Minuscule arrangements in cellulose reflect light in specific ways to give rise to vibrant hues All that glitters is not green. Glitter and shimmery pigments are often made using toxic compounds or pollutive microplastics (SN: 4/15/19). That makes the sparkly stuff, notoriously difficult to clean up in the house, aContinue Reading
These substances conduct electricity and heat, can be shaped and are often shiny. Metal (noun, “MET-al”) Metals are substances that have three major things in common. First, they can conduct electricity and heat. Metals can also be shaped. Some are hammered into flat sheets or can be pulled into wires.Continue Reading
A lot of plastic is impossible to recycle. Chemists are trying to change that. It feels good to recycle. When you sort soda bottles and plastic bags from the rest of your garbage, it seems like you’re helping the planet. The more plastic you put in the blue bin, theContinue Reading
Materials like this could someday be used to curb airplanes’ climate footprint. Airplanes pump a lot of carbon dioxide, or CO2, into Earth’s atmosphere. That waste, a greenhouse gas, contributes to global warming. But someday, CO2 instead could be sucked from the air and used to power those planes. AirContinue Reading
The agreement will allow authors at eligible German institutes to publish papers for fee of about £8500 each Scientific publishing giant Springer Nature has announced a new landmark open access agreement with the Max Planck Digital Library (MPDL). Authors from participating Max Planck institutions will be able to publish anContinue Reading
Cancer cells grown around bioengineered microfibres make an ideal model to test new chemotherapy drugs The habitat that cells live and grow in has been recreated using a mixture of self-assembling peptides and natural proteins.1 This synthetic matrix was then used to grow cancer spheroids, which could be used toContinue Reading
Fourth funding round of government’s future leaders programme aims to turn scientific ideas into products and services The UK government has backed 100 scientists with a total of £109 million for basic research into global issues such as food supply, cancer diagnosis and dementia treatment. This so-called future leaders programmeContinue Reading
The unintuitive properties of LC AuxeTec’s materials mean they thicken when stretched, and could be exploited in body armour and skyscraper windows Auxeticity – the tendency of a material to become thicker rather than thinner when stretched – is an unusual phenomenon. While the property is uncommon, it’s not unheardContinue Reading
The UK is set to launch the world’s first study that will deliberately infect young adults with Sars-CoV-2. The human challenge model will be used to investigate potential treatments and vaccines for Sars-CoV-2 – provided the study is given the go ahead by an ethics panel. The human challenge studyContinue Reading
The unintuitive properties of LC AuxeTec’s materials mean they thicken when stretched, and could be exploited in body armour and skyscraper windows Auxeticity – the tendency of a material to become thicker rather than thinner when stretched – is an unusual phenomenon. While the property is uncommon, it’s not unheardContinue Reading