Chemistry

Characteristic Curvature- Let's Clean Up Some Misunderstandings About Soap

If you want to learn a little something about 'characteristic curvature', you're in the right place.   Hydrophilic surfactants love water, but lipophilic surfactants love oils and dislike water. Okay, if you were expecting an article about J ...

Article - News Staff - May 5 2009 - 2:04pm

Smart Polymer Reduces Radioactive Waste At Nuclear Power Plants

Scientists in Germany and India are reporting development of a new cobalt imprinted polymer that reduces the amount of radioactive waste produced during routine operation of nuclear reactors. Their study, which details a first-of-its-kind discovery, has be ...

Article - News Staff - May 11 2009 - 12:31am

Molecules With Five-Fold Symmetry As A Two-Dimensional Crystal? Not So Impossible Any More

Five-fold symmetry is considered to be impossible in crystallography for the same reason that pentagonal tiles do not exist- it is not possible to cover a floor or wall simply using tiles with five sides of all the same length. The only way around the prob ...

Article - News Staff - May 28 2009 - 9:49am

Beauty In Strange Places

There is beauty in strange places. An ordinary life can leave traces of us that gather into something oddly appealing. Something more than the sum of its parts. ...

Article - Heidi Henderson - Jun 7 2009 - 11:13pm

Super-Heavy 112

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Blog Post - Heidi Henderson - Jun 12 2009 - 6:42pm

Century Old Materials Mystery Solved: Grain Boundary Formation Shows Similarities Of Metal And Glass

Stress and strain research got a boost thanks to research from NIST, where scientists have recently found evidence of an important similarity between the behavior of polycrystalline materials, like metals and ceramics, and glasses. Most metals and ceramics ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 17 2009 - 10:24am

Glow Or No Glow? New Weapon Against Bioterrorism

A new National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) assay using a “glow or no glow” technique may soon help the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) defend the nation against a spectrum of biological weapons that could be used in a terrorist ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 17 2009 - 10:47am

Industrial Lubricants Go Green With Ricin And Cellulose

Researchers have developed an environmentally-friendly lubricating grease based on ricin oil and cellulose derivatives, according to the journal Green Chemistry. Bonus: the new formula does not include any of the contaminating components used to manufactur ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 8 2010 - 6:55pm

Copernicium- Heaviest Element 112 Gets A Name

Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543) discovered that the Earth orbits the Sun, thus paving the way for our modern view of the world.  It took a few hundred years for religion to apologize for the reception his discovery got but luckily the  the International Un ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 15 2009 - 12:43am

Bye Bye Moore's Law: Silicon Afterburners... Engage!

A team of scientists say they have discovered a method for attaching molecules to semiconducting silicon that may help manufacturers end-run the current limits of Moore's Law in the quest to make microprocessors smaller and more powerful.  Moore' ...

Article - News Staff - Sep 8 2010 - 6:56pm