http://phys.org/chemistry-news/materials-science/ en-us PhysOrg Team Phys.Org provides the latest news on chemistry and materials science Toshiyuki Ikoma and Junzo Tanaka have developed technology for producing artificial bones from fish scales and apatite. http://phys.org/news258016654.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-06-04T08:18:00-07:00 A new type of durable, environmentally-benign blue pigment discovered at Oregon State University has also been found to have unusual characteristics in reflecting heat – it's a "cool blue" compound that could become important in new approaches to saving energy in buildings. http://phys.org/news257770600.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-06-01T11:56:46-07:00 (Phys.org) -- A simple three-step chemical reaction which could herald the introduction of new sustainable feedstocks for the chemical industry has been developed by scientists at The University of Nottingham. http://phys.org/news257758971.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-06-01T08:43:05-07:00 (Phys.org) -- The International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) today officially approved new names for elements 114 and 116, the latest heavy elements to be added to the periodic table. http://phys.org/news257703652.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-31T17:21:25-07:00 (Phys.org) -- Swiss researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a plaster that accelerates wound healing and is easily removed from the wound at any time. Burn victims in particular may profit from this invention in the future. http://phys.org/news257674025.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-31T09:30:01-07:00 Najua Tulos and co-researchers of the Faculty of Applied Sciences, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Shah Alam, studied the potential of chitosan to dye polyester fabric. Produced commercially by removing the acetyl groups from chitin (a derivative of glucose), chitosan was found to greatly improve the colourfastness of polyester fabrics. http://phys.org/news257674126.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-31T09:09:46-07:00 (Phys.org) -- Stainless steel is the icon of cleanliness for home and commercial kitchens, restaurants, hospitals and other settings, but it can collect disease-causing bacteria like other surfaces if not cleaned often. Scientists now are reporting discovery, in the ACS journal Langmuir, of a practical way to make stainless steel that disinfects itself. http://phys.org/news257662902.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-31T06:30:01-07:00 A Japanese research team headed by Dr. Takashi Nakanishi of the National Institute for Materials Science developed a nonvolatile liquid material which emits white light at room temperature. http://phys.org/news257607175.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-30T14:33:11-07:00 Synthetic platelets have been developed by UC Santa Barbara researchers, in collaboration with researchers at Scripps Research Institute and Sanford-Burnham Institute in La Jolla, Calif. Their findings are published in the journal Advanced Materials in a paper titled "Platelet Mimetic Particles for Targeting Thrombi in Flowing Blood." http://phys.org/news257602714.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-30T13:18:41-07:00 Japanese researchers developed the world’s first O2 molecular beam which enables designation of the alignment of the molecular axis and spin direction. http://phys.org/news257413692.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-28T08:48:43-07:00 When power plants begin capturing their carbon emissions to reduce greenhouse gases – and to most in the electric power industry, it's a question of when, not if – it will be an expensive undertaking. http://phys.org/news257318769.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-27T13:01:24-07:00 Eons ago, nature solved the problem of converting solar energy to fuels by inventing the process of photosynthesis. http://phys.org/news257182426.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-25T16:33:54-07:00 (Phys.org) -- When scientists think about the replication of information in chemistry, they usually have in mind something akin to what happens in living organisms when DNA gets copied: a double-stranded molecule that contains sequence information makes two new copies of the molecule. But researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have now shown that a different mechanism can also be used to copy sequence information. http://phys.org/news257153744.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-25T08:35:54-07:00 (Phys.org) -- One of the fundamental building blocks in modern chemistry, an organometallic chemical compound called ferrocene, has never been structurally defined - until now. http://phys.org/news257153134.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-25T08:26:36-07:00 Natural substances such as chlorophyll and the heme pigment of red blood cells contain colorful molecules known as porphyrins. They owe their exceptional visual characteristics to a ‘macrocyclic’ chemical structure that links several small rings together into a highly conjugated, aromatic framework. However, chemists who have synthesized porphyrin derivatives have sometimes found that this aromaticity—and any associated optical absorptions—simply disappears. http://phys.org/news257067818.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-24T09:10:03-07:00 (Phys.org) -- What’s the best way to make methanol? The question is more pressing than it sounds. Not only is methanol an important industrial chemical – some 50 million tons are used each year to make plastics and other products – but it could also become the basis of a clean energy economy that actually reduces global warming by turning a potent greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, into fuel. http://phys.org/news257059960.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-24T06:32:56-07:00 (Phys.org) -- The current method of removing the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) from the flues of coal-fired power plants uses so much energy that no one bothers to use it. So says Roger Aines, principal investigator for a team that has developed an entirely new catalyst for separating out and capturing CO2, one that mimics a naturally occurring catalyst operating in our lungs. With this success, the Laboratory has become a world leader in designing catalysts that mimic the behavior of natural enzymes. http://phys.org/news257058915.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-24T06:18:47-07:00 The innovative plastics offer improved performance and wider viewing angles over existing anti-reflective plastics in the market. This plastic uses a locally-developed nanotechnology method that creates a complex pattern of super tiny structures that mimic the patterns found on a moth’s eye, which has a unique method of diffusing light.  http://phys.org/news256988320.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-23T10:38:49-07:00 (Phys.org) -- Carbon and fluorine are at the heart of a family of chemical compounds that can be used for nonstick coatings, blood substitutes, and seemingly everything in between. http://phys.org/news256980659.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-23T09:10:01-07:00 What makes a piece of armor effective? Sure, it needs to be strong, and it should be lightweight. But what is it about a material's composition that gives it such properties? And can we develop materials that provide even better protection? With decades' worth of investment and preparation, Caltech engineers are particularly well equipped to address such questions as part of a new Army-funded program to improve protective gear and vehicles for soldiers. http://phys.org/news256910122.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-22T12:55:28-07:00 Researchers in Ireland have developed a new technology using materials called bulk metallic glasses to produce high-precision molds for making tiny plastic components. The components, with detailed microscopically patterned surfaces could be used in the next generation of computer memory devices and microscale testing kits and chemical reactors. http://phys.org/news256900371.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-22T10:13:19-07:00 (Phys.org) -- Many discoveries are made by chance, but it is also possible to help it along: The chance of finding something interesting increases when the number of experiments rises. French researchers have now applied this principle to the search for new chemical reactions. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, they have introduced a new concept based on antibodies and a "sandwich" immunoassay. http://phys.org/news256892948.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-22T08:09:26-07:00 Concerns over increasing global energy demand and the environmental impacts of fossil fuels are motivating the world’s researchers to try to develop alternative, renewable sources of energy. http://phys.org/news256799262.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-21T06:08:01-07:00 (Phys.org) -- A materials scientist at Michigan Technological University has discovered a chemical reaction that not only eats up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, it also creates something useful. And, by the way, it releases energy. http://phys.org/news256795993.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-21T05:15:35-07:00 (Phys.org) -- Certain complexes of large alkaline earth elements such as calcium, strontium, and barium are efficient catalysts for various organic reactions. However, the stability of these heteroleptic complexes in solution is compromised by ligand scrambling. The β-diketiminato ligand has proven especially useful in stabilizing reactive heteroleptic complexes of calcium, but to a lesser extent those of larger alkaline earth elements. http://phys.org/news256568550.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-18T14:20:01-07:00 (Phys.org) -- Water is the most abundant and one of the most frequently studied substances on Earth, yet its geometry at the molecular level – the simple two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, and how they interact with other molecules, including other water – has remained somewhat of a mystery to chemists. http://phys.org/news256556515.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-18T10:43:15-07:00 The chemical frameworks of ’natural products’—molecules generated by biological organisms—have inspired many of today’s most potent pharmaceuticals. But the complexity of these compounds makes time-consuming tricks necessary to produce them at large scales. Bing-Tao Guan and Zhaomin Hou from the RIKEN Advanced Science Institute in Wako, however, have developed a rare-earth catalyst system that promises to make natural product synthesis significantly easier by enabling direct modification of aromatic pyridine compounds. http://phys.org/news256550927.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-18T09:50:05-07:00 (Phys.org) -- For the first time, scientists have direct evidence that high-pressure carbon dioxide or CO2 migrates into the clay montmorillonite causing it to expand, according to scientists at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Montmorillonite is found in the rocks used to cap carbon sequestration sites, and scientists previously thought that only water could make it expand.  Caprocks spend thousands of years halting the escape of injected CO2. To learn how these rocks respond to CO2, the researchers studied the material under realistic sequestration conditions. http://phys.org/news256548199.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-18T08:23:34-07:00 (Phys.org) -- An international team of researchers has discovered how adding trace amounts of water can tremendously speed up chemical reactions—such as hydrogenation and hydrogenolysis—in which hydrogen is one of the reactants, or starting materials. http://phys.org/news256475470.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-17T14:00:10-07:00 (Phys.org) -- Krzysztof Szalewicz, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Delaware, and Rafal Podeszwa of the University of Silesia Institute of Chemistry in Poland have developed and validated a more accurate method for predicting the interaction energy of large molecules, such as biomolecules used to develop new drugs. http://phys.org/news256382564.html Chemistry - Materials Science 2012-05-16T10:23:09-07:00