Category Environment/Geology

CuOx/3A2S selectively produces N2 and H2O from NH3 through a two-step reaction. Credit: Dr. Satoshi Hinokuma

Ammonia (NH3) has attracted attention in recent years as a carbon-free fuel that does not emit carbon dioxide. For use as a fuel, it should have a lower combustion temperature and produce only nitrogen (N2) and water. Now, researchers have succeeded in developing a new catalyst that burns NH3 at a low temperature and produces N2. The results are expected to contribute to climate change countermeasures and increased renewable energy use.

NH3 is a combustible gas that can be widely used in thermal power generation and industrial furnaces as an alternative to gasoline and light oil...

Inside the target chamber at the University of Rochester’s Omega Facility, a team of researchers including Princeton University’s Thomas Duffy and June Wicks use lasers to compress iron-silicon samples to the ultrahigh pressures found in the cores of super-Earths. Credit: Photo courtesy of Laboratory for Laser Energetics

How researchers are using lasers to recreate the extreme pressures of exoplanet interiors. Using high-powered laser beams, researchers have simulated conditions inside a planet three times as large as Earth. Scientists have identified more than 2,000 of these “super-Earths,” exoplanets that are larger than Earth but smaller than Neptune, the next-largest planet in our solar system...

Dinosaur fossil (stock image). Credit: © ramirezom / Fotolia

It is commonly understood that the dinosaurs disappeared with a bang – wiped out by a great meteorite impact on the Earth 66 million years ago. But their origins have been less understood. In a new study, scientists from MUSE – Museum of Science, Trento, Italy, Universities of Ferrara and Padova, Italy and the University of Bristol show that the key expansion of dinosaurs was also triggered by a crisis – a mass extinction that happened 232 million years ago. evidence is provided to match the two events – the mass extinction, called the Carnian Pluvial Episode, and the initial diversification of dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs had originated much earlier, at the beginning of the Triassic Period, some 245 million years ago, but they remained...

Liangbing Hu, left, and Teng Li, right, are engineers at the University of Maryland, College Park who have found a way to make wood more than 10 times stronger and tougher than before. Credit: University of Maryland

New process could make wood as strong as titanium alloys but lighter and cheaper. Engineers at the University of Maryland, College Par (UMD) have found a way to make wood more than 10X stronger and tougher than before, creating a natural substance that is stronger than many titanium alloys. “This new way to treat wood makes it 12 times stronger than natural wood and 10 times tougher,” said Liangbing Hu of UMD’s A. James Clark School of Engineering and the leader of the team that did the research, to be published on February 8, 2018 in the journal Nature...