A new study says it is the first to identify a life-or-death “cell competition” process in mammalian tissue that suppresses cancer by causing cancerous cells to kill themselves.  Central to their discovery was the researchers’ identification of ‘Mahjong,  a gene that can determine the winners of the competition through its close relationship with another powerf...

Anemia is a common blood disorder characterized by low hemoglobin levels and has long been associated with those suffering from colorectal cancer, but researchers at Tel Aviv University  say that low hemoglobin levels can actually indicate a potential for colon cancer years before it’s diagnosed.  Graduate student Inbal Goldshtein, who works with Dr. Gabriel Chodick and Dr. Vard...

In a familiar high-school chemistry demonstration, an instructor first uses electricity to split liquid water into its constituent gases, hydrogen and oxygen. Then, by combining the two gases and igniting them with a spark, the instructor changes the gases back into water with a loud pop. Scientists at the University of Illinois have discovered a new way to make water, and without the ...

The 3-way catalysator of a car apparently works differently from the way chemists had expected. The conversion of carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide takes place not in one single step, but in at least two different steps. To date, the second reaction path was completely unknown, but it seems to work much more efficiently than the first, more familiar process. This discovery has been m...

Scientists in France are reporting for the first time that sculptors from the fantastically wealthy ancient Empire of Mali — once the source of almost half the world’s gold — used blood to form the beautiful patina, or coating, on their works of art. In a study published in Analytical Chemistry, Pascale Richardin and colleagues describe development of a new, noninvasive test that...

Researchers in New Jersey report development of a new type of non-stick material whose ability to shed liquids like water from a duck’s back can be turned on or off simply by flipping an electrical switch. The material, called “nanonails,” offers a wide-range of potential applications including contamination-resistant and self-cleaning surfaces, reduced-drag ships, and advanced e...

This term, the students in my organic chemistry class were presented with an opportunity to do an extra credit assignment using Second Life to represent concepts they learned in the course. When I was an undergraduate, finding molecules in articles was mainly done using the Chemical Abstracts books. A convenient way to find a specific molecule would be to look up the molecular formula a...

What are the defining discoveries and great developments that are shaping the way we use materials and technologies today? Materials Today magazine has compiled a list of the top ten most significant advances in materials science over the last 50 years. The top ten includes advances that have altered all our daily lives. Some have completely changed the research arena, and others have ...

Chemical research has traditionally been organized in either experiment-centric or molecule-centric models. This makes sense from the chemist’s standpoint. When we think about doing chemistry, we conceptualize experiments as the fundamental unit of progress. This is reflected in the laboratory notebook, where each page is an experiment, with an objective, a procedure, the results...

Drugs derived from cinchona bark, known as cinchona alkaloids, have been used in healing from ancient times. The most prominent representative of this group is quinine, a bitter substance contained in beverages such as tonic water and used in modern medicine to combat malaria. As early as 1945, Robert Burns Woodward and William von Eggers Doering (Harvard University) described how to s...