Energy: Don’t drink and drive – put the tequila in your fuel tank instead

01-Aug-2011 - UK scientists have shown that Agave – a plant used to make tequila – is an alternative feedstock to corn or sugarcane in the production of bioethanol fuel. David King, from the Low Carbon Mobility Centre at the University of Oxford, has studied the viability of using Agave as an alternative ...

Surface science goes inorganic

Powerful concept offers new approach to understanding surfaces of materials

19-Feb-2010 - A collaboration between researchers at Northwestern University's Center for Catalysis and scientists at Oxford University has produced a new approach for understanding surfaces, particularly metal oxide surfaces, widely used in industry as supports for catalysts. This knowledge of the surface ...

Miniature X-ray source using wiggling electrons

02-Oct-2009 - A team at the Laboratory for Attosecond Physics of Ludwig Maximilian's University of Munich and Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching has succeeded in reducing X-ray sources of typically several kilometres in size to the dimensions of a dining table. This involved a new method using ...

Controlling regioselectivity

11-Jun-2009 - Aromatic C-H bond activation is arguably one of the most synthetically useful reactions in the organic chemist’s toolbox. It is widely used to confer specific functionalities onto a wide variety of substrates, via the formation of C-C bonds. Regioselectivity is crucial in these reactions, ...

Professor Hagan Bayley named Chemistry World Entrepreneur of the Year 2008

28-Apr-2009 - Professor Hagan Bayley, Professor of Chemical Biology at the University of Oxford, was named Entrepreneur of the Year by the Royal Society of Chemistry. The award recognises Professor Bayley’s excellence in science and contribution to British industry. He is the founder of Oxford Nanopore ...

Dark Energy: Is It Merely An Illusion?

30-Sep-2008 - Dark energy is at the heart of one of the greatest mysteries of modern physics, but it may be nothing more than an illusion, according physicists at Oxford University. The problem facing astrophysicists is that they have to explain why the universe appears to be expanding at an ever increasing ...

Tagging-detagging for purification of radiotracers

10-Jun-2008 - Veronique Gouverneur and colleagues from the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, Cheshire, have developed a novel tagging-detagging strategy. This could be extremely useful for the purification of known and novel 18F-radiotracers for Positron Emission Tomography. It is the first detagging ...

Chemists measure chilli sauce hotness with nanotubes

Nanotube device gives precise spice advice

06-May-2008 - If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen and into the lab - chemists can now use carbon nanotubes to judge the heat of chilli sauces. The technology might soon be available commercially as a cheap, disposable sensor for use in the food industry. Richard Compton and his team at Oxford ...