Feeling disgusted by slugs? It’s ugly, wet, and giving us an unpleasant slippery sensation. Yet it is the inspiration of new chemistry innovation!
Read this article and say thanks to slugs, which have inspired scientists to invent a new glue for medical therapies!
Wine or Wine Not? An Examination of What Makes a Wine Smell
Have you ever wondered what you’re smelling when you stick your nose into a glass of wine? Read this chembite to find out!
Chemistry by Computers is Better Than Harry Potter Fanfiction
Neural networks have been used to write fanfiction, generate pictures of fake celebrities, and draw dream-like psychedelic images from photographs. But did you know they can make chemistry easier, too?
A Radical Way to Label Proteins
Read about this new approach to selectively install fluorines into proteins using a mild radical source.
Green 3D printing: from cellulose to plastic objects!
3D-printing at its greenest!
A resistant material for 3D-printing is synthesized from plant components!
Trap and Release the acetone in your breath: Portable Spectroscopy for Diabetes Diagnosis?
Ask someone what gases they would expect to find in our breath and oxygen, carbon dioxide and water may well be high on the list. But did you realize that acetone could be in there too? A npvel portable device for detecting acetone in breath has been reported.
Finding a New Way to Cook Using Every Part of the…Seaweed?
Ever taken a bite of ice cream and wondered why it’s so smooth? In this paper, the chemical responsible for that is extracted from seaweed and nothing is wasted!
Popcorn supercapacitors – future batteries for electric cars?
Most people prefer their popcorn popped to perfection, but scientist Jianhua Hou prefers his burnt. How could the smell of burnt popcorn possibly be a good thing? Chembites investigates!
X-Rays and Art: What are colors made of?
What does 15th century art and 21st century X-rays have in common? Find out here!
Controlling Nano-Sized Machines to Deliver Drugs in the Body
Tiny machines fixing disease inside the body may not be science fiction for much longer! Let’s learn about making and controlling nanomotors that could one day deliver drugs from within!
Flexible Fluorescent Dyes for the Detection of Lipids
The functional repertoire of lipids grows to more impressive heights as scientists continue to unravel the substantial functions of these biomacromolecules in cell biology.
Eavesdropping On Intercellular Communication
For complexity to emerge in multi-cellular organisms, extensive intercelluar communication must occur.
Scratching the Surface: Subsurface Hydrogen Aids CO Hydrogenation to Methanol With Nickel
In today’s Chembite we appreciate and explore some remarkable mechanistic aspects of the hydrogenation of CO at a nickel surface. The paper covered gives the first account of catalytic methanol and formaldehyde production from CO by Ni. But to explain why we need to go deeper than the surface…
Machine Learning for Understanding Materials Synthesis
Title: Materials Synthesis Insights from Scientific Literature via Text Extraction and Machine Learning Authors: Edward Kim, Kevin Huang, Adam Saunders, Andrew McCallum, Gerbrand Ceder, and Elsa Olivetti Year: 2017 Journal: Chemistry of Materials The sheer volume of publications makes scientific literature a vast sea of information…
Using Green Chemistry to Make Fertilizer from Minerals
One of the most important types of chemicals in agriculture is fertilizer. This paper shows a new way to cleanly make fertilizer from a very common mineral!
Scan your barcode, the molecular one!
What comes to your mind when you think of barcodes and plastics? This post will enlighten you on a new kind of barcode, molecular barcode, encrypted within the plastic itself!
The Frustrations of Dihydrogen Activation
Dihydrogen stores a lot of energy. How can we control the release of energy so we can use dihydrogen as a fuel of the future? A little frustration can help.
Cheap and Efficient Solar Energy: Flexible Quantum Dot Solar Cells
Solar energy is often touted as too expensive for large-scale energy production. This work gives insight into making one component of next gen solar cells, the metal oxide layer, significantly easier to fabricate.
The First Chemical Synthesis of Griffipavixanthone: Bringing out Intellectual and Artistic Virtuosity in Synthetic Chemistry
How do synthetic chemists use fundamental, yet robust reactions to chemicals stitch together smaller fragments large and complex natural products? The Porco’s Lab latest work might give you a taste of what it’s like to exercise the art of total synthesis with a hint of inspiration from biology.
Efficient Water Splitting Brought to You by Nickel Foam
We’d love to run cars on hydrogen, spitting only water out of the tailpipe. To produce cheap hydrogen in a green way, these researchers have developed a surprising new material to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.
Testing for HIV using only a smartphone
Fast, cheap, and easy medical testing devices can help diagnose diseases across the world. Let’s learn about one recently developed to detect HIV!
Say No to Drugs: Fast and Efficient Drug Detection in Biofluids
How are Olympic doping agents similar to environmental water contaminants? It all relates back to chemical detection methods!
Alternative Fuel Production by a Cu-Zr Inorganic Sponge
This works explains the design principle of a novel methane oxidation catalyst by putting together Cu and NU-1000, a Metal Organic Framework with heightened structural stability. It also uses various spectroscopic technique to assign the oxidation state of the active catalyst which in turn is the source of higher selectivity in the catalytic reaction.
Carbon Monoxide: Future Therapeutic?
Carbon monoxide is probably one of the last things you would expect to see touted as a new therapeutic. How could this compound be used in medicine?
Titan chemistry – insights from Cassini’s grand mission
In celebration of Cassini’s grand finale, this bite features the discoveries of Titan’s chemistry as revealed by Cassini.