Crystals And Catalysts

You may or may not have realised that there's been a bit of confusion around my blog over the weekend as I tried to move my blog over to wordpress.com (there's a big difference between wordpress.org and wordpress.com - will explain in depth below) but I wasn't completely successful and so I restored my blog back on blogger - my safe home. :) Reasons why I wanted to move to WordPress: It's a more professional It's recommended that more bloggers should use it since it's more flexible and professional for blogging The majority of science blogs are hosted on WordPress How I tried to move over (and only partially succeeded) I used the instructions from this website , and the coding to move to WordPress, I imported my files to my WordPress.com blog and I managed to set a redirect from my blogger blog to my WordPress blog that I had set up. But, this was only partly successful because I couldn't figure out how to set up a redirect for my individu

 Today's posts is in the form of an infographic, with a simple topic today: the brain and controlling how much food we eat and what types of food we eat.  Please give all the right credits and link back to this post if you'd like to share this infographic. Thanks!

Garden grass could become a source of cheap and clean renewable energy, scientists at Cardiff University, UK, have claimed . They have shown that significant amounts of hydrogen can be unlocked from fescue grass with the help of sunlight and a cheap catalyst; hy drogen is contained in enormous quantities all over in the world in water, hydrocarbons and other organic matter and there is a serious need to release hydrogen from these sources in a cheap, efficient and sustainable way. This process is called photoreforming or photocatalysis and involves the sunlight activating the catalyst (metal based: palladium, gold and nickel) which then gets to work on converting cellulose and water into hydrogen− their “results show that significant amounts of hydrogen can be produced using this method with the help of a bit of sunlight and a cheap catalyst”. [1] Caravaca A. et al,    Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Science , 2016; 472 (2191) [2]

Happy 2nd Birthday to my blog! - what have I achieved in the last two years? I cannot believe it's been two years since I started blogging about science (where does time go?!) But I guess time flies when you're having fun... I dived into the deep end when I started this blog, after being hesitant to start it for about a year. Now it's something I am very happy and proud to have initiated and made it into a "portfolio" for my writing - which I'm still working on, still practising (I am not a professional - yet! ;) ). Why I started my blog? Becuase I wanted a career change. After I graduated I didn't feel like my place was in the lab. Not that I hate working in the lab, actually the opposite, I loved it. But I think that as much as the world needs great scientific research it also needs great science communication. What have I gained so far? My job as a junior medical writer in medical communications! (although medical communi