A company from Ontario (Canada) has signed a memorandum of unterstanding (MOU) for graphene research with the University of British Columbia (Canada, Okanagan Campus). From a June 20, 2019 news item on Azonano, ZEN Graphene Solutions has announced the signing of a memorandum of understanding (“MOU”) with the University of British Columbia (UBC), Okanagan Campus, School of Engineering, where ZEN will contribute a minimum of $300,000 over three years in support of graphene research and…

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2D materials as signified by the ‘ene’ suffix are, as far as I can tell, always associated with electronics—initially. Borophene is not an exception. This borophene news was announced in a December 3, 2018 news item on ScienceDaily, Borophene — two-dimensional (2-D) atom-thin-sheets of boron, a chemical element traditionally found in fiberglass insulation — is anything but boring. Though boron is a nonmetallic semiconductor in its bulk (3-D) form, it becomes a metallic conductor in…

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It looks like a popsicle to me, Caption: Image captured by an electron microscope of a single nanowire memristor (highlighted in colour to distinguish it from other nanowires in the background image). Blue: silver electrode, orange: nanowire, yellow: platinum electrode. Blue bubbles are dispersed over the nanowire. They are made up of silver ions and form a bridge between the electrodes which increases the resistance. Credit: Forschungszentrum Jülich Not a popsicle but a representation of…

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This bandage not only heals wounds (on rats) much faster; it’s cheap, according to a November 29, 2018 news item on Nanowerk, A new, low-cost wound dressing developed by University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers could dramatically speed up healing in a surprising way. The method leverages energy generated from a patient’s own body motions to apply gentle electrical pulses at the site of an injury. In rodent tests, the dressings reduced healing times to a mere…

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For the sake of comparison, I wish they’d thought to include an image of a giant scallop that hadn’t been used in the research (I have an ‘unplastic’ giant scallop image at the end of this posting), Caption: These are some of the scallops used as part of the current research. Credit: University of Plymouth But, they did do this, A scan showing nanoplastic particles accumulated within the scallop’s gills (GI), kidney (K), gonad (GO),…

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Every time I think this CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) story is winding down, something new happens. The latest (I think) is in a June 3, 2019 news item on ScienceDaily, A genetic mutation that a Chinese scientist attempted to create in twin babies born last year, ostensibly to help them fend off HIV infection, is also associated with a 21% increase in mortality in later life, according to an analysis by University…

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I love the stylistic choice the writer made (pay special attention to the second paragraph) when producing this November 19, 2018 Polytechnique Montréal news release (also on EurekAlert), A scientific breakthrough by Professor Michel Meunier of Polytechnique Montréal and his collaborators offers hope for people with glaucoma, retinitis or macular degeneration. In January 2009, the life of engineer Michel Meunier, a professor at Polytechnique Montréal, changed dramatically. Like others, he had observed that the extremely…

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June 19,2019: Hello! I apologize for this site’s unavailability over the last 10 days or so (June 7 – 18, 2019). Moving to a new web hosting service meant that the ‘law of unintended consequences’ came into play. Fingers crossed that all the problems have been resolved. On another matter, I’ve accumulated quite a backlog of postings, which I will be resizing (publishing) over the next few months. I’ve been trying to bring that backlog…

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This June 11, 2019 announcement (received via email) features an upcoming talk hosted by the local Café Scientifque community, Our next café will happen on TUESDAY, JUNE 25TH at 7:30PM in the back room at YAGGER’S DOWNTOWN (433 W Pender). Our speaker for the evening will be DR. LARS MARTIN. FROM ALPHA TO OMEGA – PARTICLES AND HOW WE DETECT THEM Ever since the discovery of the electron in the late 19th century, physicists have…

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Another day, another ‘ene’ (e.g., graphene, borene, germanene, etc.). This ‘ene’ is arsenene, from an October 15, 2018 Wiley (Publications) news release (also on EurekAlert), The discovery of graphene, a material made of one or very few atomic layers of carbon, started a boom. Today, such two-dimensional materials are no longer limited to carbon and are hot prospects for many applications, especially in microelectronics. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, scientists have now introduced a new…

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