/ en-us ÌÇÐÄÊÓƵ internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: ÌÇÐÄÊÓƵics, ÌÇÐÄÊÓƵ, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. In a remarkable feat of chemistry, a Northwestern University-led research team has developed the first two-dimensional (2D) mechanically interlocked material. /news/2025-01-chainmail-material-future-armor.html Nanomaterials Thu, 16 Jan 2025 14:00:07 EST news656241542 Fresh hope is on the horizon for ecologically safer pesticide ingredients, thanks to the ingenuity of a research team at the University of Delaware. /news/2024-09-bio-based-insecticidal-ingredients-potential.html Biochemistry Analytical Chemistry Tue, 24 Sep 2024 12:21:05 EDT news646399261 As Utah's Great Salt Lake shrinks, exposing more of its playa, concerns grow about the dust the dry lakebed emits. But scientists lack the data to fully understand what pollutants are present in these airborne sediments. /news/2024-09-dangerous-great-salt-lake-clues.html Earth Sciences Environment Fri, 06 Sep 2024 09:41:04 EDT news644834461 The world is going to need a lot of weird metals in the coming years, according to chemistry professor Justin Wilson at UC Santa Barbara. But he isn't talking about lithium, cobalt or even beryllium. Wilson's interested in dysprosium, which is so hidden in the periodic table that you'd be forgiven for thinking he made it up. /news/2024-08-advanced-chelators-efficient-eco-friendly.html Biochemistry Tue, 06 Aug 2024 10:11:15 EDT news642157867 A new study conducted by researchers from the University of Delaware and Argonne National Laboratory describes a chemical reaction that can convert Styrofoam into a high-value conducting polymer known as PEDOT:PSS. /news/2024-07-styrofoam-polymers-electronics.html Polymers Analytical Chemistry Fri, 19 Jul 2024 09:13:04 EDT news640599181 An artificial intelligence system developed at EPFL can produce 3D maps of coral reefs from camera footage in just a few minutes. It marks a major leap forward in deep-sea exploration and conservation capabilities for organizations like the Transnational Red Sea Center (TRSC). /news/2024-03-ai-powered-corals-3d.html Ecology Biotechnology Tue, 19 Mar 2024 12:46:05 EDT news630071161 Always on their mobile phones? That can't be good for them. Media Scientist Anne-Linda Camerini is looking into how true this is. The feared effects on young people cannot be clearly proven. /news/2024-03-media-scientist-benefits-smartphone-children.html Social Sciences Fri, 15 Mar 2024 13:09:05 EDT news629726941 Reduce, reuse, recycle, and repurpose: These are all ways we can live more sustainably. One tricky aspect of recycling, though, is that sometimes the recycling process is chemically intensive, and this is the case for recycling one of the world's most abundant materials—chitin. /news/2024-02-environmentally-friendly-seafood-added-products.html Biotechnology Agriculture Wed, 21 Feb 2024 14:41:04 EST news627748861 "Back-to-school" season means buying pens and paper, figuring out the new bus route, and … earaches. Doctors typically treat these infections with antibiotics, but children don't always complete the full course, accelerating resistance to these medications. Today, researchers report developing a single-use nanoscale system that's unlikely to generate resistance. Using a compound similar to bleach in test animals, they show it can kill off one type of bacterium that causes ear infections, and it could someday be easily applied as a gel. /news/2023-08-back-to-school-ear-infections-antibiotic-resistance.html Bio & Medicine Tue, 15 Aug 2023 05:00:01 EDT news611250392 It created something of a stir back in 2022, when researchers from Aarhus University announced a new and inexpensive way of breaking down polyurethane (PU) plastic into its original components, which can then be recycled into new PU material instead of ending up in landfills or incinerators. /news/2023-08-mattresses-simple-chemistry-recycle-polyurethane.html Polymers Materials Science Tue, 01 Aug 2023 16:54:03 EDT news610127641 Stanford researchers have discovered a simple and environmentally sound way to make ammonia with tiny droplets of water and nitrogen from the air. /news/2023-04-method-ammonia-global-energy.html Materials Science Mon, 24 Apr 2023 17:14:49 EDT news601575274 A new study has put a remarkable and unexpected chemical genesis on more solid footing. /news/2022-08-reveals-chemical-underpinnings-benign-harsh.html Materials Science Tue, 02 Aug 2022 04:20:15 EDT news578632805 Ancient toilets and trash pits are like heaven to archaeologists. They might not have the glamor of a gleaming medieval jewel or intricate Roman mosaic, but they brim with clues about the everyday life of bygone civilizations: the detritus—and discharges—of our ancestors telling rich stories of what the past was like for those without palaces or chests of gold. From the mundane and the messy, archaeologists can spin tales of what people used to eat, how they kept clean (or not), what illnesses they had, and what they treasured (and what they didn't). /news/2022-06-ancient-toilets-maya-life-tamales.html Archaeology Thu, 09 Jun 2022 10:06:54 EDT news573988009 Nuclear medicine uses technetium-99m among other things for tumor diagnostics. With over 30 million applications worldwide each year, it is the most widely used radioisotope. The precursor material, molybdenum-99, is mainly produced in research reactors. A study at the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Research Neutron Source (FRM II) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) now shows options to significantly reduce the radioactive waste produced during processing to a medical product. /news/2022-03-key-radiodiagnostic-agent-radioactive.html Materials Science Thu, 31 Mar 2022 14:04:33 EDT news567954268 Picture a scenario in which a highly toxic substance, like dissolved nuclear fuel, is being recycled in a reprocessing plant. Until now, workers inside the plant had very limited information about what's in the solution to inform next steps. But that's changing, thanks to the innovative work led by two interns at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Now, without opening, sampling, or otherwise handling the substance, they developed an easy way to determine its acidity and chemical components—using a method as simple as taking a picture. The approach allows researchers to understand the composition of the solution safely and effectively and to quickly decide a path forward. /news/2021-10-advances-ph-phosphate-safety-nuclear.html Analytical Chemistry Thu, 28 Oct 2021 08:42:58 EDT news554629372 Gazing into the universe is like looking into a funhouse mirror. That's because gravity warps the fabric of space, creating optical illusions. /news/2021-10-galaxy-mystifies-hubble-astronomers.html Astronomy Thu, 07 Oct 2021 14:57:00 EDT news552837409 When we started using plastics about 70 years ago, not much thought—if any—was given to the implications of their lifespan and the fact that they can take centuries to decompose. Consequently, as plastics have diversified and become easier to manufacture, the planet is now straddling some 8.3 billion tons of the stuff—almost every bit of plastic ever produced—without enough technology or incentives to shrink that growing pile. Plastic is cheaper and easier to produce and throw away than it is to recycle. /news/2020-10-efficient-low-energy-method-upcycling-polyethylene.html Materials Science Thu, 22 Oct 2020 14:00:07 EDT news522571357 Modern applications such as high resolution microsopy or micro- or nanoscale material processing require customized laser beams that do not change during propagation. This represents an immense challenge since light typically broadens during propagation, a phenomenon known as diffraction. So-called propagation-invariant or non-diffracting light fields therefore do not seem possible at first glance. If it were possible to produce them, they would enable new applications such as light disk microscopy or laser-based cutting, milling or drilling with high aspect ratios. /news/2020-07-tailored-nature.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 29 Jul 2020 12:43:49 EDT news515245427 A luxury automobile is not really a place to look for something like sisal, hemp, or wood. Yet automakers have been using natural fibers for decades. Some high-end sedans and coupes use these in composite materials for interior door panels, for engine, interior and noise insulation, and internal engine covers, among other uses. /news/2020-07-plantains-carbon-nanotubes-cars.html Nanomaterials Wed, 29 Jul 2020 07:28:40 EDT news515226516 Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Germany have developed a new sustainable method of extracting the flavoring agent vanillin from lignin, a component of wood. Large quantities of waste lignin accumulate during the production of pulp, an important raw material for making paper. The process the researchers describe in their article in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering involves dissolving the lignin in caustic soda and heating this mixture to 160 degrees Celsius in a simple electrolysis cell with nickel electrodes to which a current is applied. /news/2020-06-sustainable-method-vanillin-wood.html Materials Science Wed, 03 Jun 2020 08:14:28 EDT news510390863 Bendable light beams have significant applications in optical manipulation, optical imaging, routing, micromachining and nonlinear optics. Researchers have long explored curved light beams in place of traditional Gaussian beams for line-of-sight light communications. In a recent study now published on Scientific Reports, Long Zhu and a team of researchers in Optical and Electronic information, in China, proposed and developed free-space, data-carrying bendable light communication systems between arbitrary targets for potential multifunctionality. The researchers employed a 32-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (32-QAM) based discrete multitone (DMT) signal to demonstrate free-space bendable light intensity modulated direct detection (IM-DD) communication in the presence of three curved light paths. They characterized (tested) multiple functions of free-space bendable light communication to reveal that they allowed optical communications to be more flexible, robust and multifunctional. The work will open a new direction to explore special light beams enabled, advanced free-space light communications. /news/2019-10-free-space-data-carrying-bendable.html Optics & Photonics Wed, 23 Oct 2019 07:49:17 EDT news491035733 Preterm birth (PTB)—defined as birth before the 37th week of gestation—is the leading complication of pregnancy. If doctors had a simple, accurate and inexpensive way to identify women at risk for the condition, they could develop better prevention strategies. Now researchers have created a 3-D-printed microchip electrophoresis device that can sensitively detect three serum biomarkers of PTB. They report their results in ACS' journal Analytical Chemistry. /news/2019-05-d-printed-device-biomarkers-preterm-birth.html Analytical Chemistry Wed, 22 May 2019 11:55:07 EDT news477744897 Scientists have demonstrated a new bio-inspired material for an eco-friendly and cost-effective approach to recovering uranium from seawater. /news/2019-05-bio-inspired-material-oceans-uranium-sustainable.html Polymers Materials Science Thu, 16 May 2019 11:57:04 EDT news477226613 The world's nations are nowhere near to meeting the global Paris Agreement's goals on climate change of holding global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius compared to 19th-century averages, much less its more aspirational goal of holding temperatures to a 1.5°C rise. /news/2019-03-tweak-marine-chemistry-stave-climate.html Environment Tue, 12 Mar 2019 09:05:53 EDT news471600339 Carabid beetles produce caustic chemicals they spray to defend themselves against predators, and the compound that protects their bodies from these toxic substances shows promise for use in bioengineering or biomedical applications, according to Penn State researchers. /news/2019-02-material-shields-beetle-weapons.html Plants & Animals Ecology Mon, 25 Feb 2019 15:44:21 EST news470331849 The rapidly growing desalination industry produces water for drinking and for agriculture in the world's arid coastal regions. But it leaves behind as a waste product a lot of highly concentrated brine, which is usually disposed of by dumping it back into the sea, a process that requires costly pumping systems and that must be managed carefully to prevent damage to marine ecosystems. Now, engineers at MIT say they have found a better way. /news/2019-02-desalination-resource.html Materials Science Wed, 13 Feb 2019 11:00:01 EST news469257615 Traveling ionospheric disturbances (TIDs) are among the Earth's ionosphere irregularities. They represent wave-like electron density structures propagating in the ionosphere. The motion of TIDs modulates the electron density distribution in space. It leads to a modification of plasma parameters, namely the refractive index, and affects the propagation of radio waves. In particular cases, the variations of plasma parameters strongly affect the lower-frequency electromagnetic waves that can result in focusing or amplification of the incident radiation (Meyer-Vernet et al. 1981). The focusing effect manifests itself in the form of peculiar spectral disturbances in intensity with specific morphology, so-called spectral caustics (SCs), occasionally appearing in dynamic spectra of solar radio instruments operating in the meter-decameter wavelength range. /news/2019-01-simulate-focusing-effect-ionospheric-disturbances.html Earth Sciences Thu, 03 Jan 2019 06:55:43 EST news465720934 Using microlensing method, an international team of astronomers has detected a new "super-Earth" alien world circling a low-mass star about five times less massive than our sun. The finding is detailed in a paper published March 28 on the arXiv pre-print repository. /news/2018-04-astronomers-super-earth-exoplanet-orbiting-low-mass.html Astronomy Wed, 04 Apr 2018 09:20:01 EDT news442044875 A WSU research team for the first time has developed a promising way to recycle the popular carbon fiber plastics that are used in everything from modern airplanes and sporting goods to the wind energy industry. /news/2017-05-recycling-carbon-fiber-composites.html Polymers Tue, 02 May 2017 10:35:25 EDT news412940106 (ÌÇÐÄÊÓƵ)—A team of researchers from several institutions in China and the U.S. has developed a way to use platinum–molybdenum carbide to catalytically release hydrogen from methanol and water to power a hydrogen fuel cell. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the team describes the new method to produce hydrogen for possible use in a fuel cell. /news/2017-03-platinum-molybdenum-carbide-catalytically-hydrogen-power.html Materials Science Fri, 31 Mar 2017 10:20:01 EDT news410172676