When bears and ground squirrels hibernate in winter, they stop eating, lasting until spring simply on the fat reserves they’ve stored up in their bodies. Usually, this sort of prolonged fasting and inactivity would significantly reduce the mass and function of muscle, but hibernators don’t suffer this fate. Why?

Under the intensity of a prolonged pandemic, the world finds an ever-growing and seemingly never-ending waste stream of used surgical masks, plastic face shields, and medical gloves and gowns. Cornell engineers now offer a solution to sustainably reroute the discarded material.

Johannes (Hans) Clevers will succeed William Pao as Head of Roche Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED) and become a member of the company’s Corporate Executive Committee. Clevers who is currently a member of Roche’s Board of Directors will step down and make way for a new candidate which is yet to be announced.

For the first time, researchers at ETH Zurich have calculated in absolute figures the extent to which the production of chemicals is currently interfering with nature worldwide — and the results are staggering. In addition to greenhouse gas emissions, the new method also takes land use and freshwater consumption into account.

Medix Biochemica has acquired the Germany-based manufacturer of innovative and high-quality raw materials in molecular diagnostics – Mypols Biotec. The move is in line with the company’s aim of expanding its reagent offerings for molecular diagnostics as well as supports the firm’s portfolio of in vitro diagnostics raw materials.

The biotech company Nuclera has raised 42.5-million-dollars at the first close of its Series B financing for its desktop protein printer - eProtein desktop bioprinter. The rapid protein prototyping and discovery platform helps one to print proteins in 24 hours and will initially screen and print proteins for research and drug discovery customers.

Researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have been conducting research on metal-organic frameworks (MOF) and they have revealed that MOFs can extract water from desert air. Apart from this, it can also be used in other important areas such as biogas storage, carbon dioxide capture, controlled delivery of drugs and for the destruction of chemical weapons.

The introduction of strain into semiconductors offers a well-known route to modify their band structure. Researchers at the University of Surrey showed a single-step procedure for generating such strains smoothly and deterministically, over a very wide range, using a simple, easily available, highly scalable, ion implantation technique to control the degree of amorphization in and around single-crystal membranes.

Carbon nanotubes are of great interest in both scientific research and commercial applications thanks to the unique properties of the material. A new thesis at Karlstad University, Sweden, looks at how the atomic structure influences the different properties of the material.

University of Otago geneticist, Professor Neil Gemmell announced the results of investigations into the environmental DNA present in Loch Ness. The results come after 250 samples of water were taken around, through the centre, and into the very depths of the lake. The “monster-factor” has provided Professor Gemmell with an opportunity to showcase the science of eDNA to the world, and the project has subsequently drawn considerable interest.