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Archive for the ‘chemistry’ category: Page 221

Dec 23, 2021

Take a look at this delicious lickable screen to see the future we knew was coming

Posted by in categories: chemistry, futurism

The ultimate cooking show experience.


A professor has created Taste the TV (TTTV), a system of chemicals and rolling plastic that lets you lick a screen to taste what it’s displaying. The mind reels with the endless possibilities of this kind of tech.

Continue reading “Take a look at this delicious lickable screen to see the future we knew was coming” »

Dec 23, 2021

Nuclear Salt Water Rocket: Is It the Only Viable Way to Get to Other Planets?

Posted by in categories: chemistry, nuclear energy, space travel

Let’s nuke our way to the stars!

What is required to get us to other planets? A lot of things but mainly energy. Our current rockets simply can’t produce enough energy to get us that far.

American aerospace engineer, author, and advocate for human exploration of Mars Robert Zubrin has one idea for getting us to space and it’s a rather interesting one. It’s called Nuclear Salt Water Rocket (NSWR) and it replaces traditional chemical propellant with salts of plutonium or 20 p… See more.

Dec 23, 2021

Machine learning used to predict synthesis of complex novel materials

Posted by in categories: chemistry, information science, nanotechnology, quantum physics, robotics/AI

Scientists and institutions dedicate more resources each year to the discovery of novel materials to fuel the world. As natural resources diminish and the demand for higher value and advanced performance products grows, researchers have increasingly looked to nanomaterials.

Nanoparticles have already found their way into applications ranging from energy storage and conversion to quantum computing and therapeutics. But given the vast compositional and structural tunability nanochemistry enables, serial experimental approaches to identify impose insurmountable limits on discovery.

Now, researchers at Northwestern University and the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) have successfully applied to guide the synthesis of new nanomaterials, eliminating barriers associated with materials discovery. The highly trained algorithm combed through a defined dataset to accurately predict new structures that could fuel processes in clean energy, chemical and automotive industries.

Dec 22, 2021

AI Used To Predict Synthesis of Complex Novel Materials — “Materials No Chemist Could Predict”

Posted by in categories: chemistry, nanotechnology, quantum physics, robotics/AI

AI machine learning presents a roadmap to define new materials for any need, with implications in green energy and waste reduction.

Scientists and institutions dedicate more resources each year to the discovery of novel materials to fuel the world. As natural resources diminish and the demand for higher value and advanced performance products grows, researchers have increasingly looked to nanomaterials.

Nanoparticles have already found their way into applications ranging from energy storage and conversion to quantum computing and therapeutics. But given the vast compositional and structural tunability nanochemistry enables, serial experimental approaches to identify new materials impose insurmountable limits on discovery.

Dec 22, 2021

Scientists solved the mystery of comet’s green shade

Posted by in categories: asteroid/comet impacts, chemistry, existential risks

But strangely, this green shade disappears before it reaches the one or two tails trailing behind the comet.

Astronomers, scientists, and chemists have been puzzled by this mystery for almost 90 years. In 1930, it was suggested that this phenomenon was due to sunlight destroying diatomic carbon. The carbon is created from the interaction between sunlight and organic matter on the comet’s head. However, due to the instability of dicarbon, this theory has been hard to test.

Scientists at UNSW Sydney have finally found a way to test this chemical reaction in a laboratory – and in doing so, has proven this 90-year-old theory correct. They solved this mystery with the help of a vacuum chamber, a lot of lasers, and one powerful cosmic reaction.

Dec 22, 2021

Step forward in quest to develop living construction materials and beyond

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, economics

Some engineered living materials can combine the strength of run-of-the-mill building materials with the responsiveness of living systems. Think self-healing concrete, paint that changes color when a specific chemical is detected or material that could reproduce and fill in a crack when one forms. This would revolutionize construction and maintenance, with wide-reaching economic and environmental implications.

Seeing this new category of adaptive materials on consumer shelves may be a ways off. Still, critical early research from the University of Minnesota sheds new light on this exciting advancement, which shows promise beyond building materials, including biomedical applications.

In a new study in Nature Communications, researchers from the College of Biological Sciences demonstrate how to transform silica — a common material used in plaster and other construction materials — into a self-assembling, dynamic and resilient material.

Dec 21, 2021

A Mining Company Is Using Hydrogen Power in Its Trucks, Cutting CO2 Emissions

Posted by in categories: chemistry, energy, engineering, sustainability, transportation

And it’s a hybrid mix of hydrogen and electric power.

Global mining company Anglo American is experimenting with hydrogen to power the giant mining trucks.

Mining trucks consume 35.3 gallons (134 liters) of diesel per hour with their enormous weight of around 220 metric tonnes and therefore emitting vast amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Continue reading “A Mining Company Is Using Hydrogen Power in Its Trucks, Cutting CO2 Emissions” »

Dec 21, 2021

James Webb Space Telescope: The $10B Successor of the Hubble

Posted by in categories: chemistry, evolution, space

It makes space travel look cheap.

Humans have been looking at the stars for millenia, but it was just over 30 years ago that the Hubble Space Telescope launched, and we started getting a really good look at what’s out there. Hubble was beset with more than a decade of setbacks before its launch in 1990. Then, just after taking its position orbiting Earth, astronomers realized that something wasn’t right. It took engineers another three years to fix a manufacturing error that had left one of the mirrors misshapen by one-millionth of a meter. Ultimately, that imperfection was enough to render the telescope’s mirrors effectively useless. The long wait was worth it, though. The Hubble enabled dozens of breakthroughs in astronomy. It also took beautiful pictures. A recent version of its famous “Hubble Deep Field” image includes galaxies that are 13 billion lightyears away, making them the farthest objects ever photographed.

NASA is scheduled to soon launch what it calls the “successor” to Hubble: the James Webb Space Telescope. Like the Hubble, the Webb telescope is also designed to take extraordinarily precise measurements of “Ultraviolet and visible light emitted by the very first luminous objects [and which] has been stretched or ‘redshifted’ by the universe’s continual expansion and arrives today as infrared light.” Webb will also study objects closer to home, such as planets and other bodies in our solar system with the aim of determining more about their origin and evolution. Webb will also observe exoplanets located in their stars’ habitable zones, to search for signatures of habitability, and to learn about their chemical compositions.

Dec 20, 2021

Scientists create mind-blowing tool to ‘see’ millions of brain cell connections in mice

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, neuroscience

To solve the mysteries of how learning and memory occur, Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists have created a system to track millions of connections among brain cells in mice—all at the same time—when the animals’ whiskers are tweaked, an indicator for learning.

Researchers say the new tool gives an unprecedented view of brain cell activity in a synapse—a tiny space between two , where molecules and chemicals are passed back and forth.

Continue reading “Scientists create mind-blowing tool to ‘see’ millions of brain cell connections in mice” »

Dec 20, 2021

Where does consciousness come from? And how do our brains create it? A look at one of life’s biggest mysteries

Posted by in categories: biological, chemistry, neuroscience

General anesthesia doesn’t just work on your brain or on your mind. It works on your consciousness. By altering the delicate electrochemical balance within the neural circuitry inside your head, the basic ground state of what it is to “be” is — temporarily — abolished. In this process lies one of the greatest remaining mysteries in science, and in philosophy too.

Somehow, within each of our brains, the combined activity of billions of neurons, each one a tiny biological machine, is giving rise to a conscious experience. And not just any conscious experience, your conscious experience, right here, right now.