Showing 20 articles starting at article 561

< Previous 20 articles        Next 20 articles >

Categories: Chemistry: General, Energy: Nuclear

Return to the site home page

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Friction is hard to predict and control, especially since surfaces that come in contact are rarely perfectly flat. New experiments demonstrate that the amount of friction between two silicon surfaces, even at large scales, is determined by the forming and rupturing of microscopic chemical bonds between them. This makes it possible to control the amount of friction using surface chemistry techniques.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A collaborative research team has discovered a new process for making anhydrides that promises improvements in costs and sustainability.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Civil and environmental engineers have determined the factors that may help identify the schools and daycare centers at greatest risk for elevated levels of lead in drinking water. The most telling characteristic for schools in Massachusetts is building age, with facilities built in the 1960s and 1970s -- nearly a third of the facilities tested -- at the greatest risk for having dangerously high water lead levels. 

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Scientists provide new evidence to motivate rapid fossil fuel phaseout. The science team determined exposure to ambient air pollution and its health impacts using an updated atmospheric composition model, a newly developed relative risk model and recent satellite-based fine particle data. They estimated all-cause and disease-specific mortality and attributed them to emission categories. They show that phasing out fossil fuels is a remarkably effective health-improving and life-saving intervention. About 5 million excess deaths per year globally could potentially be avoided.  

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Found in fishing nets, carpet, clothing, Nylon-6 is a major contributor to plastic pollution, including ocean pollution. Now, chemists have developed a new catalyst that quickly, cleanly and completely breaks down Nylon-6 in a matter of minutes -- without generating harmful byproducts. Even better: The process does not require toxic solvents, expensive materials or extreme conditions, making it practical for everyday applications. In experiments, the new process recovered 99% of the polymer's building blocks, which can then be upcycled into higher-value products.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

World War II concluded decades ago, but live mines lurking on the ocean floor still pose threats, potentially spewing unexpected geysers or releasing contaminants into the water. Experts conduct controlled explosions to clear underwater munitions, but concerns have arisen over the environmental impacts from these blasts. New results show that the contamination produced by detonation depends on the blast type, with weaker explosions leaving behind more potentially toxic residues.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers have developed an AI model that can predict where a drug molecule can be chemically altered.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Used lithium-ion batteries from cell phones, laptops and a growing number of electric vehicles are piling up, but options for recycling them remain limited mostly to burning or chemically dissolving shredded batteries. Researchers have improved on approaches that dissolve the battery in a liquid solution in order to reduce the amount of hazardous chemicals used in the process. This simple, efficient and environmentally-friendly solution overcomes the main obstacles presented by previous approaches.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

New technology often calls for new materials -- and with supercomputers and simulations, researchers don't have to wade through inefficient guesswork to invent them from scratch.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers could find no simple solution to limiting non-CO2 emissions from aircraft.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Carbon capture is essential to reduce the impact of human carbon dioxide emissions on our climate. Researchers have developed a method to confirm whether carbon in concrete originates from the raw materials, or from carbon in the air which has been trapped when it reacts with the concrete to form the mineral calcium carbonate. By measuring the ratio of certain carbon isotopes in concrete that had been exposed to the air and concrete that hadn't, the team could successfully verify that direct air carbon capture had occurred.  This method could be useful for the industrial sector and countries looking to offset their carbon emissions.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Research shows that variations in pyrite sulfur isotopes may not represent the global processes that have made them such popular targets of analysis and interpretation. A new microanalysis approach helps to separate out signals that reveal the relative influence of microbes and that of local climate.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Engineers have achieved a world first by manufacturing the first back-contact micrometric photovoltaic cells.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers have devised a way to produce chemicals used in medicine and agriculture for a fraction of the usual cost. Using oxygen as a reagent and copper as a catalyst to break organic molecules' carbon-carbon bonds and convert them into amines, which are widely used in pharmaceuticals. Traditional metal catalysis uses expensive metals such as platinum, silver, gold and palladium, but the researchers used oxygen and copper -- an abundant base metal.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers create transistors combining silicon with biological silk, using common microprocessor manufacturing methods. The silk protein can be easily modified with other chemical and biological molecules to change its properties, leading to circuits that respond to biology and the environment.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers have developed a new method for the accurate determination of the water content of water-soluble compounds. This plays a significant role in various areas, including determining drug dosages.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Global measurements and model calculations show that the complex relationship between the chemistry and climate impact of aerosol particles can be successfully captured by a simple formula.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

An engineering research team is pioneering a new method, based on percussion, to detect pipeline elbow erosion to prevent economic losses, environmental pollution and other safety issues.  

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Bio-based plastics often end up in recycling streams because they look and feel like conventional plastic, but the contamination of these compostable products makes it much harder to generate functional material out of recycled plastic. Scientists have now developed a biology-driven process to convert these mixtures into a new biodegradable material that can be used to make fresh products. The scientists believe the process could also enable a new field of biomanufacturing wherein valuable chemicals and even medicines are made from microbes feeding off of plastic waste.

     (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Chemists have developed a bioinspired supramolecular approach to convert photo-switchable molecules from their stable state into metastable one with low-energy red light. Their work enables fast, highly selective, and efficient switching, providing new tools for energy storage, activation of drugs with light, and sensing applications.