The excitement fairly crackles off the video, A May 24, 2018 news item on Nanowerk announces the research, Imagine a box you plug into the wall that cleans your toxic air and pays you cash. That’s essentially what Vanderbilt University researchers produced after discovering the blueprint for turning the carbon dioxide into carbon nanotubes with small diameters. Carbon nanotubes are supermaterials that can be stronger than steel and more conductive than copper. The reason they’re…

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It has to be disconcerting to realize that your precious paintings are deteriorating day by day.  In a June 22, 2017 posting titled ‘Art masterpieces are turning into soap‘, This piece of research has made a winding trek through the online science world. First it was featured in an April 20, 2017 American Chemical Society news release on EurekAlert, A good art dealer can really clean up in today’s market, but not when some weird…

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The Society of Italian Researchers and Professionals in Western Canada (ARPICO) is hosting a physics event for those of us who don’t have Phd’s in physics. From an October 24, 2018 ARPICO announcement (received via email), The second event of ARPICO’s fall 2018 activity will take place on Tuesday, November 13th, 2018 at the Roundhouse Community Centre (Room B). Our speaker will be Dr. Pietro Giampa, a physicist who recently joined the ranks of the…

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This is a going to a science policy heavy posting with both a conference and the latest report from the Canadian Council of Academies (CCA). 2018 Canadian Science Policy Conference As I noted in my March 1, 2018 posting, this is the fourth year in a row that the conference is being held in Ottawa and the theme for this 10th edition is ‘Building Bridges Between Science, Policy and Society‘. The dates are November 7…

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This injectable bandage could be a gamechanger (as they say) if it can be taken beyond the ‘in vitro’ (i.e., petri dish) testing stage. A May 22, 2018 news item on Nanowerk makes the announcement (Note: A link has been removed), While several products are available to quickly seal surface wounds, rapidly stopping fatal internal bleeding has proven more difficult. Now researchers from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University are developing an…

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Just about everybody is interested in science these days and the Harlem Globetrotters (basketball team) are no exception,, Here’s more about science and Harlem Globetrotters from an October 17, 2018 news release (received via email), (Dallas, TX – Oct. 17, 2018) To prepare for their new world tour, the Harlem Globetrotters demonstrated acts of science at the “highest” level when Zeus McClurkin made two trick shots from the roof of the Perot Museum of Nature…

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An August 30, 2018 news item on Nanowerk announces the report, The monitoring of air contamination by engineered nanomaterials (ENM) is a complex process with many uncertainties and limitations owing to the presence of particles of nanometric size that are not ENMs, the lack of validated instruments for breathing zone measurements and the many indicators to be considered. In addition, some organizations, France’s Institut national de recherche et de sécurité (INRS) and Québec’s Institut de…

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Most of the talk about nanotubes is focused on carbon nanotubes but there are other kinds as a May 21, 2018 Rice University news release (also received via email and on EurekAlert and in a May 21, 2018 news item on ScienceDaily), notes, Boron nitride nanotubes are primed to become effective building blocks for next-generation composite and polymer materials based on a new discovery at Rice University – and a previous one. Scientists at known-for-nano…

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I’m a little late with this but there’s still time to register should you happen to be in or able to get to Dubai easily. From an October 18, 2018 International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Media Advisory (received via email), Media registration is open for the 2018 ITU Plenipotentiary Conference (PP-18) – the highest policy-making body of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations’ specialized agency for information and communication technology. This will be closing…

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A May 21, 2018 news item on phys.org announces some intriguing work borne of a UK-India research collaboration, Nanoparticles derived from tea leaves inhibit the growth of lung cancer cells, destroying up to 80% of them, new research by a joint Swansea University and Indian team has shown. The team made the discovery while they were testing out a new method of producing a type of nanoparticle called quantum dots. These are tiny particles which…

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