Can weightlessness stop cancer from growing? One of the nine research projects that has been given the go-ahead for the new China Space Station scheduled for 2022 is designed to answer this exact question.

The pollution of water, food and the environment by microparticles and especially micro- plastics is a growing concern. Therefore, efficient techniques for analyzing them in detail are urgently needed. A Raman microscopy system equipped with an advanced software package enables researchers to automatically find, classify and identify microparticles.

Using four low-cost smartphone cameras and some simple colored backlighting, researchers could construct a tomographic particle image velocimetry (PIV) system that is capable of quantitative flow visualization.

Agilent Technologies expanded its portfolio of instruments for molecular diagnostics with the introduction of the AriaDx Real-Time PCR System.

Electronic devices are becoming continually smaller, more flat and multifunctional and their “inner life”, the microelectronic systems, along with them – thanks to 3D integration.

CFD Simulation in Chemical Reaction Engineering — The goal of reaction engineering is to optimize transport processes (heat transfer, mass transfer and mixing) in order to improve yield/conversion of desired products whilst ensuring the safe operation of the reactor. CFD simulation can help maximizing yield while minimizing costs.

In a new study, Velia Fowler, PhD, and her lab at The Scripps Research Institute report that a protein called myosin IIA contracts to give red blood cells their distinctive shape. The findings, published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could shed light on sickle cell diseases and other disorders where red blood cells are deformed.

Scientists at the University of Portsmouth have engineered an enzyme which can digest some of our most commonly polluting plastics. The discovery could result in a recycling solution for millions of tonnes of plastic bottles, made of polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, which currently persists for hundreds of years in the environment.

Ultimately, every analysis relies on detection, and in most cases one of the many spectroscopic procedures is used for this. What is happening in this extremely wide-ranging field, and what trends are hot right now?

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 is awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson for the development of cryo-electron microscopy, which both simplifies and improves the imaging of biomolecules.