Will manual pipettes still be around in 50 years’ time? What challenges lie ahead? What opportunities? Two Eppendorf experts share their views with LP. The conversation was conducted by Dr. Ilka Ottleben.

It has been assumed that the Vikings were trading in stockfish, but so far solid evidence has been lacking. With new methods, it is possible to extract ancient DNA from fishbone remnants and reveal the source of the stockfish.

As recently as 60 years ago, it was almost impossible to pipette small amounts of liquid in the microliter range safely and reproducibly. Many breakthroughs, particularly in the fields of molecular and chemical research, would not have been conceivable in the milliliter range.

In freshwater lakes, large amounts of the greenhouse gas methane are oxidized by bacteria before it can be emitted into the atmosphere. A study in Lakes Rotsee and Zug has now shown that the bulk of this work is done, not by “classical” methane consumers, but by filamentous bacteria previously known only as contaminants of water supplies.

Researchers from the University of Granada announced progress in Chagas disease research. The disease affects over 8 million people worldwide and there is currently no treatment. Their findings may prove invaluable in designing new drugs to tackle this disease.

The characteristics of human skin are heavily dependent on the hydration of the tissue. Its water content also changes its interaction with textiles. Up to now, it has only been possible to determine the interaction between human skin and textiles by means of clinical trials on human subjects. Now, Empa researchers have developed an artificial gelatine-based skin model that simulates human skin.

Sand, coffee grounds and rice behave very differently than water or oil, but under certain conditions they will suddenly exhibit astonishing similarities. Scientists oft the ETH Zurich in collaboration with international colleagues have found a way to better understand the behaviour of granular materials.

There are different technical and administrative requirements on the one side for active storage of chemicals and on the other side for passive storage of chemicals. When do we refer to active storage and when to passive storage? Discover, what is important for safe hazardous substance storage in this article.

Whether employed in basic research or the production of biopharmaceuticals, monoclonal antibodies are used in an exceptionally wide range of applications. Until now, harvesting of mammalian cell cultures used to be time-consuming, especially at laboratory scale, and usually involved a centrifugation step. A new diatomaceous earth-based filtration solution now improves and accelerates this process significantly.

Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, recently unveiled a promising breakthrough for lithium sulphur batteries, using a catholyte with the help of a graphene sponge. Their development results in a higher utilization of sulphur and more environmentally friendly batteries.