Bionema receives £650K Innovate UK grant for groundbreaking biological slug control technology
Grant and Award Announcement
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 20-Sep-2025 23:11 ET (21-Sep-2025 03:11 GMT/UTC)
Award-winning Swansea University spin-out company Bionema Group Ltd has been awarded a major funding boost from Innovate UK.
Dark Matter remains one of the biggest mysteries in fundamental physics. Many theoretical proposals (axions, WIMPs) and 40 years of extensive experimental search failed to provide any explanation of the nature of Dark Matter. Several years ago, in a theory unifying particle physics and gravity, new, radically different Dark Matter candidates were proposed, superheavy charged gravitinos. Very recent paper in Physical Review Research by scientists from the University of Warsaw and Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics, shows how new underground detectors, in particular JUNO detector starting soon to take data, even though designed for neutrino physics, are also extremely well suited to eventually detect charged Dark Matter gravitinos. The simulations combining two fields, elementary particle physics and very advanced quantum chemistry, show that the gravitino signal in the detector should be unique and unambiguous.
In a recent breakthrough, researchers from Japan discovered a unique Hall effect resulting from deflection of electrons due to “in-plane magnetization” of ferromagnetic oxide films (SrRuO₃). Arising from the spontaneous coupling of spin-orbit magnetization within SrRuO₃ films, the effect overturns the century-old assumption that only out-of-plane magnetization can trigger the Hall effect. The study offers a new way to manipulate electron transport with potential applications in advanced sensors, quantum materials, and spintronic technologies.
Eliminating toxic and expensive heavy metals in the chemical industry: A new publication Nature Chemistry from the Holger Braunschweig group at the University of Würzburg points the way forward.
A collaborative research team from Peking University has developed a novel method to enhance the tumor-targeting efficiency of γδ T cells through chemical engineering. By conjugating or gluing the cancer cell-targeting antibodies to γδ T cells via fast metabolic glycan labeling and click chemistry, the team achieved improved anti-tumor efficacy both in vitro and in vivo. This innovative approach holds significant promise for advancing adoptive cell therapy in cancer treatment.
A research team has studied the development of the Shanghai Typhoon Model from a traditional physics-based regional model toward a data-driven, machine-learning typhoon forecasting system. They summarize the model’s performance in Typhoon Danas in 2025, noting that a hybrid Shanghai Typhoon Model provides a significant advancement in forecast accuracy. Their paper outlines a roadmap for evolving the physically driven Shanghai Typhoon Model into a purely data-driven, regional machine-learning weather-prediction model designed for typhoon prediction.
Current clinical protocols predominantly utilize mononuclear gadolinium(III) complexes as contrast agents. Recently, coordination clusters composed of multi-nuclear paramagnetic metal ions have demonstrated promisingly higher relaxation rates as MRI contrast agents and adaptable stability in various solutions, offering promising medical application prospects. This review mainly highlights such advancements, focusing on the influence of ligand selection and structural design on the relaxation rates of metal clusters as MRI contrast agents.