New strategy to design mechano-responsive luminescent materials
Credit: Jin M. et al., Journal of the American Chemical Society, May 23, 2017 "Smart" materials that change color in response to a mechanical stimulus...
NEWS INDEX
QUT to use drones to find and protect koalas
Queensland University of Technology will deploy drones in a high-tech effort to find and protect koalas in South East Queensland, with the State Government announcing...
Plant parasite dodder transmits signals among different hosts
Credit: ZHANG Jingxiong Around 1% of flowering plants are parasites. Some of these parasites can survive without host plants while others cannot. The former are...
Scientists find secret to cell size in world’s biggest food producer
A gene controlling cell size has been identified in a microalgal group which underpins a fifth of the world's food chains. Scientists at The University...
Pinpointing sources of water pollution with a robotic eel
Credit: EPFL EPFL researchers are taking part in an ambitious project funded by the Swiss NanoTera Program and aimed at developing a swimming robot that...
Dodder: A parasite involved in the plant alarm system
Credit: Jingxiong Zhang, Chinese Academy of Sciences Plants of the genus Cuscuta have colorful folk names, such as wizard's net, devil's guts, strangle tare or...
Symbiosis: Butter for my honey
Textbooks tell us that, in arbuscular mycorrhizal symbioses, the host plant supplies its fungal symbionts solely with sugars, in return for inorganic nutrients. New findings...
Knee joint signals bones to grow
Scientists from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, US, have revealed a communication system between the knee joint and developing bones in mice, which controls...
Catch of the day: A net full of trees
Credit: Earlham Institute SPECTRE, a new open-source software package, simplifies the complex business of creating phylogenetic networks and trees. It has been written by bioinformaticians...
How gene silencing works in plants
Credit: University of Seville The group of Doctor Myriam Calonje Macaya from the Institute of Plant Biochemistry and Photosynthesis (IBVF), a mixed centre from the...
Timing matters: How to use tillage more effectively for weed management
Credit: Matthew R. Ryan With herbicide resistance on the rise, there is a renewed emphasis on soil tillage as a critical component of integrated weed...
Thousands of genes exchanged within microbial communities living on cheese
Researchers at the University of California San Diego have found that microbial species living on cheese have transferred thousands of genes between each other. They...
New triggerable, tough hydrogels could make drug-releasing systems safer
Boston, Mass. -- Drug-releasing devices that reside in the stomach for extended periods of time make it easier for patients to receive their full course...
Princeton researchers report new system to study chronic hepatitis B
Credit: Image courtesy of Benjamin Winer and Alexander Ploss, Princeton University Department of Molecular Biology Scientists from Princeton University's Department of Molecular Biology have s..
Ingestible drug-delivery materials may help patients comply with treatment regimens
CAMBRIDGE, MA -- Around half of all medications for chronic diseases are not taken as prescribed, costing the U.S. health care system more than $100...
