In the blockbuster Terminator movie franchise, an evil robot morphs into different human forms and objects and oozes through narrow openings, thanks to its "liquid-metal" composition. Although current robots don't have these capabilities, the technology is getting closer with the development...
Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have developed a fascinating new theory for how life on Earth may have begun.
Their experiments, described today in the journal Nature Communications, demonstrate that key chemical reactions that support life today could...
Researchers from the UK and Spain have identified an eco-friendly solid that could replace the inefficient and polluting gases used in most refrigerators and air conditioners.
When put under pressure, plastic crystals of neopentylglycol yield huge cooling effects—enough that they are competitive with conventional...
After five years of experimentation, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have succeeded in crystallising and mapping a novel conformation of LeuT, a bacterial protein that belongs to the same family of proteins as the brain's so-called neurotransmitter transporters.
These...
Professor Fernando Uribe-Romo and his team of students created a way to trigger a chemical reaction in a synthetic material called metal-organic frameworks (MOF) that breaks down carbon dioxide into harmless organic materials. Think of it as an artificial...
A scalable graphene-based membrane for producing clean water.
Credit: Aaron Morelos-Gomez
An international team of researchers, including scientists from Shinshu University (Japan) and the director of Penn State's ATOMIC Center, has developed a graphene-based coating for desalination membranes that...
Researchers at Utah State University are using silkworm silk to grow skeletal muscle cells, improving on traditional methods of cell culture and hopefully leading to better treatments for muscle atrophy.
When scientists are trying to understand disease and test treatments,...
Scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) achieved a technological breakthrough for solar cells previously thought impossible.
The scientists successfully integrated an aluminum source into their hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) reactor, then demonstrated the growth of the semiconductors aluminum indium...
By formulating positively charged fluorescent dyes into a new class of materials called small-molecule ionic isolation lattices (SMILES), a compound's brilliant glow can be seamlessly transferred to a solid, crystalline state, researchers report August 6 in the journal Chem. The...
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and their colleagues have demonstrated a room-temperature method that could significantly reduce carbon dioxide levels in fossil-fuel power plant exhaust, one of the main sources of carbon emissions in...
Water is everywhere on Earth, but maybe that just gives it more space to hide its secrets. Its latest surprise, Stanford researchers report Aug. 26 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is that microscopic droplets of water spontaneously...
