A natural protein has been reported to self-assemble into one of the best-known regular mathematically complex fractals – a Sierpiński triangle. This is the first time such a discovery has been made at the molecular scale in nature. Fractals are geometric shapes that are made up of repeating smaller structures that resemble the whole. These […]

By screening 407 compounds directly in cells scientists in Austria and the US have found that they bound with 2305 proteins not previously known to have any such interactions. Georg Winter at the Centre for Molecular Medicine (CEMM) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and colleagues used the large compound collection to create […]

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has announced the first round of projects that will receive funding under its Sustainable Laboratories programme. The initiative, which aims to make chemistry research greener, was launched in 2022 following a global survey that found that 84% of chemical scientists in industry and academia wanted to do more to enhance […]

Cell culture media used for testing nanomaterials does a poor job of simulating an in vivo environment and could be preventing scientists from understanding how nanomedicines respond in the body, new research shows. ‘We believe this is a key reason why accumulated knowledge on nanomaterials has not yet been translated into successful clinical applications,’ says […]

An international team of scientists has created a liquid metamaterial, or ‘metafluid’, which can be manipulated to change its properties, like its viscosity and transparency. The creators of the material found that it behaved like a Newtonian liquid in its normal state – when its viscosity is proportional only to its temperature – but as […]

Byproducts from the manufacturing industry can be converted into electrodes for water splitting, new research shows. The intrinsic nanotextured surface of the waste metal means single atoms can bind to it to form effective electrocatalysts. Producing hydrogen through water splitting is set to be fundamental for addressing future global energy demands. However, the environmental impact […]

An excess of fragments of amyloid precursor protein (APP), called APP-CTFs, can trigger a mechanism that occurs at the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease. The researchers say understanding the role of APP-CTFs could open avenues for early intervention therapies that could stop or even prevent Alzheimer’s disease. For the past two decades, Alzheimer’s research has […]

Structural disorder increases the capacitance of carbon supercapacitor electrodes, according to new findings from a team of UK-based researchers. The discovery could lead to the development of supercapacitors that can store more charge. Supercapacitors generally comprise porous electrodes soaked in an electrolyte. The most common and cheapest electrodes are made of activated carbon, which is […]

Although Islamic scholars made substantial contributions to mechanics, astronomy, and especially optics along the road from the Greek ta physika to modern physics, it was in the realm of mathematics that they made what was probably their greatest contribution to the development of that discipline.  Greek science was to a great extent dominated by geometry, first and […]

Escherichia coli has been engineered to thrive on methanol not sugars. This change is the latest step toward carbon-neutral bioproduction and the synthetic strain can produce four precursor compounds used in industry. Using E. coli to synthesise compounds such as insulin is not new and bioproduction, where the cells convert carbon into other materials, is […]