Chemistry
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Chemistry
Explosive goes boom, but not too soon
Leavening a volatile new material with good old TNT yields a substance that’s safer to handle and easily reverted into a highly potent form.
- Chemistry
If that’s a TV, this must be the den
In some situations, the brain identifies a location based on a checklist of objects.
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- Chemistry
Fighting flames with greener materials
New, nano-thin coatings for fabrics and plastics are relatively nontoxic flame retardants.
- Chemistry
Pooping pandas may make better biofuels
Gut microbes break down bamboo efficiently, inspiring new approaches to process raw plant materials for fuel.
- Chemistry
Molecules/Matter & Energy
Fuel from gator fat, cube-shaped neutrons and more in this week's news.
- Chemistry
Molecules/Matter & Energy
Metamaterial warp drives, secrets of coffee rings and more in this week's news
- Tech
Sparing the rare earths
Potential shortages of useful metals inspire scientists to seek alternatives for magnet technologies
- Chemistry
Meteorites contain chemicals linked to life
Space rocks could have delivered DNA building blocks to Earth.
- Chemistry
Molecules/Matter & Energy
One-way light, flexible electricity and plant networks in this week's news
- Earth
Marine microbes prove potent greenhouse gas emitters
Earth’s oceans emit an estimated 30 percent of the nitrous oxide, or N2O, entering the atmosphere. Yet the source of this potent greenhouse gas has puzzled scientists for years. Bacteria — long the leading candidate — can generate nitrous oxide, but the seas don’t seem to contain enough to account for all of the nitrous oxide that the marine world has been coughing up. Now researchers offer a better candidate.
- Earth
Eels point to suffocating Gulf floor
In June, scientists predicted that the Gulf of Mexico’s annual dead zone — a subsea region where the water contains too little oxygen to support life — might develop into the biggest ever. In fact, that didn’t happen. Owing to the fortuitous arrival of stormy weather, this year’s dead zone peaked at about 6,800 square miles, scientists reported on Aug. 1 — big but far from the record behemoth of 9,500 square miles that had been mentioned as distinctly possible.
