Membrane technology: Looking deep into the smallest pores

Membranes of vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (VaCNT) can be used to clean or desalinate water at high flow rate and low pressure. Recently, researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and partners carried out ...

How environmental microbes boost fruit fly reproduction

For many of us, when we think of microbiomes, our first thoughts are probably about the beneficial microorganisms that live in our guts. But now, researchers from Japan and the US have discovered how the microbes living in ...

Why does puberty trigger us to stop growing?

All animals start out as a single-celled organism and then start growing. At some point, of course, they need to stop getting bigger, but the process by which this happens is poorly understood.

In defence of woodlice and their complicated sex lives

Lots of adults dislike woodlice. Some are physically revolted by them. But this distaste is cultural rather than innate since most small children are well-disposed towards woodlice and happy to handle them. Some people even ...

Water processing: Light helps degrade hormones

Micropollutants in water often are hormones that accumulate in the environment and may have negative impacts on humans and animals. Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Leibniz Institute of Surface Engineering ...

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Steroid

A steroid is a terpenoid lipid characterized by its sterane or steroid nucleus: a carbon skeleton with four fused rings, generally arranged in a 6-6-6-5 fashion. Steroids vary by the functional groups attached to these rings and the oxidation state of the rings. Hundreds of distinct steroids are found in plants, animals, and fungi. All steroids are made in cells either from the sterol lanosterol (animals and fungi) or from the sterol cycloartenol (plants). Both sterols are derived from the cyclization of the triterpene squalene.

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