news 2018

Companies are keen to use miniature chemical reactors to make pharmaceuticals and fine chemicals, but are discouraged by their tendency to clog up. Researchers at KU Leuven have now devised an elegant way of using sound waves to keep the chemicals flowing. The chemical industry conventionally produces in large batches, but this approach has drawbacks.

( 29-10-2018 ) Whether you think about bank accounts, YouTube videos or QR codes, everything is saved as zeros and ones, or data, on a computer. The storage equipment available might not be capable of holding all that information much longer. Ghent University successfully investigates alternative data storage methods There are two major issues.

Clusters of silver atoms captured in zeolites, a porous material with small channels and voids, have remarkable light emitting properties. For instance, they can be used for more efficient lighting applications as a substitute for LED and TL lamps. Until recently, scientists did not know exactly how and why these small particles emit light.

Researchers have achieved a long-sought-after objective of electrically controlling water flow through membranes, as reported in Nature. This is the latest exciting membranes development benfitting from the unique properties of graphene. The new research opens up an avenue for developing smart membrane technologies and could revolutionise the field of artificial biological systems, tissue engineering and filtration.

Chemists from Belgium and China have produced a new material that changes colour under a flow of human breath. After a while, the colour returns to normal. This creates possibilities for encryption and anti-counterfeiting. Our clothes, food and everyday devices get their colour from dye or pigments that absorb light.

Introduction: Vincent Van Gogh used only two yellows to paint Sunflowers: a light-fast and a light-sensitive type. Researchers from the Universities of Antwerp, Perugia and Delft together with museum staff have painstakingly examined Sunflowers by Vincent van Gogh (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam). He painted this iconic work, a composition dominated by yellow tints with some orange and blue accents, in 1889 in Arles, France.

The traditional pint is increasingly losing ground to speciality beers. Using herbs is one of the ways to give these beers their specific flavour. Research shows that the taste of these herbs depends a great deal on where they are grown and on their harvest year. Brewers can use this knowledge to maintain the flavour and quality of their product.

A study conducted by a team of international researchers, including Krishna Das from the Laboratory of Biological Oceanology ( FOCUS Research Unit), presents new data on the level of mercury in seven distinct populations of European seabass ( Dicentrarchus labrax ), an edible species whose flesh is highly appreciated by gourmets.

Researchers at the NANOCHEM laboratory (MolSys Research Unit) of the University of Liege have studied molecules synthesized by Sir Fraser Stoddart's group, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry 2016 and professor at Northwestern University. The results obtained during this research and published in Nature Nanotechnology (1) open up new paths in the use of molecular machines, these synthetic molecules that carry out controlled motion on demand.

A research team led by Prof. Julie Bakker (GIGA-ULiège) and Prof. Ulrich Boehm (Saarland University, Germany) has made a major advancement in our understanding of how the brain controls sex. Using female mice as a model, the researchers found that a hormone in the brain, (appropriately) called kisspeptin, drives both attraction to the opposite sex and sexual behavior.

Could the manufacture of the integrated circuits and chips for our everyday electronic devices be made simpler, safer and cheaper simply by being able to switch coloured light on and off? Researchers from Queensland University of Technology (QUT, Australia), Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Belgium's Ghent University have stepped towards this  by pioneering a system that modulates visible, coloured light to change the reactions of a powerful chemical coupling agent.