The Race to Repurpose Nature’s Protein Factories
The molecular machines that cells use to build proteins are backed by a billion years of evolution. In that time, these machines—ribosomes—have become exceptionally good at forging amide bonds between standard α-amino acids to make peptides and proteins. Ribosomes are so good at their job that researchers want to harness them to make other polymers. […]
Public Money is set to Stimulate Supply of Sustainable Hydrogen
The production of carbon-neutral hydrogen, dubbed green hydrogen, and of low-carbon hydrogen, dubbed blue hydrogen, is set to increase around the world in 2021. “There’s been a surge of interest in hydrogen, and it’s not slowing down,” says Runeel Daliah, an analyst at Lux Research. The attention is a response to the continued restrictions on greenhouse gas […]
3-D Printing Complex Objects in a Flash
Taking advantage of molecules that switch states when exposed to particular wavelengths of light, researchers have developed a 3-D printing method that can make precise objects in a matter of minutes. The technique, developed by Stefan Hecht of RWTH Aachen University, Martin Regehly of Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences, and colleagues at the Berlin-based start-up xolo, is called xolography because […]
2021 Startup Predictions: Trends, Sectors, And Tech That Will Emerge
There aren’t many positives to take out of 2020, but the extraordinary progress made in digital transformation is one silver lining. Rapidly maturing software technologies meant most sectors were already on a digital journey, and Covid-19 has proven an unexpected stress-test for these new solutions. With employees and consumers confined to their homes for much […]
Brexit: This Is How The Final Agreement Between The United Kingdom And The European Union Remained At The Last Minute
Brexit: This Is How The Final Agreement Between The United Kingdom And The European Union Remained At The Last Minute After months of negotiations and delays due to the coronavirus pandemic, the European Union and the United Kingdom finally reached a final agreement to specify the terms of the so-called Brexit. Although the separation became official on January 31, 2020, it […]
DeepMind solves 50-year-old Challenge in Predicting Protein Folding
This week, the artificial intelligence (AI) program, AlphaFold, developed by Google’s DeepMind, has solved a decades-old problem in biology: determining a protein’s 3D structure based only on its amino acid sequence. The results were announced at the 14th Community Wide Experiment on the Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP14), where Alphafold beat […]
Is Green Investing Influencing the Value of Chemical Companies?
In the past couple of years, the stock market has not been kind to DuPont, 3M, and Chemours, three giants of the global chemical industry. Between January 2018 and September 2020, DuPont’s shares fell 45%, 3M’s dropped 31%, and Chemours’s plummeted 59%. That’s a combined decline in value of about $80 billion. The tumble is […]
Work at Home? How to Separate Work and Personal Life
Do You Own a Home-Based Business? There are now more than 30 million small companies in the United States. Moreover, home-based businesses account for half of these. Additionally, almost 70 percent of today’s startup owners launch and operate their businesses in the home. There are some major advantages that make home-based businesses so popular. Most people love […]
What is Industry 4.0 and What Place Does Small Business Have in It?
What is Industry 4.0? Industry 1.0 started in the second half of the 18th century with mechanization from 1760 – 1830. Machines and tools replaced the agrarian society driven by animal and human labor. Iron and steel along with steam ann internal combustion engine made this possible. Industry 2.0, mass production, was from 1870 – […]
Who Pays When a Graduate Student gets Hurt?
On Nov. 2, 2018, chemistry PhD student Shiva Dastjerdi was working in her Boston University research lab synthesizing candidates for cancer drugs. She was walking across the lab carrying a small vial containing trifluoroacetic acid when her foot slipped on a wet spot on the floor. Dastjerdi was wearing gloves, goggles, and a lab coat, […]
