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In 1921, archaeologists found the remains of a Bronze Age priestess, dubbed the Egtved Girl. Now, a new study reveals that the priestess, who was found in Denmark, likely traveled hundreds of kilometers and was born somewhere in Germany. The Egtved Girl was, according to all clues, an extraordinary person. She only lived to be […]
Scientists have managed how to create morphine using a kit like the ones used to make beer at home. They used genetically modified yeast to perform the complicated process of turning sugar into morphine, and while they believe this can have huge medical significance, they also express concerns about "homebrewed" drugs.
According to a new study, just like tree rings carry with them hints about previous dry or rainy years, bones in fish carry with them a specific signature which records the chemical composition of the waters they used to live in. Most vertebrates, especially fish, have what is called an ‘otolith’ – a specific bony structure […]
Graphene - the one atom thick sheet of carbon arranged in a hexagon lattice - is the strongest material known to man, and spider silk is one of the strongest found in nature, second only to limpet teeth. Heck, why not combine the two? Sounds silly, but it surprisingly worked when Nicola Pugno of the University of Trento, Italy sprayed spiders with both graphene particles and carbon nanotubes. The spiders weaved silk infused with the materials, and in some cases the silk was 3.5 times stronger than its natural counterpart. The resulting fiber is tougher than "synthetic polymeric high performance fibers (e.g. Kevlar49) and even the current toughest knotted fibers,” according to the paper published in Materials Science, which obviously entails a lot of real-life applications, industrial or otherwise.
Many beetles have defense mechanisms which involves foul chemicals squirting from their abdomens, but bombardier beetles have taken it to the next level. Researchers from MIT, the University of Arizona, and Brookhaven National Laboratory wanted to see how it works, so they studied the bombardier beetle and figured it out. The research is published in Science.
I know, the title sounds like one of those scams that promise you'll lose weight - but this is all science all the way. Researchers in Sri Lanka have found a simple way of cooking the rice that not only reduces calories by half, but also provides other health benefits. The key addition is coconut oil.
In a most unexpected find, the same University of Manchester team that isolated graphene for the first time in 2003 found that water flattens into square crystals - a never encountered lattice configuration - when squeezed between two layers of graphene. The square ice qualifies as a new crystalline phase of ice, joining 17 others previously discovered. The finding could potentially improve filtration, distillation and desalination processes.
At his lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Dr. Martin Burke laid the foundation for what he simply calls "The Machine" - an automated small molecule synthesizer that's set to change the way chemists assemble chemicals forever. It's like a 3D printer, only for molecules. Starting with some basic chemicals, which Burke and colleagues separate into blocks, the machine assembles all sorts of molecules in a modular fashion, like pinning Lego bricks. Hours and hours of toiling in the lab might now be dedicated to more important business, and molecules yet to be synthesized can now be attempted. These small molecules hold tremendous potential in medicine, but technology is also sure to exploit the machine - anything from LEDs to solar cells.
Belgian scientists have revealed a refined explanation for the chemical process that's currently degrading Vincent van Gogh's famous paintings, which are losing their bright red. Like other old paintings, van Gogh's works are losing their saturated hue because of the interaction between red led and light. Using sophisticated X-ray crystallographic methods, the researchers identified a key carbon mineral called plumbonacrite in one of his paintings, which explains the process even better.
Scientists in Finland have been keeping themselves busy testing two different beers... for science, of course. These are not just your average beers though - they're almost two centuries old, recovered by divers exploring a 1840s shipwreck in the Baltic Sea back in 2010.
Scientists undertook the gargantuan task of analyzing the compound chemicals found in the venom of 206 spiders, and they discovered what may lead to a new generation of painkillers, improving the lives of over 1 billion people.
After an exhaustive analysis conducted over a year and a half, NASA's Curiosity Rover has finally confirmed the existence of methane on Mars, somewthing which indicates that life may have existed (or still exist) on Mars.
Using ultra-fast laser techniques employed by the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, scientists have peered through the transitional state that reactants go through before joining in a molecule. The implications for chemistry are massive and the findings might spur a new field of science. Already, we’re hearing about some very interesting conclusions, although much […]
Chinese researchers ran simulations and found that a pentagon-containing version of graphene is theoretically stable. The 2D allotrope of carbon is made up of atom-thick sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a repeating pentagon pattern, while graphene is made up of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagon pattern, like a chicken wire. Graphene is the strongest material in the […]
Using only energy from the sun, a pioneering artificial leaf system splits water to generate hydrogen - a highly energy dense fuel. When Daniel Nocera, then a professor at MIT, announced his device for the first time four years ago, people were really hyped about it but it soon became clear that making hydrogen was only part of the solution. "The problem with the artificial leaf," Nocera says, is that "it makes hydrogen. You guys don't have an infrastructure to use hydrogen."
Coffee beans undergo several processes before they become the delicious brew we all know. The coffee beans we’re used to seeing, the brown ones with a delightful flavor, are roasted. Raw coffee beans have a different color and smell very differently. So what makes roasted coffee look, smell, and taste so different from raw coffee? The […]
Chemists have confirmed the existence of new bond - a vibrational chemical bond. First predicted to occur 30 years ago, the findings yet again show what a complex and constantly evolving field chemistry is.
American and Australian researchers have figured out how to unboil an egg, devising a method that unfolds tangled proteins. The process could prove to be extremely valuable in the biotech industry; costs could be dramatically cut for cancer treatments, food production and other research. So, is unboil a word now?
There are millions of dollars in gold and other metals in the sewage sludge in major cities. A new study has found that in a city with 1 million inhabitats, there’s as much as $13 million worth of valuable metals, including gold and silver.
What do you do if you need to catch your own food... but you're just not fast enough? That's the problem cone snails had to face, and the solution they came up with is pretty amazing: they kill fish by lowering their sugar levels with a unique type of insulin, researchers found
Carbon buckyball molecules rarely exist naturally on Earth. Nonetheless, that did not stop astronomers from finding an unexpected abundance of buckyballs in space. Three years ago, Dr. Olivier Berné and Professor Xander Tielens – then, both at Leiden University – suggested a way to form these carbon buckyballs by sifting the hydrogen from larger carbon-hydrogen molecules. […]
The bright, rainbow-colored thermal pools of Yellowstone park may owe their spectacular color to tourist pollution, a new study suggests. Using mathematical models, the study showed the initial colors of the ponds – the ones they had before tourists started polluting them. Morning Glory Pool is a hot spring in the Upper Geyser Basin of […]
The German cities of Dortmund and Luedenscheid have decided to rename streets named after the former BAYER chief executive Carl Duisberg. Similar initiatives are also underway in Frankfurt, Wuppertal, Krefeld and Leverkusen. This carries a special weight as Wuppertal is the birth place of Carl Duisberg, Leverkusen is the home of BAYER‘s headquarters. Carl Duisberg is […]
We’ve previously told you how our ancestors’ adaptation to metabolizing alcohol which first happened some 10 million years ago may have been essential to their survival. There’s more to it though. The same enzyme that metabolizes alcohol, dehydrogenase (ADH4), may be eventually used to transform CO2 into alcohol, which could be later used as a […]
DNA is widely recognized by its double helix, but if you look at the molecule through a microscope you might be disappointed. That’s because the double helix is an atomic model, and you’d need a really powerful microscope to see the helix. On a grander scale, DNA can take some interesting shapes. Take for instance […]
Scientists have made a significant step towards developing fully artificial life – for the first time, they demonstrated evolution in a simple chemistry set without DNA. In a way, the researchers showed that the principle of natural selection doesn’t only apply to the biological world. Using a simple a robotic ‘aid’, a team from the University of […]
A team of UK researchers led by none other but Nobel Laureate Andre Geim – one of persons involved in graphene’s discovery in 2004 – has shown that the wondrous two dimensional material graphene can used as a proton exchange membrane in fuel cells. The find took everybody by surprise since no one expected graphene could […]
It might not come as a surprise to hear that the world’s strongest material, graphene, was found to be a great impact absorber as well. After all, there always seems to be a study that adds to the growing list of graphene’s useful properties, be its lightness, flexibility, or electrical conductivity. It’s been labeled as […]
Researchers at University of Utah have demonstrated for the first time a working biological fuel cell that uses enzymes to convert jet fuel into electricity; all at room temperature. Fuel cells are much cleaner and efficient at producing energy than internal combustion engines – theoretically, fuel cells can be up to four times more efficient since […]
Whether you enjoy a strong malty taste, or a fruity savor, or even just a subtle aroma in your beer – you have yeast to thank for. Yeast imbues beer with aromatic molecules that account for most, if not all of the final flavor. But why is it that they create all this wide array of […]
We live in a solar system filled with water. Not only does liquid water cover 72% of our planet Earth, we have also found ice water in asteroids and comets, on the Moon, on Mars, and even in the shadows of craters on Mercury; while Europa and other moons of Jupiter and Saturn almost certainly […]
Yeast is already used to create two substances widely used to kill pain – beer and wine. Jokes aside, researchers have shown that genetically modified yeast can create morphine, which would remove the need for poppy crops – something which is currently causing widespread issues (including war) in some areas. “Opiates and related molecules are […]
For the first time, scientists at Penn State University have coaxed carbon-containing molecules to form a strong tetrahedron shape, then linked each tetrahedron end to end to form a long, thin nanothread. The resulting materials is stronger than carbon nanotubes, while the thread is only a few atoms across thick, hundreds of thousands of times smaller than […]
Though betavoltaics – battery technology that employs radiation as a means of power generation – has been around since the 1950s, developments thus far haven’t been the most promising. This may set to change after researchers at University of Missouri reported they’ve devised a nuclear-assisted battery, which works in a watery environment, that both lasts longer […]
Stanford researchers traced back methane leaks from contaminated drinking water in Pennsylvania and Texas to shale gas wells. However, they note that they did not find a link between the contamination and the technique used to drill for shale gas itself, called hydraulic fracturing or more commonly known as fracking. Instead, the researchers concluded that […]
As microbes become more and more resistant to antibiotics and cleaning products, it’s crucial that we find better, more efficient way of fending them off. Dr. Samir Mitragotri from the University of California at Santa Barbara has led a team which showed that ionic liquids (ILs), also known as liquid salts, dramatically improve the treatment of microbial […]
Since it was first introduced decades ago, mass spectrometry has proved to be an invaluable tool for analyzing the chemical makeup of foods, pharmaceuticals, forensic remains and so on. The equipment, however, is extremely bulky, expensive (in the hundreds of thousands range) and a sample might take days of back and forth analysis before results […]
One of the most famous chemistry experiments of the last century was the ‘primordial soup’ project initiated by Stanley Miller. The chemist wanted to see what would happen if you mixed methane, ammonia and hydrogen – all substances readily available on Earth before life began – and zapped them with electricity, to create a phenomenon analogous to […]
For billions of years, nature has been harnessing the energy from the sun through photosynthesis. This way, plants, algae and cyanobacteria use sunlight to split water and produce energy-rich chemical compounds from carbon dioxide (CO2). This energy is then transferred to animal that eat these plants, and animals that eat plant-eating animals, including us humans. It’s […]
A while ago I wrote about the disheartening status quo of energy today: frack now, ask questions later. In the article, I argue that there’s a disproportion between the amount of hydraulic fracturing (9 out of 10 wells in the US are fracking wells) and the number of research articles that discuss the bio impact […]
Chemists led by Nobel laureate K. Barry Sharpless have used what is called click chemistry to uncover unprecedented, powerful reactivity. This opens a new “chemical galaxy” of molecules, potentially paving the way for making drugs, plastics and unprecedented smart materials. Click chemistry is a term applied to chemical synthesis tailored to generate substances quickly and reliably by joining […]
A group of international researchers have demonstrated a novel technique for destroying cancer cells. By inserting a chloride payload that penetrates the cancer cell's sodium membrane, the cells become flushed with salt causing a self-destruction response.
Brown University researchers reported the development of a copper foam which could turn CO2 into useful chemicals such as formic acid – a preservative and antibacterial agent in livestock feed. As CO2 emissions continue to grow, scientists are trying to find potential uses to it. The problem with carbon dioxide is that it is extremely […]
Austrlian researchers have successfully developed transparent, ultra-thin, foldable solar cells.
Researchers have found a cheap and quick way of producing peptides in a laboratory. Producing one of the body's natural defenses against cancer and then implanting it into patients can prove pivotal in the fight against cancer.
Scientists have found a much more efficient way of converting CO2 into methanol, using a catalyst with oxide nanoparticles. The resulting system makes the conversion almost 90 times faster than currently existing systems.
Ionic liquids (IL) are basically liquid salts with very low melting points, that are extensively used in industry. It's only recently that an ionic liquid has been found to occur in nature, after a team of researchers at University of South Alabama found that the substances forms when two ant species mix their venom.
While scientists have been studying and incrementally increasing solar cell efficiency, we’ve yet to reach nature’s magnitude of solar energy conversion through photosynthesis. Artificial photosynthesis is a goal in alternative energy research, yet the process is extremely difficult to mimic since, in nature, the process involves numerous stages and transformation of matter and energy. Purdue University […]
If you’ve owned a smartphone or laptop for more than two years and use the gadgets frequently, then you’ve most likely noticed, to your exasperation, how short the battery life is compared to when the product was first shipped. Rechargeable batteries have been around for more than 100 years, but it’s only recently that scientists […]
Deepika Kurup, a 14 year-old girl who was awarded the $25,000 prize in The Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge, is living proof of how nurturing talent can help young, bright people go very far. While still in the 8th grade, Kurup viable solution for the global water crisis and invented a water purification system that […]
