Where explosions are concerned you might expect to see some army research and you would be right. A June 29, 2020 news item on ScienceDaily breaks the news, Since World War I, the vast majority of American combat casualties has come not from gunshot wounds but from explosions. Today, most soldiers wear a heavy, bullet-proof vest to protect their torso but much of their body remains exposed to the indiscriminate aim of explosive fragments and…

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This was going to be written for January 2020 but sometimes things happen (e.g., a two-part overview of science culture in Canada from 2010-19 morphed into five parts with an addendum and, then, a pandemic). By now (July 28, 2020), Dr. He’s sentencing to three years in jail announced by the Chinese government in January 2020 is old news. Regardless, it seems a neat and tidy ending to an international scientific scandal concerned with germline-editing…

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I love the opening line (lede). From a June 29, 2020 news item on Nanowerk, Researchers dipped their new, printed sensors into tuna broth and watched the readings.It turned out the sensors – printed with high-resolution aerosol jet printers on a flexible polymer film and tuned to test for histamine, an allergen and indicator of spoiled fish and meat – can detect histamine down to 3.41 parts per million.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has…

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Both of these news bits are concerned with light for one reason or another. Rice University (Texas, US) and breaking fluorocarbon bonds The secret to breaking fluorocarbon bonds is light according to a June 22, 2020 news item on Nanowerk, Rice University engineers have created a light-powered catalyst that can break the strong chemical bonds in fluorocarbons, a group of synthetic materials that includes persistent environmental pollutants.… A June 22, 2020 Rice University news release…

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Supercapacitors are a predictable source of scientific interest and excitement. The latest entry in the ‘supercapacitor stakes’ is from a Russian/Finnish/US team according to a June 11, 2020 Skoltech (Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology) press release (also on EurekAlert), Researchers from Skoltech [Russia], Aalto University [Finland] and Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT; US] have designed a high-performance, low-cost, environmentally friendly, and stretchable supercapacitor that can potentially be used in wearable electronics. The paper was…

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First, there was the story about art masterpieces turning into soap (my June 22, 2017 posting) and now, it seems that microbes may also constitute a problem. Before getting to the latest research, here’s are some images the researchers are using to illustrate their work, Caption: Leonardo da Vinci noted that the fore and hind wings of a dragonfly are out of phase — verified centuries later by slow motion photography. Thaler suggests further study…

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