Making surfaces that oil can’t stick to is important for cleaning up oil spills and other pollution. Let’s find out about a new way to coat surfaces that makes them repel oil!
Photocages: Using Light to Deliver Medicine
What will medicine look like 10 years from now? Well, your doctor might be shining a light on you to help target drug delivery in your body. Read more about drug delivery using molecules called photocages inside!
Trapping Lead Contamination in Its Tracks: Metal-Organic Frameworks
Aging infrastructure containing lead contaminates too many water sources in the US, and worldwide. For the first time, researchers have developed a material, based on a metal-organic framework, that almost instantaneously brings lead- and mercury-contaminated water to safe drinking levels. Could this be the next generation of water filters?
Discovering More Structural Diversity in Bacterial Natural Products
Microorganisms are particularly remarkable at churning out structurally challenging small molecules with interesting biological functions. In this work, an unprecedented chemical transformation in one such natural products is discovered and characterized.
Going against the grain: Turning rice husks into batteries and solar cells
Discover how rice husk be converted into structures like carbon nanotubes and lithium battery anodes!
Recyclable plastics help save Earth!
Given our current rate of plastic consumption and generation, can our planet win over plastic? Can we save our planet and still use plastic? In this article, discover how chemists at Colorado State University have synthesized a new kind of plastic that can be recycled infinitely without losing its functionality!
Capturing a new form of DNA: i-motif DNA structures and where to find them
A new form of DNA was found in vivo. It can be a way to regulate the DNA replication and thus prevent the replication of tumor cells.
Separating Left- and Right-Handed Molecules With A Magnetic Field
Today’s Chembite looks at a remarkable new way of separating enantiomers – using a magnetic field.
Breaking the ice – Inorganically connecting nanoparticles
Currently, nanoparticles are not talking to each other while working. In this article, we explore how researchers break the ice between nanoparticles and design a new class of materials by establishing a connection.
Peptide-based ON-OFF switches for cancer therapeutics
Researchers have designed a reversible prodrug delivery system using pH sensitive peptide sequences.
Controlling Adhesives with Light!
Let’s learn about a new material that can be made sticky or not sticky with just light!
GRID SCALE ENERGY STORAGE: A NEW MANGANESE-HYDROGEN BATTERY
For solar and wind to be viable technologies, large scale and cost effective batteries are sorely needed. Now, researchers have made a totally new type of battery, based on cheap manganese sulfate, that fits this bill. Their large proof-of-concept proptoype battery reached ~97% and powered a blue LED for hours!
Recycling waste papers into future bioimaging sensors
What do you think we can make from waste papers? Newspaper? Carton boxes? Another paper? What about bioimaging sensors? Let’s learn more about ’em!
Looking Deeper into the Chemistry of Flames
Researchers discover new formation pathways for oxygenated hydrocarbons in combustion.
Mood Lighting: Colorful Coatings for Smart Windows
Feeling blue? The chemistry of new “smart windows” could help – with a coating that adjusts to the outside temperature and a color filter that you can switch at will, they could be the perfect mood lighting for your energy-efficient home.
What are the materials that make up Saturn’s moon, Titan? – Helen Maynard-Casely
Thanks to observations from both spacecraft & telescopes on Earth, we know much about how chemicals are distributed throughout the cosmos. But they don’t always tell us what the materials are. Today, ANSTO scientist Helen Maynard-Casely explores the materials that might make up Saturn’s moon, Titan! Welcome Helen!
Algal Blooms Impact Air Quality in Great Lake Regions
Algal blooms aren’t the most aesthetically pleasing plant in a lake region, but did you know their emissions can impact air quality and human health?
Weak Magnetic Fields Affect DNA Repair: A Migratory Bird’s Inner Compass?
Birds and other migratory animals use the Earth’s weak magnetic field to navigate, but what do they use as a compass? While previous research has uncovered some promising candidates, not until now have experiments identified a compass sensitive to fields as weak as Earth’s – DNA repair by photolyase.
The shape of supercooled water
Water is a really special liquid: its characteristics allow the existence of life as it is. But It can still amaze us: a new form of liquid water has just been discovered at -80 °C.
Seeing the unseen – the first aromatic molecule identified in space!
Outer space has lots of radiation. But there’s one kind, a faint infrared glow, that has appeared as a mystery to many scientists.
By following this mysterious light, scientists have now made a great discovery – seeing an aromatic molecule for the first time in the galaxies!
Evolving Proteins to Make Tiny Carbon Rings
Learn how researchers at Caltech artificially evolved proteins to synthesize some of the most challenging tiny molecules in organic chemistry!
Sniffing Sensors to Save Entrapped Humans
Human odors and skin oils can be detected by hand-held sensors in order to aid in urban search and rescue efforts.
Controlling Crystallinity and Porosity of Covalent Organic Frameworks with Hydrogen Bonding
This work reports a solvent-free solid-to-solid synthesis method for covalent organic frameworks (COFs), which is very promising from a greener and cleaner chemistry standpoint. The researchers found that hydrogen bonding within the starting material plays a key role on the porosity and crystallinity of the final COF.
Using lasers to make graphene on the surface of food!
Graphene is a wonder-material that is nearly indestructible, conducts electricity, and flexible enough to be worn. Let’s learn how to make it with lasers on the surface of carbon-based materials!
Why Scientists Are Putting Barcodes on Worms
Find out what “photochemical barcodes” are and how they might help us understand complex biological processes.