Pestalotiopsis microspora was found to digest polyurethane, a synthetic polymer developed in the 1940s which is often used in shoes, modern appliances and vehicle parts.

Polyurethane was first developed at the beginning of World War Two as a replacement for rubber, and was used to create mustard gas resistant garments, high-gloss aeroplane finishes and chemical and corrosion-resistant coatings.

The fungus is capable of surviving on a diet of only polyurethane and in oxygen starved environments, such as the centre of landfill sites.

A number of other microorganisms were found to be capable of digesting polyurethane, but these were unable to survive solely on a diet of the plastic substance.

Led by molecular biochemist Professor Scott Strobel, the team found the fungus within the jungles of Ecuador.

They have now identified a serine hydrolase, which is the enzyme thought to allow the microorganism to digest the polyurethane.

Using nanotechnology, the researchers were able to produce a paint that opens new doors to improving safety monitoring, and reducing costs.

The smart paint can be sprayed onto any surface and uses electrodes to detect any form of structural damage before a major fault occurs.

It has been created from a waste product known as fly ash and carbon nanotubes. Potential applications include essential infrastructure including bridges, mines and wind turbines.

The wind energy industry in particular is expected to see significant growth in the coming years, with wind power expected to contribute 14 to 16 per cent of electricity demand in Europe by the year 2020.

The smart paint has a cement-like quality when mixed, making it particularly useful in harsh environments, such as offshore wind farms, which are increasingly being built in harsher and more remote locations.

Dr Mohamed Saafi, of the university's Department of Civil Engineering, said: "There are no limitations as to where it could be used and the low-cost nature gives it a significant advantage over the current options available in the industry.

"The process of producing and applying the paint also gives it an advantage as no expertise is required and monitoring itself is straightforward."

As fly ash is used as the main substance in the paint, it costs just one per cent of other inspection methods that are currently widely used. Tests using a prototype have already proved the paint to be "highly effective".

"The smart paint represents a significant development and is one that has possibly been overlooked as a viable solution because research tends to focus on high-tech options that look to eliminate human control.

"Our research shows that by maintaining the human element the costs can be vastly reduced without an impact on effectiveness," Dr Saafi concluded.

In nature, cell membranes are created from molecules that have heads that mix with water and tails that repel water. These collectively make a double layer barrier, capable of sequesting the contents of the cell.

Neal Devaraj, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of California, San Diego, and Itay Budin, a graduate student at Harvard University, used a reaction joining two chains of lipids to create a similar molecule.

"In our system, we use a sort of primitive catalyst, a very simple metal ion. The reaction itself is completely artificial. There’s no biological equivalent of this chemical reaction," Professor Devaraj explained.

He added that the simplicity of the reaction may be where the real value of the discovery lies. Professor Debaraj said the step is "trivial and can be done in a day".

Artificial photosynthesis is another major goal for chemists, which recently moved a step closer with the creation of highly efficient electrodes capable of mimicking a key step.

The technique should enhance the use of photo-electrochemical cells, the team from the Empa Institute said.

Moving to strict atomic time would remove the need to add leap seconds to ensure time keeps pace with the rotation of the earth.

However, this would mean time would gradually shift away from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and Coordinated Universal Time (UCT), as it is known to the rest of the world.

Scientists argue this would create issues years down the line and effectively lead to the elimination of GMT, the Daily Telegraph reported, and are planning to fight the move.

Currently, there are deviations between GMT and strict atomic time.

Peter Whibberley of the National Physical Laboratory said: "We have had leap seconds for the last 40 years so we can handle them, but there is no equipment in the world that could handle a leap minute or hour … it could be 200 years down the line but it would be just impossible."

GMT is currently measured by the moment when the noon sun crosses the meridian in Greenwich and originally referred to the mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in London.

Researchers from Fort Valley State University, in Georgia and Virginia Tech applied the technique to beef samples inoculated with large numbers of the E. coli O157:H7 bacterium.

The current was able to almost completely deactivate the bacterium. The beef also contained far higher levels of contamination than would traditionally be found in samples from the slaughterhouse.

"It offers a quick and easy way to decontaminate at-risk, but otherwise safe, beef without recourse to microbicidal chemicals or other more complicated treatment processes," the researchers said.

Last summer saw an outbreak of a new form of E.coli, believed to be linked with beansprouts, according to German authorities.

Over 2,000 cases were reported, including more than two dozen deaths. The strain also brought with it cases of haemolytic uraemic syndrome, caused when bacteria produces the toxic chemical verocytotoxin. 

By using the natural anti-oxidants lycopene and grape seed extract in the filter of the cigarette, the researchers "drastically" cut the harmful free radicals entering the body.

Work to make cigarettes healthier in the past has centred on the use of haemoglobin and activated carbon. The combination has been shown to reduce the free radicals in cancer smoke by up to 90 per cent, however at a cost which has so far prevented it being introduced to the market.

The latest work using natural antioxidants forms a paper which is the 1,500th to be published in the Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE).

Content director Dr Aaron Kolski-Andreaco said: "Practically, this research could lead to an alternative type of cigarette filter with a free radical scavenging additive. It could lead to a less harmful cigarette."

According to figures from Cancer Research UK, smoking accounts for 23 per cent of cancers in men, while figures from University of California, San Francisco suggest over the next 40 years smoking could case 18 million cases of TB.

Encyclopaedia Britannica carried out a poll of over 1,000 people to determine Britain's most common scientific misconceptions.

It found 46 per cent believe oxygen, not nitrogen, forms the main component of air, while almost a third of people believed that humans use just ten per cent of their brain capacity, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Seven per cent of those polled believed Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy was in fact written by Dr Brian Cox.

Ian Grant, managing director of Encyclopaedia Britannica UK, said: "Many of us have grown up to believe certain things are true in science, without ever questioning them. And, as this research suggests, scientific misconceptions, once picked up, can stay with us for our whole lives."

Just one in every 100 respondents on the 20 question test scored full marks.

Previous research from Encyclopaedia Britannica found almost a third of science teachers believe student misconceptions are the biggest barrier to teaching their subject.

I recently interviewed Chris about his position as Chemicals Warehouse team leader to find out what it’s like to manage the logistics of distributing hazardous chemicals.

What is your official job title and how long have you been working in our chemicals warehouse?

My job title is RMD Chemical Warehouse Team Leader. I have worked here for just over 11 years.

How many people do you manage as team leader?

I have a team of 3 in the Export department and 15 picker / packer/ goods in people.

How does the process of goods in/putaway/picking/packing/shipping etc differ in the chemicals warehouse?

Staff in the Warehouse must have chemical awareness training on a yearly basis just to familiarise themselves with the hazards we handle on a daily basis – this is not down to chemistry level, just an outline of what the different hazards can do to you if they are mishandled. We also have to wear PPE such as lab coats and safety glasses while in the area.

What are your daily tasks/responsibilities?

My daily tasks are many and varied! Primarily, the focus is on getting the orders off the system, picked and packed. To this end, I run the Wave planning system, taking the appropriate orders off the system, sorting them into walk sequence and dishing them out. I also perform the same task for the Export department, which I run.

I pick and pack as and when required, both Home Sales and Export as I am IATA and IMDG trained. I order the consumables for the area such as packing materials, gloves and ice packs. Any queries that the packers or pickers have regarding the orders, stock, space issues etc will all get directed to me, complaints will come my way. I arrange  the Invitrogen reserve stock requests, check IATA paperwork for dispatching export items, deal with sales, international and technical queries, maintain the area with regard to calling in engineers for servicing.

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]]> http://www.fisher.co.uk/news/analyticalscience/a-day-in-the-life-at-thermo-fisher-scientific/feed/ 0 http://www.fisher.co.uk/news/analyticalscience/new-method-shows-how-drugs-reach-their-intended-goal/ http://www.fisher.co.uk/news/analyticalscience/new-method-shows-how-drugs-reach-their-intended-goal/#comments Thu, 27 Oct 2011 14:43:06 +0000 Tania http://www.fisher.co.uk/science-news/?p=1812 Drug manufacturers could be about to be given a boost through a new technique which has been developed for medication suitability.

Before bringing a product to market, it is critical to show that the drug reaches its intended goal in the body's tissue, with researchers at Sweden's Lund University announcing a new breakthrough.

Their methodology makes use of mass spectrometry, which avoids having any radioactive labelling which is capable of changing medication behaviour, with the results recently being published in the journal Analytical Chemistry. However, the new process can be used on drugs off the shelf and creates a molecular image of the drug while it is in the body's tissue.

"When you want to register a new drug, you must be able to both explain its exact mechanisms of action and show that it is effective and safe," said Lund University's Gyorgy Marko-Varga, who worked alongside Thomas Fehniger during the study. "In order to avoid side-effects, the drug should reach only the cells for which it is intended. Our new technical platform makes it easier to show this," Mr Marko-Varga explained.

The researchers were able to examine biopsies from the lungs of patients who have lung cancer and chronic obstructive lung disease. These patients must also have inhaled medication in order to dilate the airways, before mass spectrometry was then used to show the precise spatial distribution of the drug within the tissue. Results were concluded through analysing 3,000 measurement points of 0.01mm2 from each patient lung sample.

Recently, Lund University announced that it is working on a research project to develop a new camera to provide images of tumour-homing molecules within the body. This camera can then be used to help evaluate the dose needed for radiotherapy treatment, with professor Sven-Erik Strand highlighting the fact that some measuring instruments do not show off small details when looking at radioactivity in a tumour.

A team from the University of Sheffield has unveiled the design, which allows engineers to check in real time on how the viscous components of liquids change during a production process. It will therefore make it easier and cheaper to make changes to the liquid, whether it be ketchup or makeup, according to the experts.

The device uses a non-invasive sensor system which the liquid passes through, with information then being fed back along with a calculation of likely behaviours. A paper which talks about the innovation – a joint project between the University's Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering – has been published in the journal Measurement Science and Technology.

Dr Julia Rees, from the Department of Applied Mathematics at the university, said: "Companies that make liquid products need to know how the liquids will behave in different circumstances because these different behaviours can affect the texture, the taste or even the smell of a product. Measuring the individual components of a liquid's viscosity is called rheometry. We can produce equations to measure a liquid's total viscosity, but the rheology of most liquids is very complicated. Instead, we look at properties in a liquid that we can measure easily, and then apply maths to calculate the viscosity."

Professor of biochemical dynamical systems in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of Sheffield Will Zimmerman said that the device has been made with an eye on conservation and following Ben Franklin's maxim of "waste not, want not".

Recently, a study into viscosity revealed that Albert Einstein's Brownian Motion theory needs a slight adjustment.

Results published in the journal Nature revealed that experts in EPFL's Laboratory of Complex Matter Physics found that the viscosity of water does not fully inhibit the momentum of water molecules acting on another object.