Fungi convert polyethylene waste into pharmacologically useful metabolic products

30-Nov-2022

Plastic waste is one of the most significant ecological and economic problems of our time. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, a research team has now introduced a chemical–biological method for upcycling polyethylene waste: catalytic cleavage is used to make carboxylic diacids that are ...

more

New treatment for harmful aldehydes in wastewater

20-Jun-2022

Platinum has set a new “gold standard” in jewelry, and now it’s about to upscale the quality of your water. As wastewater treatment for potable – drinkable – reuse becomes a more viable and popular option to address water shortages, the question of what harmful byproducts might form in treatment ...

more

New research points to a potentially strong impact from water purification to drug manufacturing

08-Jun-2021

Water is weird - and yet so important. In fact, it is one of the most unusual molecules on Earth. It boils at a temperature it shouldn't. It expands and floats when it is in the solid-state. Its surface tension is higher than it should be. Now, new research published in the journal Nature has ...

more

Memory device, developed by USC researchers, shows record performance

27-Jul-2020

Memory devices come in many forms. From USB sticks, to external hard-drives, to chips implanted directly into smartphones. What makes one better than another is usually a combination of new, groundbreaking materials and the novel device structure. The better the materials, and the way those ...

more

3D printed tires and shoes that self-repair

07-Feb-2019

Instead of throwing away your broken boots or cracked toys, why not let them fix themselves? Researchers at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering have developed 3D-printed rubber materials that can do just that. Assistant Professor Qiming Wang works in the world of ...

more

22-Mar-2018

For years, scientists have been inspired by nature to innovate solutions to tricky problems, even oil spills -- manmade disasters with devastating environmental and economic consequences. A new USC study takes a cue from leaf structure to fabricate material that can separate oil and water, which ...

more

16-Oct-2017

Scientists have long searched for the next generation of materials that can catalyze a revolution in renewable energy harvesting and storage. One candidate appears to be metal-organic frameworks. Scientists have used these very small, flexible, ultra-thin, super-porous crystalline structures to ...

more

10-Oct-2017

Gold. The word brings to mind wedding rings, buried treasure and California in the 1840's. But when gold is reduced to 1/100,000 the size of a human hair, it takes on an entirely new personality. By attaching gold nanoparticles to the surface of a microlaser, researchers in the USC Viterbi School ...

more

Using methanol, scientists aim to generate energy cells that move cars, warm houses and help produce food

21-Apr-2017

Scientists have long struggled with generating and storing hydrogen, the kind that might one day provide the backbone for renewable energy fuel cells that make our cars move, warm our houses and help produce food, in a way that also won't hasten climate change or otherwise harm the ...

more

13-Apr-2017

Semiconductors are used for myriad optoelectronic devices. However, as devices get smaller and smaller and more demanding, new materials are needed to ensure that devices work with greater efficiency. Now, researchers at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering have pioneered a new class of ...

more