American bees get a (small) break.
It’s tough being a bee for lots of reasons, but at least, as New Scientist reports, brain damage from chemical warfare won’t be as much […]
chemistry
City grime “breathes out” pollution
BBC reveals a dirty secret about our sooty cities – the grunge doesn’t trap air pollution – it creates it: In rooftop experiments in Germany, […]
Graphene’s tin cousin
Nature greets a new one-atom-thick material – a super-thin sheet of tin scientists at Shanghai Jiao Tong University are calling “stanene”: Stanene (from the Latin […]
Fish juice and shrimp shell sunscreen.
Not sure how it smells once you rub it on (despite assurances it doesn’t), but New Scientist is looking toward a blend of fish extract […]
So, one of the most common household chemicals is killing you. Surprise!
Nature analyzes the new World Health Organization (WHO) determination that Roundup weedkiller causes cancer: The cancer-research arm of the World Health Organization last week announced […]
3D printing molecules to order.
Popular Mechanics takes the 3D printer to the next level – synthesizing not new shapes, but new chemicals from scratch: In a new study published […]
Programmable solids. Any shape you like.
Science magazine is shaping up for a flexible future, with a whole new kind of 3D LCD screen: The moving images we see on a […]
Stronger than spider silk
Washington Post reveals the natural substance that beats spider silk for toughness, and diamonds for hardness – and it’s limpet teeth: In a study set […]
There’s gold in them thar sewers….
It just ain’t sanitary. Science magazine plumbs the depths of the million-dollar treasure hiding at the municipal waste treatment plant: Metals have long been known […]
Dumb chemicals drop babies’ IQs.
Science Daily reveals that two kinds of phthalates – chemicals found in ordinary stuff like dryer sheets, soap, lipstick and vinyl fabrics – can drop […]
Once in the ocean, where does the plastic *go*?
Nature surveys the plastic in the seas, expects to see things like detergent bottles and Barbies breaking up into tiny “microplastic” particles, and doesn’t. So […]
Bullet-proof fabric and cheap hydrogen fuel… and it comes from carbon.
Nature celebrates more wonders – potential ones, from flexible armor to affordable fuel cells – that we can make from graphene: Protons’ ability to travel […]
Mummies: WAAAY older than we thought.
Jesus lived 2,000 years ago. There was no such thing as the English language, and most human beings had never even seen paper. 2,500 years […]
Fine wines – a plummy finish, a hint of earthiness, and some sex-bending pseudohormones.
Science 2.0 has more on the discovery of lots of phthalates in fine European wines: It isn’t just the booze itself, a group of scholars […]
E-cigarettes not really that much better than the non-e variety.
Science Daily pokes a hole in the optimism around electronic cigarettes with findings that they’re really not that different from the kind you light and […]