Laboratory Saas provider Labforward has raised more than 6 million dollars in a Series B financing round for transforming its software suite into a connectivity platform for laboratories and also expanding internationally. The laboratory equipment manufacturers Tecan, 2mag and the firm’s existing investor Peppermint Venture Partners have made the mega investment.

In an extensive documentation of flower-visiting orthopterans in the tropics, NUS biologists found that grasshoppers, crickets, katydids, and their relatives provide a valuable service to plants by serving as pollinators.

With their expertise in microbiome research, researchers at the Institute of Environmental Biotechnology at the Technical University of Graz were able to demonstrate how a specific bacterium inside the seeds of rice plants effectively and in an eco-friendly way inhibits destructive plant pathogens.

A layer as thin as a single atom is enough to double the amount of water split on the surface of an electrode in an electrolysis system — and thus also the volume of hydrogen produced. Researchers from Jülich, Aachen, Stanford, and Berkeley report on this in the latest edition of the journal Nature Materials.

Within the framework of a partnership, Boehringer Ingelheim will make use of Google’s resources in the field of quantum computing. The pharmaceutical company is the first in its industry to team up with Google in this field.

Scientists at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) have developed insulin nanoparticles that may one day become the basis for an oral medicine, and an alternative to insulin injections for diabetic patients. In a pre-clinical study, a NTU Singapore team fed insulin-containing nanoparticles to rats and found that insulin increased in their blood minutes later.

Compared with meat eaters, fish eaters have a lower risk of several adverse heart diseases, including stroke. These findings, which were part of new research looking at the diets and risk of developing or dying from heart diseases of more than 420,000 people in the UK, also concluded that vegetarianism was associated with a lower risk of developing heart disease.

Microorganisms used as “production plants” for active ingredients are an important asset in the sustainable bioeconomy toolkit. But how can production strains be manipulated most efficiently for optimal performance in the process? A new approach is based on miniaturization and automation.

Quick and straightforward, aqueous size exclusion chromatography (SEC) has become a mainstay for the analysis of protein aggregates in the biopharmaceutical industry. Coupling SEC with advanced detection, such as mass spectrometry, light scattering or surface plasmon resonance, makes it a versatile tool for numerous applications beyond aggregate analysis.

Owners of a dog with diabetes are more likely to develop type 2 diabetes than owners of a dog without diabetes. No shared risk of diabetes could be detected for cat owners and their cats. These findings from a study conducted at Uppsala University in collaboration with three other universities, have now been published in The BMJ.