Toxic waste: cigarette butts harm the environment twice

Chemicals released from cigarette butts damage 'beneficial parasites'

22-Nov-2024 - Cigarette butts do not belong in the environment. Yet they often end up there, especially near water bodies. A survey by the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (IGB) has shown that many of Berlin's waters contain considerable amounts of nicotine, which is also toxic to ...

Evaluating the link between chemicals and declining insect populations

Using a library of 1,000+ agrochemicals, scientists saw significant changes in behaviour and long-term survival of different insect populations

29-Oct-2024 - Few people are fans of stink bugs, mosquitoes, or boll weevils, but insects play a key role in the circle of life that makes up the planet’s environment. In fact, world-renowned biologist E. O. Wilson famously declared that if insects vanished, our environment would collapse. Scientists have ...

“Dictionaries” make fluorescence-based data for integrative structure models and their dynamics accessible

3D structures of biomolecules

23-Oct-2024 - A research team from Germany and the USA led by Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has developed a data description that can provide results from fluorescence measurements for structural and dynamic modelling of large biomolecules. The authors explain in the scientific journal Nature ...

Are trees the future for the production of industrial chemicals?

Finding could help turn trees into affordable, greener industrial chemicals

22-Oct-2024 - Trees are the most abundant natural resource living on Earth’s land masses, and North Carolina State University scientists and engineers are making headway in finding ways to use them as sustainable, environmentally benign alternatives to producing industrial chemicals from petroleum. Lignin, a ...

Effects of chemical mixtures: Neurotoxic effects add up

Study demonstrates for the first time the toxicological relevance of chemical mixtures as they occur in humans

22-Oct-2024 - Chemicals are omnipresent today: they enter our bodies through food, air or the skin. But how do these complex mixtures of chemicals affect our health? In a study published in the journal Science, a research team from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) has shown that chemicals ...

Synthesizing fine chemicals: Technological Advance in Production of Pharmaceuticals

04-Oct-2024 - Production of fine chemicals such as those used in pharmaceuticals is typically complex and laborious. An interdisciplinary team of Fraunhofer researchers worked together across different projects to devise a method modeled on a cascade, in which multiple successive stages of synthesis proceed ...

The 2024 Balzan Prizes Focus on Sustainable Progress

From Law to the History of Science, and from the Biology of Ageing to Innovative Materials: 750,000 Swiss Francs will be awarded to each of the four winners of the Balzan Prizes

11-Sep-2024 - In Milan, the President of the International Balzan Foundation “Prize”, Maria Cristina Messa, and the Chair of the Balzan General Prize Committee, Marta Cartabia, announced the winners of the four 2024 Balzan Prizes. The announcement was made after the conclusion and synthesis of the selection ...

Turning bacteria into bioplastic factories

Biologists find new ways to encourage the plastic-producing power of purple microbes

28-Aug-2024 - In a world overrun by petroleum-based plastics, scientists are searching for alternatives that are more sustainable, more biodegradable and far less toxic to the environment. Two new studies by biologists at Washington University in St. Louis highlight one potential source of game-changing ...

Synthetic polymers against fungal infections

A chemistry PhD student is stranded at the Leibniz-HKI and uses the time for research on Candida albicans

26-Aug-2024 - When combined with antifungal drugs, synthetic polymers are particularly effective against Candida albicans. This is what a German-Australian research team found out and also clarified the mechanism of action behind it. The international collaboration came about by chance during an unplanned ...

Cancer drug could treat early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, study shows

26-Aug-2024 - A type of drug developed for treating cancer holds promise as a new treatment for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, according to a recent study by researchers at Penn State, Stanford University and an international team of collaborators. The researchers discovered that by blocking a ...