Microwaved Coal
ENERGY
Stick a chunk of lignite in your home microwave and you’ll find that it doesn’t even warm up: coal is transparent to microwave radiation. But you might also notice that...
Read More >>Vaccine Machine
HEALTH
Last year, following the publication of his latest research in the journal Vaccine, dozens of emails flooded polysaccharide chemist Mario Monteiro’s inbox. Monteiro’s paper, about a potential...
Read More >>Pure pursuit
ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTRY
If it’s unfair to judge a book by its cover, it’s equally unfair to judge a promising new technology by the ho-hum building housing it. When first arriving at Xogen Technologies’ wastewater...
Read More >>DREAMS Weaver
COMMUNITY CONNECTIONS
Dalhousie University chemistry and physics professor Mary Anne White likes to talk. She’s good at it. She’s good at materials science too — renowned...
Read More >>Grinding chemistry
TECHNIQUES
Basic chemistry has seldom been better captured by Hollywood than when Tom Hanks built a fire in Castaway. Stranded alone on a desert island...
Read More >>The stem of the matter
BIOCHEMISTRY
With their amazing ability to develop into any cell type in the human body, pluripotent stem...
Read More >>NMR for the masses
RESEARCH
Take two aspirin and call me in the morning,” is the advice meted out late at night to an achy patient by the country doctor of fable. While it’s true...
Read More >>Persistent Contamination
ENVIRONMENTAL CHEMISTRY
Survival in the Arctic has always been about finding food in a harsh land, as many European explorers learned the hard way. Some, such as Roald Amundsen of Norway, made...
Read More >>Big oil cleans up its act
PETROCHEMISTRY
From the air, the landscape surrounding Fort McMurray in northeastern Alberta is a patchwork of boreal green stitched...
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 >>Weapons of microscopic destruction
BIOCHEMISTRY
A coral reef is a place of opulent wonder, with schools of iridescent, psychedelic fish as well as colourful sponges, sea urchins, anemones and coral polyps, awash in currents teeming...
Read More >>Chemistry on Mars
RESEARCH
Just over a year ago, the biggest Mars space exploration vehicle, or rover, yet built was gently lowered from a rocket-powered ‘sky crane’ onto the surface of the red planet.
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