Chemistry

At The Nanoscale, A 150 Year Old Law Of Crystal Growth Breaks Down

The first direct observations of how facets form and develop on platinum nanocubes reveals that a nearly 150 year-old scientific law describing crystal growth breaks down at the nanoscale. The researchers behind a new study used transmission electron micr ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 23 2014 - 6:30am

Glycocongugates Are More Than The Sum Of Their Sugars

A certain type of biomolecule, called a glycoconjugate,  is built like a nano-Christmas tree. Its many branches are bedecked with sugary ornaments that get all the glory. That's because, according to conventional wisdom, the glycoconjugate's low ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 25 2014 - 2:05pm

Pauling's Rules: Protein Crystals Now Plug N' Play

In 1929 Linus Pauling came up with Pauling's Rules to describe the principles governing the structure of complex ionic crystals. These rules essentially describe how the arrangement of atoms in a crystal is critically dependent on the size of the ato ...

Article - News Staff - Aug 30 2014 - 9:49am

Catching Some Xe's Has Strange Effects On The Body

Image credit: Pslawinski via Wikimedia | http://bit.ly/1lzJKDE By Chris Gorski, Inside Science (Inside Science)-- Xenon is one of the so-called noble gases. It's odorless, colorless and a loner. It very rarely combines with other atoms, or even itsel ...

Article - Inside Science - Sep 10 2014 - 11:30am

Alien Life Search Guidelines Released

Astronomers searching the atmospheres of alien planets for gases that might be produced by life, such as oxygen, ozone, or methane, may be missing the mark- because those gases can be produced non-biologically. Methane is a carbon atom bound to four hydro ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 11 2014 - 5:14pm

WelO5: New Halogenation Enzyme Discovered

Molecules containing carbon-halogen bonds are produced naturally across all kingdoms of life and constitute a large family of natural products with a broad range of biological activities.  The presence of halogen substituents in many bioactive compounds h ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 15 2014 - 6:18pm

Mini-Mouth: Making Wine Better, Thanks To Nanoscience

Wine, with its thousands of chemical combinations, can be hard to judge. As numerous studies have shown, getting experts to distinguish between a $4 bottle of wine and a $40 one is in the luck range Can a nanosensor do better? Researchers at Aarhus Univer ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 17 2014 - 9:18am

Recycle 'Fracking' Wastewater For Fracking, Don't Drink It

Natural gas hydraulic fracturing- fracking- has been wonderful for CO2 emissions while keeping energy costs for poor people manageable but a few sites have been treating fracking wastewater and returning it to rivers.  A new study finds that this is just ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 24 2014 - 9:31am

How Safe Are Safe Ingredients In Food?

A 1997 Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rule allowed food manufacturers to use ingredients "generally regarded as safe," or GRAS, like vinegar and lots of other things, without needing approval all over again. Food advocates say the current GR ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 24 2014 - 12:04pm

RM 8027: World's Smallest Reference Material

If good things come in small packages, then nanoparticles are going to make engineers very happy. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently issued Reference Material (RM) 8027, the smallest known reference material ever created fo ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 28 2014 - 10:00am