http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/chemistry-blog.html Chemistry blog from networlddirectory, the place for information. Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT en-us http://www.networlddirectory.com/images/blogs/chemistry-blog.jpg http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/chemistry-blog.html 128 86 http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2010/healthier-vegetable-oil-tractor-fuel-to-harvest.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2010/healthier-vegetable-oil-tractor-fuel-to-harvest.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT Genetic discoveries from a shrub called the burning bush, known for its brilliant red fall foliage, could fire new advances in biofuels and low-calorie food oils, as per Michigan State University scientists. New low-cost DNA sequencing technology applied to seeds of the species Euonymus alatus - a common ornamental planting - was crucial to identifying the gene responsible for its manufacture of a novel, high-quality oil. But despite its name, the burning bush is not a suitable oil crop........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2010/scrubbing-chemical-contaminated-buildings.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/5-2010/scrubbing-chemical-contaminated-buildings.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT Dhiren Barot was an al Qaeda operative involved in plots to blow up the London subway, among other targets. To maximize the damage and the terror, he planned to pack some of his bombs with toxic gas. Fortunately, in August 2004, British authorities nabbed Barot and his accomplices before they could carry out their attacks........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2010/new-bacteria-strain-to-make-super-bread.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2010/new-bacteria-strain-to-make-super-bread.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT What better venue than San Francisco sourdough capital of the world to unveil a new natural sourdough ingredient that could replace conventional additives in a variety of other breads, while making them tastier and more healthful? And that's what researchers described today at the American Chemical Society's 239th National Meeting, being held here........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2010/solving-hydrogen-storage-issues.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/3-2010/solving-hydrogen-storage-issues.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT Graphenecarbon formed into sheets a single atom thicknow may be a promising base material for capturing hydrogen, as per recent research* at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Pennsylvania. The findings suggest stacks of graphene layers could potentially store hydrogen safely for use in fuel cells and other applications........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/oil-droplets-can-navigate-complex-maze.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/oil-droplets-can-navigate-complex-maze.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT Call them oil droplets with a brain or even "chemo-rats." Researchers in Illinois have developed a way to make simple oil droplets "smart" enough to navigate through a complex maze almost like a trained lab rat. The finding could have a wide range of practical implications, including helping cancer drugs to reach their target and controlling the movement of futuristic nano-machines, the researchers say. Their study is in the weekly Journal of the American Chemical Society....... ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/mercury-in-arctic-snow.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/mercury-in-arctic-snow.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT A study by University of Michigan scientists offers new insight into what happens to mercury deposited onto Arctic snow from the atmosphere. The work also provides a new approach to tracking mercury's movement through Arctic ecosystems. Mercury is a naturally occurring element, but some 2000 tons of it enter the global environment each year from human-generated sources such as coal-burning power plants, incinerators and chlorine-producing plants........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/reverses-paralysis-with-a-beam-of-light.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/reverses-paralysis-with-a-beam-of-light.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT In an advance with overtones of Star Trek phasers and other sci-fi ray guns, researchers in Canada are reporting development of an internal on-off "switch" that paralyzes animals when exposed to a beam of ultraviolet light. The animals stay paralyzed even when the light is turned off. When exposed to ordinary light, the animals become unparalyzed and wake up. Their study appears in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS). It reports the first demonstration of such a light-activated switch in animals........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/synthesis-of-hydrogen-fuel-storage-material.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/2-2010/synthesis-of-hydrogen-fuel-storage-material.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT An international team of scientists has identified a new theoretical approach that may one day make the synthesis of hydrogen fuel storage materials less complicated and improve the thermodynamics and reversibility of the system. A number of scientists have their sights set on hydrogen as an alternative energy source to fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal that contain carbon, pollute the environment and contribute to global warming. Known to be the most abundant element in the universe, hydrogen is considered an ideal energy carrier - not to mention that it's clean, environmentally friendly and non-toxic. However, it has been difficult to find materials that can efficiently and safely store and release it with fast kinetics under ambient temperature and pressure........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/new-perspective-on-periodic-table.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/new-perspective-on-periodic-table.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT Transforming lead into gold is an impossible feat, but a similar type of "alchemy" is not only possible, but cost-effective too. Three Penn State scientists have shown that certain combinations of elemental atoms have electronic signatures that mimic the electronic signatures of other elements. As per the team's leader A. Welford Castleman Jr., Eberly Distinguished Chair in Science and Evan Pugh Professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Physics, "the findings could lead to much cheaper materials for widespread applications such as new sources of energy, methods of pollution abatement, and catalysts on which industrial nations depend heavily for chemical processing"........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/breaking-the-tetrahedra-packing-record.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/breaking-the-tetrahedra-packing-record.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT Two Kent State University professors are part of a team of scientists who recently uncovered a way to pack tetrahedra, considered to be the simplest shaped regular solids with its four triangular sides, more densely than ever before. Peter Palffy-Muhoray, professor of chemical physics and associate director of the Liquid Crystal Institute at Kent State, and Xiaoyu Zheng, assistant professor in Kent State's Department of Mathematical Sciences, along with four colleagues at the University of Michigan and one at Case Western Reserve University, have broken a world record for packing the most tetrahedra into a given volume........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/learning-from-snowflake-chemistry.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/learning-from-snowflake-chemistry.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT There is more to the snowflake than its ability to delight schoolchildren and snarl traffic. The structure of the frosty flakes also fascinate ice chemists like Purdue University's Travis Knepp, a doctoral candidate in analytical chemistry who studies the basics of snowflake structure to gain more insight into the dynamics of ground-level, or "tropospheric," ozone depletion in the Arctic........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/super-cool-atom-thermometer.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/12-2009/super-cool-atom-thermometer.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT As physicists strive to cool atoms down to ever more frigid temperatures, they face the daunting task of developing new, reliable ways of measuring these extreme lows. Now a team of physicists has devised a thermometer that can potentially measure temperatures as low as tens of trillionths of a degree above absolute zero. Their experiment is published in the current issue of Physical Review Letters and highlighted with a Viewpoint in the December 7 issue of Physics (http://physics.aps.org.)........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/green-gas-emission-continues.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/green-gas-emission-continues.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT The annual rate of increase in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels has more than tripled in this decade, in comparison to the 1990s, reports an international consortium of scientists, who paint a bleak picture of the Earth's future unless "CO2 emissions [are] drastically reduced". These CO2 emissions increased at a rate of 3.4% per year from 2000 to 2008, in contrast to 1% each year in the prior decade, researchers from the Global Carbon Project report in the current issue of Nature Geoscience. The team comprises some 30 scientists from around the world, including Scott C. Doney, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Richard A. Houghton, senior scientist and acting director of the Woods Hole Research Center (WHRC)........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/novel-hydrogen-storage-method.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/novel-hydrogen-storage-method.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT Researchers at the Carnegie Institution have found for the first time that high pressure can be used to make a unique hydrogen-storage material. The discovery paves the way for an entirely new way to approach the hydrogen-storage problem. The scientists observed that the normally unreactive, noble gas xenon combines with molecular hydrogen (H2) under pressure to form a previously unknown solid with unusual bonding chemistry. The experiments are the first time these elements have been combined to form a stable compound. The discovery debuts a new family of materials, which could boost new hydrogen technologies. The paper is reported in the November 22, 2009, advanced online publication of Nature Chemistry....... ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/memorise-all-112-elements-of-periodic-table.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/memorise-all-112-elements-of-periodic-table.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT Is there an easy way to memorise all 112 elements? Yes, there is. You could make up a melody, and sing them. Melody is a great mnemonic device. The idea was used by Carleton... ....... ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/protons-nearest-neighbors-in-the-nucleus.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/protons-nearest-neighbors-in-the-nucleus.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT A recent experiment at the Department of Energy's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has observed that a proton's nearest neighbors in the nucleus of the atom may modify the proton's internal structure. When comparing large nuclei to small nuclei, past measurements have shown a clear difference in how the proton's constituent particles, called quarks, are distributed. This difference is called the EMC Effect........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/computer-model-foresees-green-future.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/computer-model-foresees-green-future.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT It's the year 2060, and 75 percent of drivers in the Greater Los Angeles area have hydrogen fuel cell vehicles that emit only water vapor. Look into Shane Stephens-Romero's crystal ball - a computer model called STREET - and find that air quality has significantly improved. Greenhouse gas emissions are more than 60 percent lower than in 2009, and levels of microscopic soot and ozone are about 15 percent and 10 percent lower, respectively........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/accidental-discovery-of-near-perfect-blue-pigment.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/11-2009/accidental-discovery-of-near-perfect-blue-pigment.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT An accidental discovery in a laboratory at Oregon State University has apparently solved a quest that over thousands of years has absorbed the energies of ancient Egyptians, the Han dynasty in China, Mayan cultures and more - the creation of a near-perfect blue pigment. Through much of recorded human history, people around the world have sought inorganic compounds that could be used to paint things blue, often with limited success. Most had environmental or durability issues. Cobalt blue, developed in France in the early 1800s, can be carcinogenic. Prussian blue can release cyanide. Other blue pigments are not stable when exposed to heat or acidic conditions........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/8-2009/scrubbing-sulfur.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/8-2009/scrubbing-sulfur.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT The Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has developed a reusable organic liquid that can pull harmful gases such as carbon dioxide or sulfur dioxide out of industrial emissions from power plants. The process could directly replace current methods and allow power plants to capture double the amount of harmful gases in a way that uses no water, less energy and saves money........ ]]> http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2009/extreme-makeover-chemistry-style.html http://www.networlddirectory.com/blogs/permalinks/6-2009/extreme-makeover-chemistry-style.html Fri, 21 May 2010 12:50:23 GMT In revisiting a chemical reaction that's been in the literature for several decades and adding a new wrinkle of their own, scientists with Berkeley Lab and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have discovered a mild and relatively inexpensive procedure for removing oxygen from biomass. This procedure, if it can be effectively industrialized, could allow a number of of today's petrochemical products, including plastics, to instead be made from biomass........ ]]>