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- Parent Category: Chemistry
- Category: General
The researchers’ technique, which relies on self-organizing substances known as block copolymers, was described this week in the Nov. 9 issue of the journal Science. It’s also being given a real-world test run in collaboration with HGST, one of the world’s leading innovators in disk drives.
“In the last few decades there’s been a steady, exponential increase in the amount of information that can be stored on memory devices, but things have now reached a point where we’re running up against physical limits,” said C. Grant Willson, professor of chemistry and biochemistry in the College of Natural Sciences and the Rashid Engineering Regents Chair in the Cockrell School of Engineering.
Read more: Computer Memory Could Increase Fivefold From Chemist’s Research
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- Category: Medicinal
Groundbreaking research at Leicester’s Hospitals has identified a promising new treatment for patients suffering with severe asthma.A team of medics led by Professor Ian Pavord from Glenfield Hospital have spent 10 years researching the best way to treat patients with severe asthma. They identified a subgroup of patients who might respond to a new antibody therapy called Mepolizumab. More than 600 patients from 13 countries were involved in the DREAM Trial - a controlled drug trial which compared the effect of Mepolizumab and placebo on the number of asthma attacks experienced by patients over a year.
Researchers found that there were 50 per cent fewer asthma attacks when patients were treated with a monthly injection of Mepolizumab. The drug works best in patients who have frequent asthma attacks. Importantly, patients who were given this innovative treatment did not report any adverse effects.
Read more: Pioneering research gives new hope to asthma patients
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- Category: Environmental
The backbone of our energy infrastructure is carbon-based fuel. In the form of oil, coal and natural gas, carbon compounds run our cars, heat our homes and cook our food. For reasons of energy security and limiting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, we need to transition to alternative and sustainable fuels. We can minimize the shock of transitioning away from fossil fuels to sustainable sources by using as much existing carbon-based infrastructure as possible.
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- Category: Environmental
by Hayley Birch
New studies may help to explain the high concentration of sulfuric acid in the atmosphere. The research could also have implications for global climate modelling, enabling scientists to reduce uncertainties related to the effects of aerosols in their predictions.
Scientists have struggled for years to reconcile atmospheric concentrations of sulfuric acid with the results of laboratory experiments on particle formation rates. According to Mikko Sipilä at the University of Helsinki in Finland, this is down to the inadequacy of particle detectors in previous experiments - the best could only detect particles of 3nm and above. But now Sipilä and a team of international researchers have developed methods to detect particles barely bigger than a single nanometre.
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- Parent Category: Chemistry
- Category: Environmental
Farmers buy 88 million tons of nitrogen fertilizer annually to grow staple crops such as corn, wheat and rice. And it takes 3 to 5 percent of the world’s natural gas to make all that fertilizer. That’s frustrating because three-fourths of the Earth’s atmosphere is nitrogen, but it’s in a form that most crops can’t use.
But a few plants, such as alfalfa, soybeans and peanuts, can fertilize themselves, in a way, thanks to a friendly bacterial infection. These legumes recruit bacteria that “inhale” naturally occurring nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into the useful form that plants use for food.
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- Parent Category: Chemistry
- Category: General
by Carl Saxton
High levels of antimony found in fruit juices causes concern for health, say European scientists.
Antimony has no known biological function and the effects of long term human exposure are unknown. Antimony trioxide, a suspected carcinogen, is used as a catalyst in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) production which is used to package foodstuffs.