Chemistry News

Sweet solution to water purification

Scientists have developed a sugar-fuelled chemical filter to clean up contaminated water.

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Banana skins stop metal ions from slipping away

A group of Brazilian researchers led by Renata Castro, have found that the classic comedy banana skin is actually very effective at removing heavy metal ions like copper and lead from water.

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Key component of life's building blocks could have come from space

The origins of life on earth are a hotly debated topic among scientists. One theory suggests that meteorites brought some of the chemical building blocks for amino acids – the molecules that make up proteins. Now tests on a meteorite provide more evidence that they might have kickstarted the chain of events that led to the evolution of life here.

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Etching Graphene

With a breakthrough that could hasten the arrival of a new generation of even more powerful microprocessors, scientists have discovered how to etch single sheets of graphene...

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Switch your Christmas dinner for burgers and oregano?

In case you were thinking of shunning turkey for Christmas dinner this year and chowing down on hamburgers, researchers from the University of Arizona have some advice that could help to reduce the formation of potentially cancer-causing chemicals and inactivate food poisoning bugs in grilled meat...

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The Controversial Arsenic Loving Bacteria

The discovery of bacteria that appear to thrive on toxic arsenic may have implications for our understanding of the chemistry of life, both on Earth and elsewhere. But the resulting criticisms and controversy may overshadow the discovery, by questioning the very way scientists discuss their work...

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Why some people are allergic to wine

A lot of us like a nice glass of wine at the end of the day, but for around 500 million people in the world, that’s not so much fun, as they have an allergy to wine. It’s apparently a bit like having a hayfever attack, with itchy eyes and sneezing. Now a group from the University of Southern Denmark have found out exactly what it is in the wine that makes these people react to it.

 

 

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Mechanism of Prozac mood-boost unlocked

In a move that could hold the key to better drugs to beat a range of mood disorders including depression, French scientists have solved a vital piece of the puzzle of how certain antidepressants work...

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Boron Carbide Nanowires

One of the hottest areas of materials science is the development of composite materials that combine the useful features of two or more pure materials. It is often useful to mix the materials as thoroughly as possible but this can be difficult as you get smaller, because the particles often stick together rather than mixing.

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Copper-powered carbon sequestration

We’ve heard about carbon sequestration, deep beneath the Earth, but now here’s another way of dealing with the CO2 problem - with copper. Part o...