Category Chemistry/Nanotechnology

This nanostructured device, about half the size of a postage stamp, uses sunlight to quickly disinfect water. It consists of thin flakes of molybdenum disulfide arranged like walls on a glass surface and topped with a thin layer of copper. Light falling on the walls triggers formation of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and other “reactive oxygen species” that kill bacteria. Credit: C. Liu et al., Nature Nanotechnology

In many parts of the world, the only way to make germy water safe is by boiling, which consumes precious fuel, or by putting it out in the sun in a plastic bottle so ultraviolet rays will kill the microbes. But because UV rays carry only 4% of the sun’s total energy, the UV method takes 6 to 48 hours, limiting the amount of water people can disinfect this way.

Now researchers at the...

This photograph shows high throughput bioprinting of cells into microwells. Credit: Ozbolat Lab at Penn State

Now that 3D printing has made it easier to generate custom-made prosthetics, bioengineers are looking ahead at manufacturing actual cellular material. Such technology could be the basis for personalized biomedical devices; tissue-engineered skin, cartilage, and bone; or even working bladders. In a Trends in Biotechnology special issue on biofabrication, publishing August 17, researchers review and consider the progress made in 3D bioprinting and what might be possible in the decades — or years — ahead.

1. Made-to-Order Organs-on-a-Chip: inexpensive and efficient personalized medicine...

This is a condensation trail, or contrail, left behind an aircraft. Credit: Courtesy of Mick West

Well-understood physical and chemical processes can easily explain the alleged evidence of a secret, large-scale atmospheric spraying program, commonly referred to as “chemtrails” or “covert geoengineering,” concludes a new study from Carnegie Science, University of California Irvine, and the nonprofit organization Near Zero.

Some groups and individuals erroneously believe that the long-lasting condensation trails, or contrails, left behind aircraft are evidence of a secret large-scale spraying program. They call these imagined features “chemtrails.” Adherents of this conspiracy theory sometimes attribute this alleged spraying to the government and sometimes to industry.

Carnegie’s Ken Caldeir...

Atmospheric-pressure (left) and high-pressure (right) 2D layered Lawrencite-type crystal structures of magnesium chloride. Blue and green spheres indicate magnesium cations and chlorine anions respectively. Credit: Image courtesy of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

High-pressure structural behavior of magnesium chloride could work to neutralize biological weapons. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists have combined X-ray diffraction and vibrational spectroscopy measurements together with first-principle calculations to examine the high-pressure structural behavior of magnesium chloride.

Magnesium chloride (MgCl2) is well known to be an effective de-icing agent, for example, in the aviation industry...