Bacterial glitter: New findings open up possibilities for sustainable color technologies

Predictions with artificial intelligence

10-Jul-2024 - An international team of researchers has investigated the mechanism that makes some types of bacteria reflect light without using pigments. The researchers were interested in the genes responsible and discovered important ecological connections. These findings were published in the current issue ...

X-ray insights may enable better plastics production

Analysis helps to understand fragmentation of catalyst particles in ethylene polymerisation

30-Sep-2021 - An X-ray study at DESY is pointing the way towards a better understanding of plastics production. A team led by Utrecht University investigated so-called Ziegler-type catalysts, the workhorses in the world's polyethylene and polypropylene production, at DESY's X-ray source PETRA III. As the ...

The indestructible light beam

Researchers create special light waves that can penetrate even opaque materials as if the material was not even there

14-Apr-2021 - Why is sugar not transparent? Because light that penetrates a piece of sugar is scattered, altered and deflected in a highly complicated way. However, as a research team from TU Wien (Vienna) and Utrecht University (Netherlands) has now been able to show, there is a class of very special light ...

Optimal information about the invisible

How do you measure objects that you can't see under normal circumstances?

27-Jan-2021 - Laser beams can be used to precisely measure an object’s position or velocity. Normally, however, a clear, unobstructed view of this object is required – and this prerequisite is not always satisfied. In biomedicine, for example, structures are examined, which are embedded in an irregular, ...

Start-ups in Germany are rarely based on radical innovations

Accelerating effect through crises

13-Aug-2020 - The founding processes in the "alternative energies" and "information technologies" sectors are proceeding faster in Germany than in the USA. This is the result of an international research project of the IfM Bonn and the University of Utrecht, which evaluated a survey of founders in Germany, the ...

Support drives fate of protected gold nanoclusters as catalysts

The choice of a support material may have drastic effects on the structure of the catalyst

17-Jun-2020 - In collaboration with experimentalists from Ghent University, Belgium and Utrecht University, Netherlands, researchers at the Nanoscience Center (NSC) at the University of Jyväskylä, have recently discovered that the choice of a support material for model catalysts, made from gold nanoclusters ...

Secrets of fluorescent microalgae could lead to super-efficient solar cells

13-May-2019 - Tiny light-emitting microalgae, found in the ocean, could hold the secret to the next generation of organic solar cells, according to new research carried out at the Universities of Birmingham and Utrecht. Microalgae are probably the oldest surviving living organisms on the planet. They have ...

Scientists develop diesel that emits far less CO2

14-Dec-2015 - Researchers from KU Leuven and Utrecht University have discovered a new approach to the production of fuels. Their new method can be used to produce much cleaner diesel. It can quickly be scaled up for industrial use. In 5 to 10 years, we may see the first cars driven by this new clean ...

Spot-welding graphene nanoribbons atom by atom

14-Jun-2013 - Scientists at Aalto University, Finland and Utrecht University, the Netherlands have created single atom contacts between gold and graphene nanoribbons. In their article published in Nature Communications, the research team demonstrates how to make electrical contacts with single chemical bonds ...

X-ray nanoscopy of cobalt Fischer–Tropsch catalysts at work

09-Apr-2013 - Cobalt Fischer–Tropsch catalysts have been investigated in both 2-D and 3-D, by scientists in the Netherlands and the US, using in situ hard X-ray transmission X-ray microscopy (TXM). The Fischer–Tropsch process is an important step in the production of liquid fuels from natural gas, biomass or ...