S’pore University develops microfibre sensor for healthcare
Reading Time: 4 minutesA RESEARCH team from National University of Singapore (NUS) has developed a soft, flexible and stretchable microfibre sensor for real-time healthcare monitoring and diagnosis. The novel sensor is highly sensitive and ultra-thin with a diameter of a strand of human hair. It is also simple and cost-effective to mass produce. Wearable and flexible technology has […]
Power up energy efficiency in crops
Reading Time: 2 minutesBY SHAWN KENG IN a resource-demanding world, humans have developed green technologies which are energy efficient and minimal in carbon footprint. Now, imagine the engineering of energy efficiency is applied in crops. Scientists are programming rice to produce more yield during photosynthesis, by interchanging genetic code found in maize. Based on University of Oxford press […]
Maximising plant growth through light manipulation
Reading Time: < 1 minutePENANG: Associate Professor Dr S Sreeraamanan from the Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) School of Biological Sciences presented his project during the pitching session at Sains@USM held recently. His project was on the manipulation of light sources for maximising plant growth, which according to him would result in optimised growth in a cost-effective manner, as energy […]
Researchers reverse heart failure in Marfan mice
Reading Time: < 1 minuteIN experiments with mice that have a rodent form of Marfan syndrome, Johns Hopkins researchers report that even modestly increasing stress on the animals’ hearts — at levels well-tolerated in normal mice — can initiate heart failure. The findings, described August 4 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation Insight, revealed a novel cellular pathway in […]
Large-scale international project to map the world’s microbes
Reading Time: 3 minutesTHE first reference database of the microbes colonising the planet was constructed by more than 500 scientists. They contributed over 27,000 samples of microbiomes from diverse environments around the globe. The Earth Microbiome Project is a massive global research collaboration that resulted in ‘recapturing’ half of all known bacterial sequences. “We’re finding out on an […]
Research shows Fraser’s Hill still pristine
Reading Time: 3 minutesBY ASMAHANIM AMIR BANGI: Fraser’s Hill in Pahang is still intact and its surrounding forests are pristine with rich biological diversity because the development of the area was well-planned. A lecturer from the School of Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences, Faculty of Science and Technology (FST), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Prof Dr Sahibin Abd Rahim said […]
Africa’s most notorious insects – the bugs that hit agriculture the hardest
Reading Time: 3 minutesBY ESTHER NDUMI NGUMBI, Research Fellow, Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology, Auburn University THE dreaded crop-eating fall armyworm continues to spread across Africa like wildfire. This invasive insect pest, first reported in Africa in early 2016, is in more than 20 African countries including South Sudan and South Africa. It has destroyed many staple crops […]
How pythons regenerate their organs
Reading Time: 3 minutesEVOLUTION takes aeons, but it leaves marks on the genomes of organisms that can be detected with DNA sequencing and analysis. As methods for studying and comparing genetic data improve, scientists are beginning to decode these marks to reconstruct the evolutionary history of species, as well as how variants of genes give rise to unique […]
Cool microscope technology revolutionises biochemistry
Reading Time: 2 minutesWE may soon have detailed images of life’s complex machineries in atomic resolution. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 is awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson for the development of cryo-electron microscopy, which both simplifies and improves the imaging of biomolecules. This method has moved biochemistry into a new era. A picture […]
Chicken eggs with interferon beta whites will drive down costs
Reading Time: 2 minutesBY SETH AUGENSTEIN GENETICALLY modified chickens are laying eggs with interferon beta in their whites, a team of Japanese scientists reports. The three female chickens are producing enough of interferon beta – used in the treatment of multiple sclerosis and hepatitis, and virus research – to drive down normally-high costs of making the precious and expensive […]