In Japan, researchers at the University of Tsukuba have developed a technology to produce improved surgical sealants using gelatin of cold-water fish in particular (e.g. cod, hake, Alaska pollock and salmon) because the biomaterial basically makes the sealants waterproof. Tests performed on mice and pig tissue performed well, with the material biodegrading in eight weeks […]
In California, Stanford University reports that an interdisciplinary team at Stanford has made significant strides toward solving the solar energy storage issue, demonstrating the most efficient means yet of storing electricity captured from sunlight in the form of chemical bonds. As Stanford observed in a release, “that stored energy can be recovered later in different […]
In Arkansas, the University of Arkansas is helping lead an effort to develop a bioscience network of scientists in the United States and Southeast Asia. The National Science Foundation recently awarded a $500,000 grant to establish the Food, Energy, Water and Ecosystems Resources Research Coordination Network, to build a team of minority and minority-serving faculty […]
In Missouri, a computer scientist at Washington University in St. Louis has developed a way to coax cells to do natural things under unnatural circumstances, which could be useful for stem cell research, gene therapy and biofuel production. Michael Brent, the Henry Edwin Sever Professor of Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, […]
In Germany, microbes are already used on a wide scale for the production of fuels and base chemicals, but for this most of them have to be “fed” with sugar. However, since sugar-based biotechnology finds itself in competition with food production, it is faced with increasingly fierce criticism. Carbon dioxide has meanwhile become the focus […]
In India, the Advanced Biofuel Center says it has developed a new varietal of Moringa tree seed after several years research and trials. This varietal has been named Maru-Moringa(MOMAX3) due to the location of its discovery. The MOMAX3 cultivar is noteworthy for producing a very high quality of Moringa oil with five times more quantity […]
In Germany, UFOP reports that the average price farmers received for rapeseed was at just under EUR 380 per tonne free storage facility, a level not seen since May 2014. The factors that contributed to supporting the rapeseed price originated, first and foremost, from overseas. German rapeseed prices have climbed continuously since the 2016 harvest […]
In Washington state, it may sound like science fiction, but wastewater treatment plants across the United States may one day turn ordinary sewage into biocrude oil, thanks to new research at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The technology, hydrothermal liquefaction, mimics the geological conditions the Earth uses to create crude oil, using high […]
In Wisconsin, researchers at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center have incorporated an exotic gene conferring weak bonds into the plant’s lignin, the hard-to-process compound that gives plant cell walls their sturdiness but makes them difficult to process in an industrial setting. The resulting lignin, dubbed zip-lignin, readily breaks down under simple chemical conditions. This […]
In Missouri, researchers at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center have discovered a way to make algae better oil producers without sacrificing growth. The findings were published Sept. 6, in a paper titled, “Synergism between inositol polyphosphates and TOR kinase signaling in nutrient sensing, growth control and lipid metabolism in Chlamydomonas,” in The Plant Cell. They […]
