Cobalt-Controlled Communication

Fine Performance Tuning of an Organometallic Molecular Wire by Added Dicobalt Fragments

08-Sep-2010 - Smaller and smarter: this is the aim of research in the quest for ever faster electronic devices smaller in size but capable of performing more complicated tasks. Devices consisting of the smallest possible components, molecular parts, have emerged as the answer. Molecular wires, the most basic ...

Carbon mapping breakthrough

08-Sep-2010 - By integrating satellite mapping, airborne-laser technology, and ground-based plot surveys, scientists from the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology, with colleagues from the World Wildlife Fund and in coordination with the Peruvian Ministry of the Environment (MINAM), have ...

Listening to ancient colours

New technique may help restorers identify decades-old pigments

06-Sep-2010 - A team of McGill chemists have discovered that a technique known as photoacoustic infrared spectroscopy could be used to identify the composition of pigments used in art work that is decades or even centuries old. Pigments give artist’s materials colour, and they emit sounds when light is shone ...

Eclectic Enzymes

Easily Modified Building Blocks for Drug Design

06-Sep-2010 - In the pursuit of biologically active compounds, it is often necessary to be able to control the stereochemistry at predefined positions in a molecular skeleton. The search for ways to prepare chiral building blocks with known configuration that also show structural differentiation is important. ...

Making good taste measurable

02-Sep-2010 - Does milk chocolate still contain milk? Or does cheaper vegetable fat already dominate here? Has the barrique wine really seen the inside of a barrique barrel or has it been spiked with flavoured woodchips? Both the products of global food manufacturers as well as small, traditional foodstuffs à ...

Listen up! U-M experiment records ultrafast chemical reaction with vibrational echoes

02-Sep-2010 - To watch a magician transform a vase of flowers into a rabbit, it's best to have a front-row seat. Likewise, for chemical transformations in solution, the best view belongs to the molecular spectators closest to the action. Those special molecules comprise the "first solvation shell," and ...

New study shows that oilsands mining and processing are polluting the Athabasca River

01-Sep-2010 - Inorganic elements known to be toxic at low concentrations are being discharged to air and water by oilsands mining and processing according to University of Alberta (U of A) research findings. The 13 elements being discharged include mercury, arsenic, lead, cadmium and several other metals known ...

Purdue-Stanford team finds radioactive decay rates vary with the sun's rotation

01-Sep-2010 - Radioactive decay rates, thought to be unique physical constants and counted on in such fields as medicine and anthropology, may be more variable than once thought. A team of scientists from Purdue and Stanford universities has found that the decay of radioactive isotopes fluctuates in synch with ...

Stretched polymer snaps back smaller than it started

30-Aug-2010 - Crazy bands are cool because no matter how long they've been stretched around a kid's wrist, they always return to their original shape, be it a lion or a kangaroo. Now a Duke and Stanford chemistry team has found a polymer molecule that's so springy it snaps back from stretching much smaller ...

Novel bio-based polymer: Young Academics Award for Scientist of TU Braunschweig

27-Aug-2010 - Stefanie Kind, PhD student at the Institute of Biochemical Engineering of the Technische Universität Braunschweig, was awarded with the prestigious “Young Metabolic Engineer Award” During the Metabolic Engineering Conference in Jeju, South Korea, an international jury selected five most excellent ...