Asia biodiversity threat
Asia is rated as the ‘the most underperforming continent in meeting a global target to protect 17% of land by 2020,’ according to a new study by the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, UK. Only 13.2% of land on the continent is designated as a terrestrial protected area.
Sound shaping
Scientists in Germany have created 3D patterns out of solid particles, gel beads and biological cells using ultrasound.
Aerogel takeoff
Engineers at the University of Bath, UK, have launched a company to make ultra-light aerogels. The firm, Aerogel Core, will take advantage of graphene to produce aerogels with superior shape and strength.
Bee friendly insecticides
The secrets of how plants make limonoid compounds have been revealed. It is hoped the recipe could help the scientists synthesise bee-friendly chemicals for protecting crops against insects.
BASF restructures production
German chemical major BASF is restructuring production at its Ludwigshafen HQ to make it ‘better equipped for the intensifying competition in the long term’. The company plans to close the caprolactam plant, one of two ammonia plants and associated fertiliser facilities. The toluene diisocyanate (TDI) plant and the precursor plants for dinitrotoluene and toluene diamine will also be closed.
Bioelectronics breakthrough
A Swedish team has grown electrodes in living animal tissue. The result paves the way for the formation of fully integrated electronic circuits in living organisms, they claim.
Magic angle electrons
Physicists in the US have proposed a new mechanism for superconductivity that arises when electrons slow in twisted bilayer graphene. This could open a route for designing new superconductors or improve existing materials.
Pest genome database
A new database detailing the genomes of 19 global crop pests is now publicly available. It’s hoped that the contents will accelerate novel pest control approaches that are more species-specific and less likely to trigger resistance in their targets, as well as non-chemical methods that involve manipulating insect behaviour.
Roadmap for AMR
A new UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report highlights the role environmental pollution plays in antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which may be much larger than previously thought.
Fingerprinting cells
Scientists in the UK have reported a technique to isolate individual living cells and evaluate how they absorb drugs. They also generated a lipid fingerprint for mammalian cells given a tuberculosis drug.