A Kaust (King Abdullah University of Science and Technology) startup has introduced the Azure Robotics project which makes use of artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics to offer an effective disinfection process for large-surface areas.

Astra Zeneca collaborated with the Serum Institute of India (SII) for the supply of the vaccine to the Indian Government as well as many other low and middle-income countries. Astra Zeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine has also received emergency use authorisation in five other countries.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a new range of strain sensors from Mxenes, a flexible, stretchable, and electrically conductive nanomaterial. The NUS is also exploring the application of these sensors in soft exoskeleton robots for rehabilitation and in surgical robots for transoral robotic surgery.

Victor Grignard was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1912. Since then, the Grignard reagents named after him have become firmly established in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. A new type of microreactor developed by Fraunhofer researchers makes these reactions faster and safer and the products purer.

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.