Alexandra Goho

All Stories by Alexandra Goho

  1. Chemistry

    Tricky Business

    The way a drug crystallizes to form a solid can make or break a billion-dollar product, which explains why pharmaceutical and crystal chemists are racing to control this poorly understood process.

  2. Materials Science

    Savvy Sieve: Carbon nanotubes filter petroleum, polluted water

    A filter made out of carbon nanotubes has potential for such applications as processing crude oil and decontaminating drinking water.

  3. Tech

    Lighting the Way for Water: New strategy for steering drops with finesse

    Using a beam of ultraviolet light, researchers manipulate tiny drops of water on a surface—a demonstration that could lead to ultrafast and highly precise chemical reactions on a chip.

  4. Materials Science

    Charging gold with a single electron

    Dropping a single electron onto a gold atom with a scanning tunneling microscope converts gold from its neutral state to an ionic state.

  5. Tech

    Quantum dots light up cancer cells in mice

    Brightly fluorescent crystals known as quantum dots have the potential to seek out cancerous cells in the body, a trick that could lead to highly precise cancer screening.

  6. Chemistry

    Velcro Therapy: Branching polymer wards off scarring after eye surgery

    Specially designed polymer molecules called dendrimers reduce scar tissue formation after glaucoma surgery, dramatically improving the procedure's outcome.

  7. Chemistry

    Tarantula venom disrupts cells in unexpected way

    The unusual way in which the chemical components of tarantula venom disrupt cells could inspire the design of new drug therapies.

  8. Astronomy

    Two newly found space molecules

    Researchers have detected two new organic chemicals in a large interstellar cloud.

  9. Chemistry

    Nitrogen Power: New crystal packs a lot of punch

    At extremely high temperatures and pressures, nitrogen gas assumes a three-dimensional crystal structure called polymeric nitrogen, a long-sought energy-storage material.

  10. Earth

    Bacteria found to release arsenic into groundwater

    Arsenic gets into groundwater largely through the action of bacteria residing in aquifer sediments.

  11. Materials Science

    Diatom Menagerie

    Materials scientists are trying to coerce diatoms into making silicon-based microdevices with specific features.

  12. Materials Science

    DNA coordinates assembly of glassy nanoscale structures

    Chemists use DNA as a scaffold to construct miniature rings and rods out of silica.