Sweat and food stains vanish under blue light

Sweat and food stains can ruin your favorite clothes. But bleaching agents such as hydrogen peroxide or dry-cleaning solvents that remove stains aren’t options for all fabrics, especially delicate ones. Now, researchers in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering report a simple way to remove yellow stains using a high-intensity blue LED light. They demonstrate the…

Read More

The invisible plastic threat you can finally see

A joint team from the University of Stuttgart in Germany and the University of Melbourne in Australia has developed a new method for the straightforward analysis of tiny nanoplastic particles in environmental samples. One needs only an ordinary optical microscope and a newly developed test strip — the optical sieve. The research results have now…

Read More

Metformin’s secret brain pathway revealed after 60 years

Although metformin has been the go-to medication to manage type 2 diabetes for more than 60 years, researchers still do not have a complete picture of how it works. Scientists at Baylor College of Medicine and international collaborators have discovered a previously unrecognized new player mediating clinically relevant effects of metformin: the brain. By uncovering…

Read More

Don’t toss cannabis leaves. Scientists just found rare compounds inside

Analytical chemists from Stellenbosch University (SU) have provided the first evidence of a rare class of phenolics, called flavoalkaloids, in Cannabis leaves. Phenolic compounds, especially flavonoids, are well-known and sought after in the pharmaceutical industry because of their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anti-carcinogenic properties. The researchers identified 79 phenolic compounds in three strains of Cannabis grown…

Read More