Worth its salt?
NUCLEAR CHEMISTRY
Last month, David Leblanc made a kind of pilgrimage to Oak Ridge, Tenn. to celebrate the 50th anniversary of a very special moment in nuclear history. From 1965 until 1969,...
Read More >>Quantum Leaps
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
Axel Becke has a lot in common with Albert Einstein. Just like the famous physicist, Becke was born in Germany and made his greatest scientific contributions...
Read More >>Entrepreneurship 101
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Early November drizzle falls outside the MaRS Centre in downtown Toronto but inside the atmosphere is warm and buzzing. Excited chatter echoes off the brick walls and glass ceiling of...
Read More >>Culture shift
RESEARCH
Last May, the National Research Council (NRC) announced that it was “open for business” and would “work with Canadian industries to bridge...
Read More >>Phosphorus recovery plant opens in Saskatoon
INDUSTRY
This summer, Vancouver-based Ostara Nutrient Recovery Technologies Inc. opened its first Canadian commercial-scale nutrient recovery facility in Saskatoon. The plant will remove phosphorus and nitrogen from wastewater, turning them into...
Read More >>Human urine teeming with chemicals
BIOCHEMISTRY
A team at the University of Alberta has published the human urine metabolome, a list of more than 3,000 chemicals detectable in the urine of an average, healthy person. The database will help everyone from environmental toxicologists to doctors...
Read More >>Hydrophobic groups enable DNA nanocages to hold drugs
NANOTECHNOLOGY
A team of chemists from McGill University has developed a new method for incorporating hydrophobic groups into nano-sized cubical cages made of DNA.
Read More >>Adenosine monophosphate confirms ‘other double helix’ theory
BIOCHEMISTRY
A team including researchers from McGill University, Concordia University and the Canadian Light Source (CLS) synchrotron have used crystallography to confirm a 50-year-old hypothesis: chains...
Read More >>Manganese may reveal metal-breathing bacteria
GEOCHEMISTRY
An international team, including researchers at McGill University, has discovered that low-oxygen aquatic environments around the world contain dissolved manganese (III), which was previously thought to exist only in solid oxides. The finding...
Read More >>Zinc phosphide nanoparticles could advance solar cells
ENERGY
A University of Alberta team has developed a new way to synthesize uniform, well-characterized nanocrystals of inexpensive zinc phosphide (Zn3P2). These semiconducting ‘quantum dots’ could lead to cheap, printable photovoltaic cells...
Read More >>Chemical ‘primer’ enables new molecular electronics
MATERIALS SCIENCE
A team from the University of Alberta has developed a new way of creating molecular junctions, which are ultra-thin layers of organic molecules sandwiched between two carbon electrodes. The discovery could lead to novel electrochemical sensors...
Read More >>Iron nanoparticles provide greener hydrogenation
GREEN CHEMISTRY
Researchers from McGill University and Japan have developed a system of polymer-embedded iron nanoparticles that provide a cheaper and more sustainable way to catalyse a wide variety of hydrogenation reactions....
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