflation…
Icy Giant Planets in the Laboratory
Giant planets like Uranus and Neptune may contain much less free hydrogen than previously assumed. Researchers from the German Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) drove shock waves through two different types of plastic to reach the same temperatures and pressures present inside such planets, and observed the behavior using ultra-strong X-ray laser pulses. Unexpectedly, one of these…
UBC Researchers Develop New Heart Valve Aimed at High-Risk Patients
Researchers at UBC have created the first-ever nanocomposite biomaterial heart-valve developed to reduce or eliminate complications related to heart transplants. By using a newly developed technique, the researchers were able to build a more durable valve that enables the heart to adapt faster and more seamlessly. Assistant Professor Hadi Mohammadi runs the Heart Valve Performance…
Ultrathin Graphene-based Film Offers New Concept for Solar Energy
Researchers at the University of Sydney, Swinburne University of Technology and the Australian National University have collaborated to develop a solar absorbing, ultrathin film with unique properties that has great potential for use in solar thermal energy harvesting. The 90-nanometer material is 1,000 times finer than a human hair and can be rapidly heated up…
Almost Perfect Performance Recorded in Low-cost Semiconductors
Tiny, easy-to-produce particles, called quantum dots, may soon take the place of more expensive single crystal semiconductors in advanced electronics found in solar panels, camera sensors and medical imaging tools. Although quantum dots have begun to break into the consumer market—in the form of quantum dot TVs—they have been hampered by long-standing uncertainties about their…