Gold nanoparticles can be used in a variety of ways, i.e. as active ingredient carriers in medicine. Although their synthesis is already very successful today, it is difficult to predict how the particles interact with the environment and humans. Scientists are therefore intensively investigating the behaviour of nanoparticles in order to make them more efficient and safer.

Lab Innovations will once again offer a one-stop showcase of new products and various aspects involved in future-proofing the laboratory. Visitors to the trade fair at the NEC, Birmingham on 30 and 31 October, will be able to discover ways to improve workflow efficiency, benefit from advances enabled by the digital age, and make sustainable procurement decisions.

Do we have our best ideas while walking? Indeed, but even small movements while sitting improve creativity, as two researchers have discovered.

Addressing one of the most profoundly unanswered questions in biology, a Rutgers-led team has discovered the structures of proteins that may be responsible for the origins of life in the primordial soup of ancient Earth.

Malvern Panalytical, a company providing advanced analysis and services solutions for the pharma drug product development, as well as services and solutions for other industries, has announced its acquisition of Creoptix, a specialist bioanalysis sensor company.

Researchers at Aalto University, Finland, have developed anticancer nanomaterials by simulating the volcano-induced dynamic chemistry of the deep ocean.

Corals are shown to recycle their own waste ammonium using a surprising source of glucose — a finding that reveals more about the relationship between corals and their symbiotic algae.

Covestro has announced a research breakthrough for the use of plant-based raw materials in plastics production: aniline, an important basic chemical, can now be derived from biomass, the company claims.

Through analyzes of ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica, a research team led by Lund University in Sweden has found evidence of an extreme solar storm that occurred about 9200 years ago. What puzzles the researchers is that the storm took place during one of the sun's more quiet phases

MIT engineers report that they have cooked up a material that is 10 times blacker than anything that has previously been described. The material is made from vertically aligned carbon nanotubes, or CNTs — microscopic filaments of carbon, like a fuzzy forest of tiny trees, that the team grew on a surface of chlorine-etched aluminum foil. The foil captures at least 99.995 % of any incoming light, making it the blackest material on record.