The laboratory of the future is digital, networked, and automated. But the clue is in the name: in most cases it’s still in the future.

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.

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.

Are there differences in quality between stored and freshly prepared ultrapure water? This article presents the results for the use of ultrapure water in gel electrophoresis and provides recommendations for the production of ultrapure water.

Experts at the University of Waterloo’s Cheriton School of Computer Science have created a deep neural network that achieves 98 percent detection of peptide features in a dataset. That means scientists and medical practitioners have a greater chance of discovering possible diseases through tissue sample analysis.

At this year's Pittcon in Chicago Thermo Fisher Scientific presented several new instruments including a new ICP-MS system and a Raman spectrometer designed to provide simultaneous analytical data at a single measurement point. They also highlighted the first new products from their latest acquisition, electron microscopy specialist FEI.

To clarify whether and when a handgun was fired, forensic scientists search for and analyze Gunshot Residue (GSR) deposits. One highly interesting aspect of GSR is the presence of volatile organic chemical residues, which can offer clues as to when a weapon was fired. An innovative extraction technique based on Headspace Sorptive Extraction (HSSE) and Gerstel Twister has now been shown to extract additional information from spent cartridges.

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.

Many people suffer from a vitamin D deficiency. This can result in brittle bones and an increased risk of respiratory diseases. Chicken eggs are a natural source of vitamin D and one way to, at least partially, compensate for this deficiency. A team of nutritionists and agricultural scientists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) has found a new way to further increase the vitamin D content of eggs: by exposing chickens to UV light.

Magnets formed from a single molecule are of particular interest in data storage, since the ability to store a bit on every molecule could vastly increase the storage capacity of computers. Researchers have now developed a new molecular system with a particular magnetic hardness.