News by Subject Biology

Reverse osmosis is one of the most widely used techniques for the desalination of water. Some of the membranes currently used are artificial channels of water inserted into lipid layers. But their large-scale performance is not satisfactory. An international team has developed a hybrid strategy, which consists of combining a polyamide matrix and artificial water channels into a single structure. Their membranes have been tested under industrial conditions and outperform conventional membranes.

A team of researchers from Kaunas University of Technology and Lithuanian University of Health Sciences proposed a non-invasive method for detection of melanoma. A patented computer-aided diagnostic system developed by Lithuanian scientists proved to be more than 90% accurate in detecting malignancy in diagnostic images of skin lesions acquired from 100 patients.

An invention similar to an elephant's trunk has potential benefits for many industries where handling delicate objects is essential, say the UNSW researchers who developed it.

The present review describes the basic principle and the instrumentation of IR spectroscopy along with its advancements. Beyond this, various applications of this technique in determination of protein structure and quantification in different materials such as foods stuffs, biotechnological products and biological fluids have also been summarized.

A group of international scientists summarized the epidemiologic and mechanistic evidence in support of an association between noise and air pollution with cardiovascular and metabolic disease, and recommended comprehensive mitigation measures.