“Interdisciplinary” has been a buzzword in the scientific circles for well over a decade. But nothing emphasizes the interconnections between different areas of research than the unexpected ones, like the one Sarah Everts, senior editor of Chemical & Engineering News, highlights in the blog Artful Science: space science and art conservation. Everts discovered the connection [...]
Fowl Plastics: Chicken Feathers Instead of Petroleum
May 11, 2011 By 3 Comments
Chicken may appear in more places than just your dinner plate in the future. Researchers are coming up with ways to swap chicken feathers for petroleum in some plastic products. Companies like Eastern Bioplastics are working to commercialize items like biodegradable flower pots and office furniture with fowl feather-based products. The aim of the research [...]
Polymer Folds in a Flash
May 3, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Like a neat demonstration of paper origami, Dutch researchers have designed a polymer that folds up on itself when exposed to a flash of light. If further developed, these special polymers could be designed as artificial catalysts. The team led by Tristan Mes of the Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands reported the creation [...]
Nanoparticles With Polymer and Peptides Target Liver Cancer Cells
April 28, 2011 By 1 Comment
Researchers have developed novel drug-delivery carriers on the nanoscale that specifically target malignant human liver cancer cells. The researchers report in a paper that appeared online in Nature Materials that these new drug delivery agents that can carry all kinds of molecules are made from porous silica nanoparticles wrapped in a special lipid membrane and [...]
