Chemistry

The robotic line cooks were deep in their recipe, toiling away in a room tightly packed with equipment. In one corner, an articulated arm selected and mixed ingredients, while another slid back and forth on a fixed track, working the ovens. A third was on plating duty, carefully shaking the contents of a crucible onto a dish. Gerbrand Ceder, a materials scientist at Lawrence Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley, nodded approvingly as a robotic arm delicately pinched and capped an empty plastic vial—an especially tricky task, and…

Credit: Journal of Chemical Education (2023). DOI: 10.1021/acs.jchemed.3c00337 A team of researchers and teachers from the University of Twente have developed a novel teaching method that uses conceptual modeling to facilitate learning and foster creativity in classrooms of chemical science and engineering students. The students tackled real-world problems related to sustainability. …

When Lee Eisenberg first read Lessons in Chemistry, he found himself immediately captivated by the world of Bonnie Garmus’ bestselling novel. Upon finishing the book, he immediately cold-called representatives at Apple, who held the rights to the novel, and asked for a job.  “I said, ‘I don’t know what’s happening with the show, but if there’s anything I can do, whether it’s handing out coffees or writing it or doing anything, I’m here,” Eisenberg tells Rolling Stone.  Best known for his work on The Office and…

November 23, 20233 min readGluten’s unique chemistry gives foods like bread and rolls their airy, stretchy texturesBy The Conversation US & Kristine NolinGluten is in a variety of breads and baked goods − it helps them rise and gives bread its characteristic texture. The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.Within the bread, rolls and baked goods on many tables this holiday season is an extraordinary substance – gluten. Gluten’s unique…

Copper is not new to medicine, having been used in infection-fighting nanoparticles and implants, among many other innovations. However, it hasn’t quite been used in the way some chemists from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have achieved, and it paves the way for simpler and much cheaper drug production in the future.Using ozone, a form of oxygen, as a reagent and the metal as a catalyst, the scientists were able to break the carbon-carbon bonds of different types of organic molecules. The ozone broke the…

Eruption of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano in the South Pacific on January 14, 2022, one day prior to the larger eruption plume that would significantly impact stratospheric composition. Credit: Tonga Geological Services, Adapted from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0 When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai volcano erupted on January 15, 2022 in the South Pacific, it produced a shock wave felt around the world and triggered…

NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory. Credit: NASAThe remotely operated facility aboard the International Space Station has created another tool that researchers can use to probe the fundamental nature of the world around us.For the first time in space, scientists have produced a quantum gas containing two types of atoms. Accomplished with NASA’s Cold Atom Laboratory aboard the International Space Station, the achievement marks another step toward bringing quantum technologies currently available only on Earth into space.Quantum…

If you’d have predicted 15 years ago that Peckham’s Giggs and US rap mogul Diddy would one day share a stage in Shepherd’s Bush, you might have received some strange looks. Road-rap legend Giggs half-talks quintessentially British bars (“Walk in the party sporting Armani / half of the crowd’s all snorting my charlie”) sounding like someone who smokes 40 a day while driving through south London drizzle. Diddy, meanwhile, is all exuberance and flashy catchphrases, the shiny suit-wearing personality that helped launch the…

The signal doesn’t necessarily have to be a visible color change—the team has also experimented with temperature. A second receptor pathway in these engineered plants responds to diazinon, an insecticide that’s currently banned for residential use in the United States. As part of the same study, the team used diazinon to turn on the plant’s normal ABA signaling, triggering a stress-induced increase in leaf temperature that can be seen by infrared night-vision cameras, similar to what the MIT team had tried before.The…

The chemicals industry helped build the 20th century, and is urgently adapting to the 21st. Almost all daily goods rely on output from the chemicals sector, from clothes and home insulation to fertilizer and medicine. But this energy-hungry industry needs innovation to find safer, more sustainable products. With tightening regulation and growing pressure from consumers and investors, the industry is embracing digital capabilities. Digitization is key to achieving a toxin-free environment, climate neutrality, and a…