Gold

One thing that will definitely ruin a wine is an unpleasant aroma. Such malodorous wines could soon be saved, however, with a little bit of help from gold nanoparticles.

While it's a stunning example of biological evolution, antibiotics-resistant bacteria is proving to be one huge global health headache. Now, though, scientists believe that our silver bullet in this battle might actually be set in gold.

While anti-fog sprays work to a certain extent, warming a glass surface is a better way of keeping it fog-free. A new coating material is designed to do so, and it utilizes light-absorbing gold nanoparticles instead of electricity.

Brain cancer is one of the most insidious forms of the disease, but a new wireless device could help improve survival times. When implanted between the skin and skull, the device uses infrared to heat up gold nanoparticles to kill cancer from within.

Discarded electronics can be a gold mine – literally. Researchers have developed an efficient new way to use graphene to recover gold from electronic waste, without needing any other chemicals or energy.

Currently, if you wish to track the electrical activity of someone's muscles, you have stick electrodes onto their skin. An experimental new technology, however, simply utilizes conductive fabric that's incorporated into washable pieces of clothing.

E-waste is a major environmental hazard, full of valuable metals. Engineers at Rice University have now shown that precious metals and rare earth minerals can be recovered by flash-heating ground-up electronics with a zap of electricity.

Many renewable energy technologies require metals that are mined through environmentally destructive processes. Now, Oxford scientists are investigating a new way to mine valuable metals trapped in hot brines beneath volcanoes.

When a patient is receiving medication, it can be difficult to determine how much of the drug is actually making its way into their bloodstream. A new subdermal "tattoo" could help, thanks to its color-changing gold nanoparticles.

Researchers at Brown University have developed a new way to make super-hard metals, up to four times harder than usual. The team made nanoparticle “building blocks” that could be fused together under pressure, thanks to a chemical treatment.

Gold has shown promise in fighting cancer in many studies, and now researchers have found a way to grow gold nanoparticles inside cancer cells within 30 minutes. From there, the gold can help with imaging and even be heated up to kill the tumors.

Not all maple syrups are created equal. There are actually over 60 taste categories that syrups fall into, as determined by human taste-testers. Soon, though, a solution containing gold nanoparticles could save those people some work.