Antibiotics – medicines that treat bacterial infections – have saved millions of lives worldwide since their discovery in the early 20th century. When we fill a prescription at the doctor’s office or pharmacy today, most of us take for granted that these commonly prescribed medicines are real, and of good quality. But in the developing world, the manufacture and the distribution of substandard, nonlegitimate medicines is wi...

The world fell in love with plastics because they’re cheap, convenient, lightweight and long-lasting. For these same reasons, plastics are now trashing the Earth. Colorado State University chemists have announced in the journal Science another major step toward waste-free, sustainable materials that could one day compete with conventional plastics.

Scientists, companies and government agencies are hard at work on decreasing greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. In recent years, biofuels produced from corn have emerged as a fuel source to power motor vehicles and, perhaps, airplanes. But corn is problematic as a biofuel source material. It’s resource-intensive to grow, creates many environmental impacts, and is more useful as food.

Medical implants like stents, catheters and tubing introduce risk for blood clotting and infection - a perpetual problem for many patients. Colorado State University engineers offer a potential solution: A specially grown, "superhemophobic" titanium surface that's extremely repellent to blood. The material could form the basis for surgical implants with lower risk of rejection by the body.

  The energy density contained in the centre of a star is higher than we can imagine - many billions of atmospheres, compared with the 1 atmosphere of pressure we live with here on Earth's surface. These extreme conditions can only be recreated in the laboratory through fusion experiments with the world's largest lasers, which are the size of stadiums.

Optical microscopy experts at Colorado State University are once again pushing the envelope of biological imaging. Jeffrey Field, a research scientist in electrical engineering and director of CSU's Microscope Imaging Network, has designed and built a fluorescence-detection microscope that combines three-dimensional and high-resolution image processing that's also faster than comparable techniques.

The growing field of spin electronics - spintronics - tells us that electrons spin like a top, carry angular momentum, and can be controlled as units of power, free of conventional electric current. Nonvolatile magnetic memory based on the "spin torques" of these spinning electrons has been recently commercialised as STT-MRAM (spin transfer torque-magnetic random access memory).

Imagine being able to instantly diagnose diabetes, Ebola or some other disease, simply by watching how a droplet of blood moves on a surface. That's just one potential impact of research led by Arun Kota, assistant professor in Colorado State University's Department of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Biomedical Engineering. Kota's lab makes coatings that repel not just water, but virtually any liquid, including oils and acids - a pr...

Most plastic and polymer materials around are poorly sustainable, as they are petroleum-based, their preparation needs metal catalysis, and they persist in the environment and cannot be effectively recycled. Seeking for true sustainability, American scientists have now prepared a fully recyclable biopolyester from a biofeedstock-based chemical without any metal catalyst involved.