Chemistry

In May 2013, Katalin Karikó turned up for work at her laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania and found her belongings piled in the hallway. “There were my binders, my posters, my boxes of test tubes,” she recalls. Nearby a lab technician was shoving things into a trash bin. “My things!” Karikó realised.Despite having worked at the tiny lab for years, the scientist – then in her 50s – was cast out, without notice, for failing to bring in “sufficient dollars per net square footage”. In short, she had not attracted…

Hokkaido University researchers have developed a groundbreaking method to repurpose plastic waste by using it to initiate radical chain reactions for detoxifying hazardous chemicals. This approach, which enhances safety and efficiency while addressing the environmental issue of plastic waste, paves the way for sustainable and economically attractive chemical processes. Artistic depiction of extremely reactive molecules called radicals being generated from plastic fibers. Credit: Koji Kubota and Hajime ItoScientists use…

Osaka University researchers have developed a more sustainable and cost-effective catalyst for chemical synthesis, significantly reducing the need for rare and expensive metals. Their nickel carbide nanoparticle catalyst efficiently converts nitriles to primary amines under mild conditions, offering a promising solution for the environmentally friendly production of pharmaceuticals and everyday products.A team from Osaka University, along with their collaborators, has created a cost-effective catalyst for a key chemical…

Although largely comic in tone, this frothy thriller is obviously modelled on classic films noir, with their tales of betrayal and cunning, gullible heroes tricked into crime by femmes fatales, and the ever-present backbeat of quiet economic desperation. But Keir O’Donnell, a character actor making his writing-directing debut, has juiced up the formula with a palette of poppy primary colours and bright stabs of pink, and an ironic, self-mocking tone. That should help this slip down easy with new-generation viewers who may…

Delving into the chemistry of counterfeit detection pens, this video covers various experimental attempts to modify their reaction with starch. It also discusses the broader context of counterfeit money detection, underscoring the intricacies involved.Counterfeit detector pens use a starch-iodine reaction to identify fake bills. But could you fool them with chemistry? In today’s episode, we dive into the chemistry of iodine, its color and its clock reactions, all while making a little extra cash on the…

Last week, the Ingenuity Mars helicopter made its final flight, far exceeding the expectations of a mission that began nearly three years ago. Now, NASA may be looking at a fixed-wing aircraft to hit the red planet's skies next.In 2021 the Perseverance rover landed on Mars carrying a small helicopter under its belly named Ingenuity. The twin rotor craft was a demonstrator to test if a vehicle could fly in the thin Martian air, which is only about one per cent as dense as our atmosphere on Earth.It became the first…

Laptop screens get dirty — that’s just a fact of life. Whether you’re using one of the best 2-in-1 laptops and want to clean off your fingerprints from the touchscreen or you use a notebook laptop and have somehow gotten food or dirt on it, the cleaning process isn’t something that’s exactly easy to understand. Do you need a special cleaning fluid? How hard should you rub? What do you rub the screen with? Even using water to clean a laptop screen isn’t necessarily completely safe, due to minerals. Device…

Using a better modeling framework, with data collected from Mississippi Delta marshes, scientists are able to improve the predictions of methane and other greenhouse gas emissions. Credit: Matthew Berens/ORNL, U.S Dept. of Energy Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are using a new modeling framework in conjunction with data collected from marshes in the Mississippi Delta to improve predictions of climate-warming methane…

On my commute to work today, I had the misfortune of being crammed into a narrow tube underground. But it could have been worse: I could’ve been squished into a single dimension. Alex Winter on His Character in Destroy All Neighbors That’s what recently happened to some krypton atoms in an Ulm University chemistry lab. Using transmission electron microscopy (or TEM), a team managed to squeeze the noble gas into a nanotube with a diameter 1/500,000th that of a human hair. In such a confined space, the atoms could not…

It's been crazy cold this week, even down where I live in Louisiana, thanks to an outbreak of a polar vortex. This frigid air is bad for all kinds of things, including football helmets, apparently. But it's actually a great time to demonstrate one of the basic ideas in science: the ideal gas law.You probably have some balloons somewhere around the house, maybe left over from New Year's. Try this out: Blow up a balloon and tie it off real tight. Got it? Now put on the warmest jacket you have and take the balloon outside.…