Phytoplankton form the base of the marine food chain but are difficult for scientists to account for. An independent underwater vehicle designed by NTNU has accomplished this task and could thus provide insights into the declining populations of seabirds.

The first order of a 18 Tesla ultra-high field magnetic resonance imaging system, a new FTIR series and a special IR solution for the dairy industry: These are just some of the few products and informations, Bruker announced at tihs year's Pittcon.

Microorganisms often assemble natural products similar to industrial assembly lines. Certain enzymes, non-ribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPS) play a key role in this process. Biotechnologists at Goethe University have now been able to discover how these enzymes interact with each other. This brings them one step closer to their goal of engineering the production of such peptide natural products.

Leica Microsystems has launched a new class of instruments for high-speed, high-quality imaging of a large diversity of samples.

Inspecting ship tanks and storage spaces underwater is a challenging task for humans. A start-up company that originated at Norway's NTNU is manufacturing autonomous drones that can do the job reliably and more cheaply.

Inspired by natural cellular structures, researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (Seas), the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, and MIT have developed a new method to 3D print materials with independently tunable macro-and microscale porosity using a ceramic foam ink.

Life sciences laboratories are another area in which plastic waste can be reduced. Approximately 5.5 million tons of plastic waste are produced every year in life sciences laboratories alone, including items like pipette tips, nitrile gloves, cell culture flasks. In the age of global waste pollution and the ubiquity of plastic in the world around us, this is definitely too much. It can’t all be changed, but improvements are possible in some areas.

Swedish scientists have developed datasets that are able to map the three-dimensional distribution and volume of the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. The visual and quantitative data of this development could become a valuable reference resource for diabetes researchers. The Umeå University researchers are publishing these datasets in the Nature Research journal Scientific Data.

In order to expand its capacities and modernise its packaging line, those responsible for the location of a large biotechnology firm in the Netherlands were looking for a new system to pack vials and pens in different configurations. Automating this small-component packaging task would open up the possibility of increasing efficiency and saving production costs. At the same time, the chosen packaging solution needed to offer a high level of flexibility and precise handling.

Over the next three years, researchers from various European institutes will be working together with the Dutch Polymer manufacturer Supra Polix on the next generation of robots: (soft) robots that ‘feel pain’ and heal themselves. The partners can count on three million Euro in support from the European Commission.