Most people know mother-of-pearl, an iridescent biomineral also called nacre, from buttons, jewelry, instrument inlays and other decorative flourishes. Scientists, too, have admired and marveled at nacre for decades, not only for its beauty and optical properties but because...
Tar, the everyday material that seals seams in our roofs and driveways, has an unexpected and unappreciated complexity, according to an MIT research team: It might someday be useful as a raw material for a variety of high-tech devices...
Indiana University of Pennsylvania students Josh Colastante, Alex Patch, and Heather Furlong excavate Allosaurus bones from the Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry.
Credit: Joe Peterson
The Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry is the densest collection of Jurassic dinosaur fossils. Unlike typical Jurassic bone beds, it...
Colorado State University polymer chemists have taken another step toward a future of high-performance, biorenewable, biodegradable plastics.
Publishing in Nature Communications, the team led by Professor of Chemistry Eugene Chen describes chemical synthesis of a polymer called bacterial poly(3-hydroxybutyrate) –...
Nearly 70 percent of the energy produced in the United States each year is wasted as heat. Much of that heat is less than 100 degrees Celsius and emanates from things like computers, cars or large industrial processes. Engineers...
With the ability to leech heavy metals from the environment and digest a potent greenhouse gas, methanotrophic bacteria pull double duty when it comes to cleaning up the environment.
But before researchers can explore potential conservation applications, they first must...
Antiaromatic planar norcorrole molecules form close face-to-face stacked structures with increased aromaticity. This behavior is quite different from that of planar aromatic molecules. This result is the first experimental proof for the theoretical prediction that the stacking of antiaromatic...
Hydrogen fuel cells are a promising technology for producing clean and renewable energy, but the cost and activity of their cathode materials is a major challenge for commercialization. Many fuel cells require expensive platinum-based catalysts—substances that initiate and speed...
Water is perhaps Earth's most critical natural resource. Given increasing demand and increasingly stretched water resources, scientists are pursuing more innovative ways to use and reuse existing water, as well as to design new materials to improve water purification...
Ketone (fluorenone) polymer can fix hydrogen via simple electrolytic hydrogenation in water at room temperature and release hydrogen when heated to 80 degrees C.
Credit: Waseda University
A Waseda University (Tokyo) research group has developed a polymer which can store hydrogen...
Sipping wine is good for your colon and heart, possibly because of the beverage's abundant and structurally diverse polyphenols. Now researchers report in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that wine polyphenols might also be good for your oral health.
Traditionally,...
