All Stories by Jessica Gorman
- Chemistry
Minimotor: Single molecule does some work
A single molecule has performed mechanical work—pulling and releasing a cantilever tip—when exposed to light.
- Materials Science
Self-Sutures: New material knots up on its own
Researchers have used a new biodegradable material to make surgical sutures that knot and tighten themselves as they warm to body temperature.
- Chemistry
Fluorine atoms used to cut nanotubes
Researchers have found that they can cut carbon nanotubes into short, potentially useful pieces using a technique for adding groups of atoms to nanotubes.
- Chemistry
Unlikely ion made in lab
Chemists have created a molecule—the pentamethylcyclopentadienyl cation—that many researchers thought was too unstable to exist long enough to be identified or studied.
- Materials Science
Membrane Mastery: Nanosize silica speeds up sieve
A novel modification to polymer membranes gives researchers a means to tune certain filters so they separate molecules more quickly and more selectively.
- Animals
Toxic Tools: Frogs down under pack their own poison
An Australian frog can synthesize its own protective poison, rather than obtain it from the insects it eats.
- Materials Science
A Field of Diminutive Daisies
Researchers have created tiny daisies as a demonstration of a new technique that creates three-dimensional structures from carbon nanotubes.
- Chemistry
Noble gases and uranium get cozy
Chemists have created the first compounds containing both uranium and noble gases.
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Icy Birth? Amino acids form in simulations of space ice
Two experiments simulating the environment of interstellar space have produced amino acids—the building blocks of proteins.
- Earth
Zooplankton diet of mercury varies
By modeling a lake ecosystem in large tubs of water, researchers have found that zooplankton—an important link in the food chain—consume much less toxic methylmercury when the lake experiences an algal bloom.
- Tech
Taming High-Tech Particles
Researchers are beginning to study whether nanomaterials could have unintended negative consequences in the human body or the environment.
- Health & Medicine
More good news about chocolate
The Kuna people of Central America appear to keep their blood pressure down by drinking cocoa rich in chemicals called flavanols.
