Bhupendra Singh ChundawatScientists have found a rapid way of producing magnesite, a mineral which stores carbon dioxide. If this can be developed to an industrial scale, it opens the door to removing CO2 from the atmosphere for long-term storage, thus countering the global warming effect of atmospheric CO2. This work is presented at the Goldschmidt conference in … Read more
A team of astronomers led by George Becker at the University of California, Riverside, has made a surprising discovery: 12.5 billion years ago, the most opaque place in the universe contained relatively little matter. It has long been known that the universe is filled with a web-like network of dark matter and gas. This “cosmic … Read more
Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles present new research on a curious cosmic phenomenon known as “whistlers” — very low frequency packets of radio waves that race along magnetic field lines. This first-of-its-kind study, appearing in the Physics of Plasmas, from AIP Publishing, provides new insights into the nature of whistlers and space … Read more
Scientists have used light patterns to control the swimming speed of bacteria and direct them to form different shapes, according to a new study in the journal eLife. Controlling bacteria in this way means it could be possible to use them as microbricks for building the next generation of microscopic devices. For example, they could … Read more
The discovery of buckyballs surprised and delighted chemists in the 1980s, nanotubes jazzed physicists in the 1990s, and graphene charged up materials scientists in the 2000s, but one nanoscale carbon structure — a negatively curved surface called a schwarzite — has eluded everyone. Until now. University of California, Berkeley, chemists have proved that three carbon … Read more
E-cigarette vapour boosts the production of inflammatory chemicals and disables key protective cells in the lung that keep the air spaces clear of potentially harmful particles, reveals a small experimental study, published online in the journal Thorax. The vapour impairs the activity of alveolar macrophages, which engulf and remove dust particles, bacteria, and allergens that … Read more
If you happen to have a box of spaghetti in your pantry, try this experiment: Pull out a single spaghetti stick and hold it at both ends. Now bend it until it breaks. How many fragments did you make? If the answer is three or more, pull out another stick and try again. Can you … Read more
