Renewable sources of energy such as wind or photovoltaic are intermittent; production peaks do not necessarily follow the demand peaks. Storing green energy is therefore essential to moving away from fossil fuels. The energy produced by photovoltaic cells and...
Catalytic conversion of biomass-derived chemicals to renewable polymers occurs in laboratory stirred-tank reactors. Credit: University of Minnesota
A team of researchers, led by the University of Minnesota, has invented a new technology to produce automobile tires from trees and grasses...
Credit: NanoPhotonics Cambridge/Bart deNijs
For centuries, scientists believed that light, like all waves, couldn't be focused down smaller than its wavelength, just under a millionth of a metre. Now, researchers led by the University of Cambridge have created the world's...
Tires gripping the road. Nonslip shoes preventing falls. A hand picking up a pen. A gecko climbing a wall.
All these things depend on a soft surface adhering to and releasing from a hard surface, a common yet incompletely understood...
Water, despite its central place in so many processes vital to life on Earth, remains a chemical mystery in many respects. One of those mysteries is the nature of water at the exact point where it comes into contact...
On the cellular highway, motor proteins called dyneins rule the road. Dyneins "walk" along structures called microtubules to deliver cellular cargo, such as signaling molecules and organelles, to different parts of a cell. Without dynein on the job, cells...
New research by engineers at MIT and elsewhere could lead to batteries that can pack more power per pound and last longer, based on the long-sought goal of using pure lithium metal as one of the battery's two electrodes,...
Nanoengineers at the University of California San Diego have developed new deep learning models that can accurately predict the properties of molecules and crystals. By enabling almost instantaneous property predictions, these deep learning models provide researchers the means to...
Metals such as iron and calcium play a crucial role inside the human body, so it's no surprise that bioengineers would like to integrate them into the soft, stretchy materials used to repair skin, blood vessels, lungs and other...
Rutgers researchers have discovered the origins of the protein structures responsible for metabolism: simple molecules that powered early life on Earth and serve as chemical signals that NASA could use to search for life on other planets.
Their study, which...
In high school chemistry, we all learned about chemical reactions. But what brings two reacting molecules together? As explained to us by Einstein, it is the random motion of inert molecules driven by the bombardment of solvent molecules. If...
