Tag: CHEMISTRY

Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute have just created an entirely new synthetic life form in a laboratory, marking a watershed moment that could radically alter the way humans interact with nature. As Wired reports, the achievement is a culmination of over two-years' worth of research, numerous failed attempts and millions of dollars. In March, however, the team injected over a million ...

We all know how carbon dating works, right? No? Well, as you should know, carbon makes up the chemical basis of all known life. Carbon, the fourth most abundant element in the universe, can be found in just about everything, albeit in different types of isotopes. Carbon 12 is all over the place, but carbon 14 (C14) is the rare and finicky little sister. The natural ratio between the levels of ...

Where would we be without hangovers? Aspirin sales would be lower, worker productivity on Monday mornings would be higher, and the cinematic masterpiece 'The Hangover' would be a predictable documentary about a bachelor party in Vegas. This, dear readers, is the future if extra-oxygenated Korean booze catches on worldwide. It's the result of research by Kwang-il Kwon and Hye Gwang Jeong at ...

It's curvilinear and magenta, so it could only be a product by Karim Rashid. The perpetually colorful designer has just created the iiamo Go, a self-warming baby bottle for the eco-conscious, haute-design mommy (and baby). In place of electrical heating, the iiamo Go utilizes cartridges of dehydrated calcium chloride -- a common salt -- and water. Re-hydrating the salt produces an exothermic ...

No matter how clean you keep your fingers, you'll be hard-pressed to keep the screen free of smudges and glares. However, scientists may have found a new way to combat, or possibly get rid of, the problem. Scientists at the 238th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society released a report Thursday, according to Cellular News, detailing a new way of testing smudge- and ...

German scientists have officially pulled ahead of their Russian, U.S., and Japanese peers in what has been dubbed a "friendly competition" to find a new element for the periodic table, the BBC reports. The new, as-of-yet unnamed element is "super heavy," a description referring to its high atomic number (112, to be exact) and instability. All such elements decay quickly, this one in a matter of ...

Could this mean the end of laundry day? Textile scientists in Australia and Hong Kong have developed a special coating for fabrics made of titanium dioxide nanoparticles that actually cause the fabric to self-clean when exposed to sunlight. Besides the obvious benefit of less time spent doing laundry, the new fabric could also mean less water used to wash clothes and less detergent being washed ...