Chemistry
- Chemistry
Turning jeans blue with sunlight might help the environment
When dipped in indican and exposed to sunlight, yarn turns a deep blue. This process is more eco-friendly than the current denim dyeing method.
- Animals
At last: How poison dart frogs ship defense toxins to their skin
A liver protein appears to help the amphibians collect and move toxins from their food to their skin. Those toxins can defend the frogs from predators.
- Materials Science
Let’s learn about graphene
Scientists have been trying to understand and harness this material’s superpowers since its discovery in 2004.
- Climate
Chemists make device to destroy planet-warming methane pollution
It can slash diffuse sources of this extremely potent greenhouse gas, such as from livestock barns and other sites.
- Archaeology
Analyze This: Stonehenge’s ‘Altar Stone’ has mysterious origins
After a century of searching for the source of the Altar Stone, scientists have yet to figure out where ancient people got the rock.
- Health & Medicine
Scientists Say: Calorie
These little units help us measure energy transfer in chemistry, nutrition and beyond.
- Chemistry
Pollution power? A new device turns carbon dioxide into fuel
Scientists made a device that converts the greenhouse gas into formate. This salt can then run a fuel cell to make electricity.
- Environment
New ultrathin materials can pull climate-warming CO2 from the air
To slow global warming, we’ll need help from CO2-trapping materials. Enter MXenes. They’re strong and reactive — and they love to eat up CO2.
- Tech
Particles from tree waste could prevent fogged lenses, windshields
A new coating made from a renewable resource — water-loving nanoparticles made from wood — could keep glass surfaces fog-free.
- Plants
Young corn leaves can ‘smell’ danger
As they mature, these leaves lose their ability to detect threatening scents.
- Climate
Hydrogen energy could help our climate — depending on its source
Hydrogen energy doesn’t emit greenhouse gases when it’s used. But how it’s produced will affect how useful it can be in slowing climate change.
- Tech
Explainer: The hydrogen rainbow
Hydrogen works the same, regardless of its source. But how clean or “green” it is very much hinges on its color-coded name — which points to how it was made.
