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.

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.

James Englehardt, professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Miami, believes his method, which goes beyond simply predicting the risk from individual substances, is far more efficient than current methods.

Detailed in the journal Risk Analysis, the method allows for prediction of human health risks from exposure to chemical mixtures, as well as single chemicals, while reducing data requirements 21-fold.

Generally, chemical contaminants to do not appear in isolation, but along with other substances which can determine their risk to human health.

"The method we are proposing could be applied, for example, to drinking water containing chemical byproducts of chlorine disinfection; well water contaminated with chemicals spilled or released to the subsurface; polluted indoor or outdoor air; or food contaminated with pesticides or other chemicals," Professor Englehardt said.

"Previously, no generally-accepted dose-response function was known for mixtures."

The method is built on a Bayesian mathematical technique, which allows the user to input various types of information, with the method tailoring the measurement accordingly to offer a more conservative assessment when less information is provided.

"More generally, I hope to motivate others to study and apply the predictive Bayesian approach to dose-response assessment, which I strongly believe in as a basis for management of ever-progressing chemical technology and for microbial dose-response assessment as well," he added.

Scientists from the University of Montreal's Department of Chemistry also recently suggested that caffeine, rather than the E.coli bacteria, should be used as a marker for contamination in water supplies.

After analysing water supplies collected from streams, brooks and storm sewer outfall pipes in the city and analysing them for caffeine, faecal coliforms and carbamazepine, a regularly prescribed psychiatric treatment, they determined the former was the best measure.

Caffeine was found to have a correlation with contamination, takes between a few weeks and three months to degrade, and is strongly associated with domestic waste. 

The application is expected to have significant benefits in the field of sustainable fuels, for which artificial photosynthesis is a major goal.

Created by the Empa Institute, the new electrodes, consisting of iron oxide conjugated with a protein from blue-green algae phycocyanin, are believed to be twice as effective at splitting water as iron oxide alone.

The technique should enhance the use of photo-electrochemical cells, which create hydrogen by electrochemically splitting water to create hydrogen, shortening the traditional process using photovoltaic cells.

“I was inspired by the natural photosynthetic machinery of cyanobacteria where phycocyanin acts as a major light-harvesting component. I wanted to make artificial photosynthesis using ceramics and proteins,” Debajeet K Bora, who designed the new electrode during his PhD thesis at Empa, explained.

The research has helped bring the possibility of solar hydrogen generation through artificial photosynthesis one step closer.

Some nine million metric tons of hydrogen are currently produced annually in the US, enough to power between 20 and 30 million cars.

Researchers at the university are using a new method intended to speed up the process of making an unexpected ground breaking discovery, using robotics to perform over 1,000 reactions a day with molecules that have never before been combined.

Senior researcher and co-author of the study David MacMillan explained: "Our process is designed specifically for serendipity to occur. The molecules that should be combined are those for which the result is unknown.

"We show that if you have enough events involved, serendipity won't be rare."

Serendipity has long been argued to play a key role in the drug discovery process, with aniline purple, penicillin, lysergic acid diethylamide, meprobamate, chlorpromazine, and imipramine among these key discoveries while the researchers were looking for something else.

Among the key discoveries to already come out of the new technique is the creation of a carbon-nitrogen molecule with an aromatic ring, which is a key building block in a number of pharmaceuticals.

Drugs using this chemical functionality recreate the natural amine molecules in the body and include antidepressants and decongestants. Molecules with an aromatic ring are typically easier to tweak in the lab so the pharmaceutical has the desired effect.

Previously, creating an aromatic ring would have taken two to three weeks, however, the discovery of the new reaction has significantly speeded the process up.

Stephen Buchwald, a professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who did not participate in the work, said: "The way these types of molecules — alpha aryl amines — were produced in this project is highly efficient, and no person could truthfully say that they would have predicted this reaction.

"This group was able to take a reaction that no one knew was possible and make it practical and useful in a very short time. This really speaks to the power of their overall method."

Work is now being undertaken to mine the process that created the molecule for indications of other novel reactions.

The research is published in Science. 

Chemists from the University of Utah discovered the molecular structure of water changes physically to form tetrahedron shapes at -55 F, at which the water becomes intermediate ice. Minus 55 F is around -48 degrees Celsius.

The temperature is 87 degrees F lower than what is generally considered to be the freezing point of water, 32 F.

Chemist Valeria Molinero explained that while theoretically small amounts of liquid water could be present below -55 F, the water can only survive for a very small period of time.

"This intermediate ice has a structure between the full structure of ice and the structure of the liquid. We're solving a very old puzzle of what is going on in deeply supercooled water," she added.

The findings are believed to be important for the predictions of global climate, by allowing scientists to predict how much water in the atmosphere is in the liquid or crystal state. 

A team from the University of Montreal's Department of Chemistry collected water samples from streams, brooks and storm sewer outfall pipes and analysed the samples for caffeine, faecal coliforms and carbamazepine, a regularly prescribed psychiatric treatment.

Professor Sebastien Sauve said: "E.coli bacteria is commonly used to evaluate and regulate the levels of faecal pollution of our water from storm water discharge, but because storm sewers systems collect surface runoff, non-human sources can contribute significantly to the levels that are observed."

As carbamazepine degrades very slowly, the team hoped it could be a useful indicator, but no correlation was found with the substance and contamination, unlike caffeine.

Once in the system, the team estimates caffeine takes between a few weeks and three months to degrade, making it a good candidate for an indicator. It is also consumed widely and has a strong association with domestic waste, rather than agricultural or industrial waste.

"This data reveals that any water sample containing more than the equivalent of ten cups of coffee diluted in an Olympic-size swimming pool is definitely contaminated with faecal coliforms.

"A caffeine sampling program would be relatively easy to implement and might provide a useful tool to identify sanitary contamination sources and help reduce surface water contamination within an urban watershed," Professor Sauve added.

Elsewhere, a University of Tennessee microbiologist is currently looking to develop a biofilter which will cleanse freshwater of the toxic algae which makes lakes and ponds unsuitable for human consumption.

The research targets the toxin microcystin, which is associated with liver damage in humans, and the team hope to isolate a number of bacteria which will consume the toxin and will ultimately be of use as a biofilter.