Tag: Research

Records from sugarcane are good for the environment. Chocolate, meanwhile, is good for our mood - even if too much sugar is unhealthy. But who said sugar was necessary to make chocolate? A Zurich-based research team dried the fibre-rich innermost layer of the cocoa hull - called the endocarp - and ground it to powder. Next the pulp from...

There are bras available for women who don’t want to have implants post mastectomy. Elsewhere, ultrasound sensors in bras could detect breast cancer early. But what about preventative treatment before the illness takes hold? Until now it’s proved difficult to test the efficacy of anti-cancer drugs in the lab. Partly because tissue taken from the body perishes within a...

Some glasses automatically adjust focus between near and distant objects. Many birds can see for miles while still recognising their immediate environment. Their retinas have a deep hollow, meaning they are more sensitive to light. With an additional fourth photoreceptor, they can also perceive blue, red, green and UV light. Inspired by this phenomenon, a Korean research team has...

Animals don’t have to die for exotic leather products. It is, however, perfectly legal to use tusks from extinct mammoths for making luxury wood carvings, chess figures or jewellery. Since this type of ivory is mostly extracted from permafrost regions or near Polar seas, many elephants fall victim to the illegal ivory trade. It is impossible to make out...

Internal wounds could be closed by a robot with an integrated 3D-printer. Sometimes, however, a blood transfusion is required. Here, blood type and Rh factor must be identical for donor and patient, although type 0 can generally be used for types A, B and AB. Need is unpredictable, and donated blood can only be stored for 42 days. Now,...

Used, starch-based juice bottles dissolve in water. If only recycling printed circuit boards (PCBs) from plastic and glass fibre were as easy. Enter a US-based research team which has manufactured a PCB prototype using cutting-edge sustainable polymers known as vitrimers. When exposed to mild heat, their molecular compounds loosen so that tears or holes can be repaired. The team...

Jellyfish could come in handy at crime scenes. Another marine creature has inspired a British research team currently developing a gripper for objects with dry, complex surfaces. The secret to an octopus’s tight grip is that it fills the tiny gaps between its suction cups and an uneven surface with mucus. Information the team used to build a pneumatically-driven...

Beer can be brewed from industrial wastewater. Now a research team from Singapore is using the wastewater from soybean production to create sustainable feed for fish farming. Usually, feed is made from wild-caught fish (sometimes very wild-caught indeed!). The team cultivated a single-cell protein in a bioreactor over four months at 30°C using the protein-rich wastewater and the micro-organisms...