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Feb 24 | News
Chemists in Finland have made new polymer-stabilized silver nanoparticles that they say significantly reduce the exposure to silver encountered by those who use silver’s ability to neutralize microbial contaminants, for example in colloidal silver water filters. Though silver’s health benefits are well known, the long-term exposure effects of small amounts of the toxin are not entirely understood.
Feb 12 | News
UCLA chemists report creating a synthetic "gene" that could capture heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions, which contribute to global warming, rising sea levels, and the increased acidity of oceans.
Feb 1 | News
As researchers around the world hasten to employ nanotechnology to improve production methods for applications that range from manufacturing materials to creating new pharmaceutical drugs, a separate but equally compelling challenge exists.
12/2/2009 | News
A Monash Univ.-led international research team has developed an innovative way to boost the output of the next generation of solar cells. Scientists at Monash Univ., in collaboration with other universities in Germany, have produced tandem dye-sensitised solar cells with a three-fold increase in energy conversion efficiency compared with previously reported tandem dye-sensitised solar cells.
11/23/2009 | News
A team of pioneering South Korean scientists have succeeded in producing the polymers used for everyday plastics through bioengineering, rather than through the use of fossil fuel based chemicals. This research may now allow for the production of environmentally conscious plastics.
11/16/2009 | News
There is good news for the global effort to reduce the amount of lead in the environment and for the growing array of technologies that rely upon the piezoelectric effect. A lead-free alternative to the current crop of piezoelectric materials has been identified by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Univ. of California (UC), Berkeley.
9/11/2009 | News
About 30,000 everyday items are made using natural rubber, but rubber trees in Asia are less than ideal because they can cause allergic reactions and are also decline from fungal disease. The Russian dandelion, used previously in World War II to make rubber, has now been optimized to fill this role.
8/24/2009 | News
In the first study to look at what happens over the years to
the billions of pounds of plastic waste floating in the world's oceans,
scientists are reporting that plastics—reputed to be virtually indestructible—decompose
with surprising speed and release potentially toxic substances into the water.
6/26/2009 | Tools And Technology
Kin-Tek Laboratories, Inc. manufacturers dopant permeation tubes used in detection systems for trace concentrations of narcotics, explosives, chemical warfare agents (CWAs), and industrial airborne molecular contaminants (AMCs).
6/24/2009 | News
Scientists with the Stanford Geothermal Program say they have achieved a proof-of-concept in the use of tiny nanoparticles as tracers to characterize fractured rocks.