Breathalyzers are a frequently used tool to measure the amount of ethanol in someone’s breath, which relates to their blood alcohol content. However, alcoholic beverages contaminated by methanol (sometimes called wood alcohol) are hard to identify and toxic if ingested. Researchers reporting in ACS Sensors have developed a prototype sensor that quickly and easily detects small amounts of methanol in breath — a step toward developing a “methanol breathalyzer” to efficiently diagnose poisonings.

To treat bacterial infections, medical professionals prescribe antibiotics. But not all active medicine gets used up by the body. Some of it ends up in wastewater, where antimicrobial-resistant bacteria can develop. Now, to make a more efficient antibiotic treatment, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science modified penicillin, so that it’s activated only by green light. In early tests, the approach precisely controlled bacterial growth and improved survival outcomes for infected insects.

Biofilms are conglomerates of bacteria and other organisms, which are feared in medicine as well as other areas because they can contain pathogens and are highly resistant to treatment. Chemists at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) have, in collaboration with colleagues from Munich and Groningen, examined how the polysaccharide “Pel” – a central component of many biofilms – is exported out of the cell by the pathogen P. aeruginosa. In the scientific journal Nature Communications, they describe the structure of the so-called PelBC export complex, which represents the last station in the cell before “Pel” is released.

A team led by Prof. Shlomo Magdassi from the Institute of Chemistry and Prof. Hanna Dodiuk from Shenkar College has recently developed a new adhesive, which addresses one of the major challenges in materials science: developing adhesives that, on the one hand, have rapid curing capabilities and can function on a wide range of surfaces, and, on the other hand, are recyclable and removable without compromising their properties. The research was performed by the PhD student Natanel Jarach, published in the prestigious journal Advanced Materials, presented a new adhesive that can be cured across almost the entire visible light spectrum and can be decomposed using a household microwave, all without requiring solvents, UV radiation, or high temperatures.

A team of Korean scientists has developed an innovative green technology that transforms plastic waste into clean hydrogen fuel using only sunlight and water.

Researchers at the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) Center for Nanoparticle Research, led by Professor KIM Dae-Hyeong and Professor HYEON Taeghwan of Seoul National University, announced the successful development of a photocatalytic system that produces hydrogen from PET bottles. The key innovation lies in wrapping the photocatalyst in a hydrogel polymer, which helps it float on water and stay active even under harsh environmental conditions.

Optical neural networks hold promise as future hardware for energy-efficient artificial intelligence tasks. The implementation of nonlinear functions in photonic integrated circuits is required for optical neural network design and performance calculation. A European scientific collaboration has experimentally demonstrated a novel optical nonlinearity arising from the hydrodynamic behavior of electrons in doped semiconductors. These results could enable advanced photonic integrated circuits using mature microfabrication processes, paving the way for scalable, high-performance optical computing.