Chemistry
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Chemistry
Argon keeps chips and lettuce crisp
A new technique replaces the air in food packages with argon instead of widely used nitrogen, improving taste and shelf life.
- Chemistry
Tiny spheres may deliver oral insulin
Researchers have developed microscopic spheres that can sneak insulin past the stomach so it can be absorbed in the small intestine.
- Chemistry
Faster, Better, Cleaner?
Chemists have found that a new class of compounds, called ionic liquids, can substitute for widely used, messy organic solvents while also performing better and producing new products of interest to industry.
- Chemistry
Feline stimulant fends off mosquitoes
Preliminary results suggest that catnip may be more effective at repelling mosquitoes than the widely used chemical DEET.
- Chemistry
Chemists redesign natural antifreeze
Researchers have synthesized a family of artificial molecules that resemble the compounds that keep Antarctic and Arctic fish from freezing.
- Chemistry
Carbon-70 fullerenes finally link up
Researchers have coaxed the cage-like molecules of carbon-70 into zigzagging polymers.
- Chemistry
Chemists make molecules with less mess
Researchers have found a way for a widely used, commercially important chemical reaction to produce less pollution.
- Chemistry
Chemistry of Colors and Curls
Chemists are using new technology and experiments to discover how hair becomes damaged and how to protect it.
- Chemistry
Researchers take an element off the table
Researchers have retracted their 1999 claim that they had created the heaviest member of the periodic table so far, element 118.
- Chemistry
Longest carbon-carbon bonds discovered
Researchers have found a type of carbon-carbon bond that's twice as long as the longest naturally occurring bond linking two carbon atoms.
- Chemistry
Carbon nanotubes show superconductivity
Researchers have made individual superconductive carbon nanotubes that are just 0.4 nanometer wide.
- Chemistry
Wee dots yield rainbow of molecule markers
Chemists report a scheme for creating a versatile color-based tagging system out of tiny atomic clusters, called quantum dots, that may enable scientists to track biomolecules with more finesse than ever.
