Geologists Hope To Disprove Asteroid Mass Extinction Scenario
Earth’s history has been punctuated by a number of mass extinctions wiping out nearly all life forms on the planet. What caused these catastrophic events is still unknown, but many scientists hypothesize that heavenly bodies crashing into the Earth could have pushed the global reset button. But are these extinctions really due to asteroid impacts, […]
NASA Confirms Recent Ice Sheet Losses
The current issue of the Journal of Glaciologycarries findings from NASA scientist Jay Zwally on the changing ice cover of Greenland and Antarctica that tallies with other recent studies indicating unprecedented thinning of the massive ice sheets. Zwally’s survey, carried out using satellites and airborne mapping, confirms that climate warming is changing how much water […]
Wrong Genes And Coffee’s A Heart Stopper
A cup of coffee in the morning may seem innocuous enough, but new research shows that coffee may put some people at risk of suffering a myocardial infarction (heart attack). While a link has been suspected for some time, research into the connection between coffee consumption and cardiovascular diseases such as myocardial infarction (MI) has […]
MOF Power
Cars that run on hydrogen rather than gasoline are closer to becoming a reality, as researchers at UCLA and the University of Michigan show how significant amounts of hydrogen fuel can be stored efficiently in a remarkable new material. The ground-breaking new study, set to be published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, […]
Risky Business Explained
Researchers working in a relatively new area of neuroscience have made progress in understanding why some people are more prone to risk taking than others. “Neuroeconomics” is a relatively new area of neuroscience that incorporates the expertise of neuroscientists, economists, psychologists and psychiatrists. Researchers in these fields are collectively trying to understand how the brain […]
Intra-Molecular Movement Of Protons Observed
Using time-slices of just 100 attoseconds (one attosecond equals one billion-billionth of a second), scientists from Imperial College London say they can now track individual protons moving in a molecule, paving the way for the direct observation of chemical reactions and potentially opening a new window on the fundamental processes occurring in chemistry and biology. […]
New Sorting Algorithm Aims To Sift Through All Possible Molecules
One of the problems in molecular synthesis is that there simply “aren’t enough atoms in the universe to make all the reasonable-sized molecules that could be made,” explains Duke University chemistry professor David Beratan. To help sift through this giant haystack, he’s investigating a new computer method that could help scientists identify the best molecules […]
New And Improved Insta-Nanotube!
Nanotubes are touted as useful for a range of applications – such as nanoelectronics and optics – but in order to be practical they have to be connectable. And while your local plumber may be able to connect water pipes in her sleep, joining nanotubes together into complex networks has so far proved to be […]
Getting Eye On Cannabinoids
With the multitude of chemical compounds contained in cannabis, odds are that at least a few of them are going to be beneficial to humans. In current research on how to modulate cannabinoid receptors in the human body, Dr. Gregory I. Liou, a molecular biologist at the Medical College of Georgia, has found that cannabidiol […]
Healing’s Golden Touch Explained
For more than 75 years, gold and platinum have been used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases. How, and why, gold should work in this fashion has remained something of a mystery to medical scientists, but now some canny Harvard Medical School researchers believe that they have pulled back the curtain to reveal […]