Nobel Prize Winner Putting Squeeze on Hydrogen

Nobel laureate puts the squeeze on hydrogen

Hydrogen, normally a gas, may act like a metal when squeezed under extreme pressure. In that state, competing chemical and physical effects determine its properties, said Nobel laureate Roald Hoffmann, Cornell's Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor in Humane Letters and professor emeritus of chemistry.

Nanoparticle Assembly is like Building With Legos

"ScienceDaily (2011-10-13) -- Scientists report that nanotechnology has entered a new era. Because of developments in nanoparticle self-assembly, designer materials with unique properties are now possible. And that could lead to immediate applications in catalysis, medical sensing and optics."

"New processes that allow nanoparticles to assemble themselves into designer materials could solve some of today's technology challenges, Alex Travesset of Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory reports in the Oct. 14 issue of the journal Science"

How Diamonds Emerge From Graphite

"Scientists have used a new method to precisely simulate the phase transition from graphite to diamond for the first time. Instead of happening concerted, all at once, the conversion evidently takes place in a step by step process involving the formation of a diamond seed in the graphite, which is then transformed completely at high pressure."

UD chemist investigates reactions that damage paintings

"In the days before artists could go to a store and buy commercial paints, they mixed their own, often combining pigments made of lead salts with such materials as egg whites and vegetable oils."

"They were seat-of-the-pants chemists," says Cecil Dybowski, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Delaware. "But they didn't understand the chemistry itself, and they didn't foresee what would happen to those pigments in the future as the paintings got older."

"What generally happened is that internal chemical reactions gradually occurred in the dried paints, causing them to change in various ways and eventually damaging their works of art, no matter how carefully those paintings had been cared for over the years."

At Last, A Reason Why Stress Causes DNA Damage

At last, a reason why stress causes DNA damage

For years, researchers have published papers that associate chronic stress with chromosomal damage.Adrenalin

 "We believe this paper is the first to propose a specific mechanism through which a hallmark of chronic stress, elevated adrenaline, could eventually cause DNA damage that is detectable," said senior author Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D., James B. Duke Professor of Medicine and Biochemistry and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator at Duke University Medical Center.

Searching For the Hydronium Ion

Researchers use neutrons to spy on the elusive hydronium ion

A Los Alamos National Laboratory research team has harnessed neutrons to view for the first time the critical role that an elusive molecule plays in certain biological reactions. The effort could aid in treatment of peptic ulcers or acid reflux disease, or allow for more efficient conversion of woody waste into transportation fuels.

Revealing Water's Secrets

Revealing water's secrets

We drink it, swim in it, and our bodies are largely made of it. But as ubiquitous as water is, there is much that science still doesn't understand about this life-sustaining substance.

Acids into Bases

If you live long enough you may see the impossible. In this case chemists transformed a group of compounds known to be acids into bases. What has become of our world?

Chemists transform acids into bases

Chemists at the University of California, Riverside have accomplished in the lab what until now was considered impossible: transform a family of compounds which are acids into bases.