The ruling of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) regarding the regulation of crops created with new molecular and genome-editing breeding techniques was announced yesterday, July 25th, in Luxembourg. The long-awaited decision was met with cheers by environmental groups and consumer organisations, but caused disillusionment and lack of understanding among researchers and entrepreneurs
The digitalisation process is continuing and does not stop at everyday objects and materials: intelligent clothing measures our oxygen and energy consumption and pea-sized measuring spheres can be used to control the water quality or the processes in bioreactors. Researchers at the University of Freiburg have now further developed such measuring characteristics of materials.
If material researchers and engineers had a favourite material, carbon fibres are probably it. Why? Because they are light-weight but extremely sturdy. Motor and wind energy industry as well as space, aviation and naval industries are already using the composite material for their lightweight constructions and applications. However, thus far the versatile material is still petrol-based. This not only translates to an expensive manufacturing process, but also requires large amounts of resources and is simply not sustainable.
Brand and product piracy is a worldwide problem. The economic damage is immense: in 2016, German companies alone recorded losses of around 53 billion euros, as a study by management consultants Ernst & Young (EY) shows. The use of such fraud in medicine is particularly problematic. The scandal surrounding inferior breast implants in 2010 showed what health consequences this could have. The French manufacturer Poly Implant Prothèse (PIP) had used cheap industrial silicone to reduce production costs.
Methionine is an essential amino acid which is used on a large scale in animal feed. It is currently being manufactured from petrochemical source materials, in a process that uses highly toxic hydrogen cyanide. In 2013, Evonik Industries, one of the world's largest producers of methionine, invited university researchers to propose new processes for making the substance safer to produce. Now, researchers at the Technical University Munich (TUM) have developed an enzymatic process that extracts methionine from the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2).
Pathogens such as salmonella can be transmitted through food. These bacteria are found most frequently in eggs and poultry but also in cheese and sausage slices. Researchers from the Institute for Food Quality and Safety of the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Foundation (TiHo) together with terraplasma GmbH have developed a new method to protect food from bacteria. The team uses cold plasma for this purpose. Plasma is produced when gas is supplied with sufficient energy, for example via an electric field. This produces charged particles.
They hang upside down from the ceiling, adhere effortlessly to steep trees and even polished glass won't make them slip: geckos. Millions of small hairs on the toes give the inconspicuous reptile adhesive forces like a magnet. For scientists, such natural wonders have always been a fascinating field of research and an incentive to transfer these abilities to technical applications and materials.
Soil is much more than dirt. It contains a slew of microorganisms, fungi and roots of a plethora of plants. All of which interact with each other and together, they make up the soil microbiome. Headed by the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg and the University of Tartu in Estonia, an international research team for the first time conducted a study of bacteria and fungi in soil.
One of the main concerns of the bioeconomy is to sustainably replace fossil raw materials such as natural gas and crude oil with resources such as biogas. In recent years, the number of biogas plants in Germany has risen to around 9,000. A study carried out by the University of Hohenheim at the beginning of 2018 showed that their share of electricity generation is still low at up to 6%. For years, researchers have been working on upgrading biogas to natural gas quality in order to make the alternative energy source fit for the future.
The genome of the arguably most important crop worldwide, bread wheat, has been decoded. The results of the thirteen-year scientific endeavor of 200 scientists from 73 research institutions in 20 countries were published in the journal “Science”.