Converting methane to methanol, with and without water

Chemists have been searching for efficient catalysts to convert methane—a major component of abundant natural gas—into methanol, an easily transported liquid fuel and building block for making other valuable chemicals. ...

Imaging the chemical fingerprints of molecules

Flip through any chemistry textbook and you'll see drawings of the chemical structure of molecules—where individual atoms are arranged in space and how they're chemically bonded to each other. For decades, chemists could ...

Key magnet installed at sPHENIX detector

After years of careful planning, crews at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory installed an enormous superconducting magnet that will be the centerpiece of the sPHENIX detector. sPHENIX is an ongoing ...

Does pollution make thunderstorms more severe?

A team of atmospheric scientists from around the nation is descending on the Houston, Texas, area for the next 14 months to seek answers to a vexing question: Do tiny specks of soot, dust, smoke, and other particles suspended ...

Scientists ID sterol essential for oil accumulation in plants

Scientists seeking to unravel the details of how plants produce and accumulate oil have identified a new essential component of the assembly line. They discovered a particular sterol—a molecule related to cholesterol—that ...

Catalyst study advances carbon-dioxide-to-ethanol conversion

An international collaboration of scientists has taken a significant step toward the realization of a nearly "green" zero-net-carbon technology that will efficiently convert carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas, and hydrogen ...

Toward the scaling up of nanocages to trap noble gases

Over the past few years, scientists have demonstrated how cage-like, porous structures made of silicon and oxygen and measuring only billionths of a meter in size can trap noble gasses like argon, krypton, and xenon. However, ...

Increasing sugar availability for oil synthesis

A team from the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) has bred a plant that produces more oil by manipulating the availability of sugar for oil synthesis. The team, led by BNL's John Shanklin, achieved ...

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