Reactive Science News

Build 'em small  The shells of microscopic ocean creatures could be the inspiration for a new approach to building components for a wide range of technologies from the lab-on-a-chip to miniature medical devices.

Shedding light on quantum dots  Hybridising an inorganic nanocrystal and a quantum dot lead to a quantum dot-organic light-emitting device (QD-OLED) a new kind of optoelectronic device that could lead to new types of flat panel displays to supersede liquid crystal displays in everything from mobile devices to TV sets.

Alloys spring to mind  A wide range of other Ni-Mn-Ga alloys that exhibit "shape memory" but also magnetic properties have been found by Japanese scientists using a combinatorial approach.

Marine bugs make drugs Marine actinomycetes, the sea-going counterparts of soil-dwelling microbes, make some highly biologically active substances. A US team has recently discovered a new antitumor agent in one of these marine bacteria and by exploiting X-ray diffraction and spectroscopy have determined its precise structure, offering a new target for synthetic chemists to focus on.

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