Crystals And Catalysts

Journal : Tuning Organic Carbon Dioxide Absorbents for Carbonation and Decarbonation : Dr's: Kim, Park &   Rajamanickam Funded by Ministry of Education. Science and Technology of the Korean Government Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is a gas / waste product that is given off by motor engines and with it other harmful gases that affect us and affect pollution and air quality. In this new piece of research the trio of scientists have aimed to find a way to capture carbon and recycle it, from carbon dioxide and at the same time release the safe molecule oxygen (O 2 ). In their research the scientists have aimed to manipulate the unique chemistry of super bases for carbon capture technology. It is beneficial to be able to control the process of carbonation and decarbonation in an easily controllable manner. ·          Superbase = alkylcarbonyl salt ·          Reverse at elevated temperatures in organic solutions ·          Gives insight into the design and optimizat

New Chemistry research:  Black phosphorus could help engineers surmount one of the big challenges for future electronics: designing energy-efficient transistors. This is a schematic of the "puckered honeycomb" crystal structure of black phosphorus. Credit: Vahid Tayari/McGill University Published in the journal: Nature Communications , the researchers are utilising black phosphorus as a material to pack more transistors on a chip, making them more energy-efficient.  The work is a result of a multidisciplinary collaboration among Szkopek's nanoelectronics research group, the nanoscience lab of McGill Physics Prof. Guillaume Gervais, and the nanostructures research group of Prof. Richard Martel in Université de Montréal's Department of Chemistry. Reporting on their finds, the scientists at McGill University, have found that when electrons move in a phosphorus transistor, they do so only in two dimensions. This will help in designing new energy-efficient t

Everybody loves chocolate, who doesn't? Unless you are allergic to it. Almost every month, new research conducted on chocolate is published proving that chocolate is good for you and can even keep the doctor away .  Even though chocolate already contains beneficial compounds for our health, scientists have been working on integrating other chemicals in chocolate which can reduce the levels of potentially harmful chemicals in our body, such as cholesterol. Infographic: Click to enlarge. In a study conducted in the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, researchers have produced phytosterol-enriched dark chocolate, as a potential functional food, which can lower cholesterol.  Before this can even reach the public, the enriched chocolate has to go through several trials. In one of the researchers’ trials, they aimed to test the oxidative stability of the dark chocolate bar containing phytosterols. The oxidative stability of the samples was evaluated during 5 months at 20°

I am reincarnating a series I started a couple of months ago, called 2 words 2 definitions where I provide the definitions of words that seem like they have similar meanings and can be confused with each other. This posts words are: Disease, Disorder & Syndrome . All three of these words have different meanings but they may sound like they all have the same meaning, if you don’t know the difference. Disease is an impairment of the normal state of the living animal or plant body or one of its parts that interrupts or modifies the performance of the vital functions, is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms, and is a response to environmental factors (as malnutrition, industrial hazards, or climate), to specific infective agents (as worms, bacteria, or viruses), to inherent defects of the organism (as genetic anomalies), or to combinations of these factors. The cause or causes of which are known. Example: Parkinson's Disease Disorder is an abnormal

This is also coincides with my 100th post!  Yay! Today is finally day 30 of the 30 Day Science Blog Challenge. You can read the rest of the months posts here . Just under two months ago I came up with the idea to prepare a 30 day blogging challenge for science bloggers. planning it wasn't easy, but I tried to make all the topics universal to science bloggers, so that anyone can join in at any time. The goal was to post consecutively for  30 days, responding to the topics given here .  So now that this is my 30th and final blog post in the challenge, how did I do and how did I find this challenge? What made this blog so challenging? Apart from a little technical glitch in May ( read about it here ) , which caused me to delay the challenge till June, the 30 day challenge was easy at times and difficult at other times. I think the hardest posts to prepare were the "controversial topics in science" posts since I had to decide on a topic that was controvers

I can't believe that the 30 days I had planned are almost coming to an end. I had been planing this project since May and I couldn't wait to start it. Its now already 29th June and we're 29 days into the challenge. Time flies when your having fun. :) Now that the 30 day challenge is over I now have to plan for the future months on this blog. Since the 30 Day challenge recieved a great response I think I will make it a yearly thing. It will be really interesting to see how my responses change to the topics next year.  But in regards to next month I will be... ...Returning to #SOTW Scientist of the Week... SOTW  is posted every Friday, where I give a condensed profile of a scientist that may be famous or not.  You can check out the previous ones here . Let me know, in the comments section below, if you want me to construct a profile of a scientist that may not be well known and you'd like to find out more about them. ...Posting frequently during the week...

This weeks science news: understanding speech and sleep, fatty diets that harm the brain, fake pills, restricting antibiotics and asthma caused by pollution. Click to enlarge image!

For the second day, discussing a controversial topic in science I will be reviewing the efficiency of Alternative medicine . But to what extent can we trust alternative medicine? First of all, what is alternative medicine ? Alternative method contains the practice of: acupuncture, chiropractic and homeopathy. All of these techniques had not been proven by scientific methods.   The reason why it’s so popular is due to the power of anecdotal evidence. For example, you can hear from a friend that alternative treatment helped improve their back pain. At first, this may seem as the treatment works and you’ll want to try it. But you have to remember that the experience of a single person doesn’t prove that a treatment works the same for everyone. Sometimes the body gets better on its own or via a placebo effect, giving rise to the “it worked for me” response and encouraging more people to follow in their footsteps.   ................. Contrary to what the popular

Is it possible, that after years of controversy, between the public, that GMO’s are safe? There are many people for or against GMOs, but mainly against. Even though the public are showered with incorrect, and sometimes dishonest, information about GMOs a.k.a genetically modified organisms, s cientists and science writers are working to correct any misconceptions about GMOs to the public and eliminate misleading data. What are GMOs? GMO’s are plants or animals that have gone under genetic modification: where scientists alter their genes with DNA from different species of living organisms, bacteria or viruses to get desired traits such as resistance to disease or tolerance of pesticides. Such as: apples that have been genetically modified to be resistant to browning. Studies about GMOs... The results from a meta analysis (conducted by Wilhelm Klümper, Matin Qaim , Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Georg-August-University of Goettingen,   G

Some #sciart in light of the #NYCBlizzard RT @TomKierein : Another frozen bubble pic by Candice Trimble pic.twitter.com/PTvlOgxblf — SciArt (@Sci_Art) January 27, 2015 #SciArt leaf prints with linocut organic molecules responsible for their colours http://t.co/H57dew88bN #printmaking pic.twitter.com/MjdJqDI6if — Ele Willoughby (@minouette) March 7, 2015 Trending now on #Biocanvas - titanium carbonide crystals http://t.co/L6eGLD9GqT #chemistry #sciart #microscope pic.twitter.com/LezUa1s2p6 — Biocanvas (@biocanvas) December 7, 2014 Amazing Photographs Of Drugs Under The Microscope http://t.co/Z6GzxQNRlr #microscopy #sciart — GE Life Sciences (@GECellBiology) July 15, 2014 Crystals vibrating to hue of Love. -CB " #art @CRoullardArt #MicroCrystal my piece "Crystal Rock Garden" #SciArt pic.twitter.com/7nijCfNm9i " — Carl Barbarotto (@Carlolight) April 22, 2015 The infectious beauty of salt transforming metal. S

If you love both science and art, Twitter was a wonderful place to be last March. #SciArt week, which officially ran from March 1st through the 7th, was initiated by  Symbiartic bloggers Glendon Mellow, Kalliopi Monoyios and Katie McKissick, who  encouraged  science artists of all types of backgrounds to come together and tweet their work to the world.  The product was a storm of  scientific illustrations, paintings, sculptures and animations, that  the Internet had never seen before.  Their original goal was to get a total of 1600 #SciArt tweets a day but within the first 24 hours they managed to reach 4000 tweets of scientific illustrations and paintings and other artworks. SciArt is a great way of representing science using art and photography. It also shows how beautiful science can be and encourage the love of science through art. Although  #SciArt is overloaded with biology related artworks it needs more chemistry artworks. This could be due to the lack of popularity of