'Space butterfly' is home to hundreds of baby stars

What looks like a red butterfly in space is in reality a nursery for hundreds of baby stars, revealed in this infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. Officially named Westerhout 40 (W40), the butterfly is a nebula—a ...

Engineered microbe may be key to producing plastic from plants

With a few genetic tweaks, a type of soil bacteria with an appetite for hydrocarbons shows promise as a biological factory for converting a renewable—but frustratingly untapped—bounty into a replacement for ubiquitous ...

Chemical noses to detect and rid pollutants

Scientists across Europe are joining forces to develop next-gen "chemical noses" that will detect and rid pollutants from the environment as part of a collaborative €2.9 million Horizon2020 FET-OPEN project (INITIO) that ...

Scientists find persistent organic pollutants in animal fur

Scientists of the Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU), working as part of an international toxicologists' team, studied fur samples of wild terrestrial mammals in Primorye, Russia. All samples contained persistent organic ...

Green alternative to PET could be even greener

One of the most successful plastics is polyethylene terephthalate (PET), the material we use to make bottles and fibers for clothing. However, PET is made from petroleum-based building blocks. An alternative to PET can be ...

New synthesis method for producing fluorinated piperidines

Synthetic molecules are essential for many products, including medicines, crop protection agents and special materials such as Teflon. These molecules have several components, which can be combined in a variety of ways, resulting ...

New catalyst achieves unprecedented activities

Researchers have developed a new catalyst to synthesise aromatic amines, which are central building blocks in many drugs and pesticides. The system is more active than conventional catalysts, so less energy is required during ...

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