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Steam condensation is key to the worldwide production of electricity and clean water: It is part of the power cycle that drives 85 percent of all electricity-generating plants and about half of all desalination plants globally, according to the United Nations and International Energy Agency. So anything that improves the efficiency of this process could have enormous impact on global energy use.

A cheap and simple process using natural fibers embedded with nanoparticles can almost completely rid water of harmful textile dyes in minutes, report Cornell and Colombian researchers who worked with native Colombian plant fibers. Dyes, such as indigo blue used to color blue jeans, threaten waterways near textile plants in South America, India and China.

At some point in elementary school you were shown that opposite charges attract and like charges repel. This is a universal scientific truth - except when it isn't. A research team led by Berkeley Lab chemist Richard Saykally and theorist David Prendergast, working at the Advanced Light Source (ALS), has shown that, when hydrated in water, positively charged ions (cations) can actually pair up with one another.

UAlberta researchers create drug that replaces key peptide linked with heart failure, diabetes and high blood pressure. Researchers at the University of Alberta have developed a synthetic peptide that could be the first in a new class of drugs to treat heart disease, high blood pressure and diabetes.

17 September 2013 A new nanostructured material with applications that could include reducing condensation in airplane cabins and enabling certain medical tests without the need for high tech laboratories has been developed by researchers at the University of Sydney.

MIT researchers have found a new family of materials that provides the best-ever performance in a reaction called oxygen evolution, a key requirement for energy storage and delivery systems such as advanced fuel cells and lithium-air batteries. The materials, called double perovskites, are a variant of a mineral that exists in abundance in the Earth's crust.

A new free-to-access 'swap-shop', where scientists deposit and exchange data could reduce the cost of research and deliver a raft of new discoveries. The architects of such a service, say it could bring about new advances faster in all fields of science, medicine and engineering by bringing together results from different sources.

University of Cambridge spin-out Astex Pharmaceuticals is to be acquired by Japanese company in order to accelerate the development of new cancer treatments. This approach has led to a significant change in how the pharmaceutical industry approaches drug discovery Chris Abell The drug discovery company, Astex Pharmaceuticals, has been acquired by the Japanese firm Otsuka Pharmaceutical, in a move which promises to significantly enhance its capacity to develop new therapeutics for cancer.

Göttingen scientists unravel fundamental mechanisms of biochemical reactions (pug) Enzymes are the molecular catalysts of life performing vital metabolic functions in every cell. To date, it has been speculated that enzymes literally bend and break their substrates during biochemical reactions. For the first time, scientists at the Göttingen Center for Molecular Biosciences (GZMB) succeeded in experimentally confirming this hypothesis with certainty.

A team of University of Montreal and McGill University researchers have devised a method to identify how signaling molecules orchestrate the sequential steps in cell division. In an article published online today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the scientists explain how they could track the relationship between signaling molecules and their target molecules to establish where, when and how the targets are deployed to perform the many steps necessary to replicate an individual cell's genome and surrounding structures.

UAlberta research shows 3,000 chemicals can be detected in human urine—results that could lead to fast, painless medical tests. Researchers at the University of Alberta have determined the chemical composition of human urine—and the results reveal a remarkable complexity in a seemingly simple substance.

Posted under: Engineering , Environment , Health and Medicine , News Releases , Research , Science , Technology Computer-designed proteins that can recognize and interact with small biological molecules are now a reality. Scientists have succeeded in creating a protein molecule that can be programmed to unite with three different steroids.

Paper: "New Pathways for Formation of Acids and Carbonyl Products in Low-Temperature Oxidation: The Korcek Decomposition of ?-Ketohydroperoxides" Unusual reaction, never fully understood, is important to fuel combustion, atmospheric chemistry and biochemistry. In all the centuries that humans have studied chemical reactions, just 36 basic types of reactions have been found.

An international team of researchers at Vienna University of Technology in Austria and at Princeton University in the USA has confirmed theoretically-predicted interactions between single oxygen molecules and crystalline titanium dioxide. The results, which could be of importance for a variety of applications, have been published in the current.

Fog-harvesting system developed by MIT and Chilean researchers could provide potable water for the world's driest regions. In some of this planet's driest regions, where rainfall is rare or even nonexistent, a few specialized plants and insects have devised ingenious strategies to provide themselves with the water necessary for life: They pull it right out of the air, from fog that drifts in from warm oceans nearby.

Remember the periodic table from chemistry class in school? Researchers from Lund University in Sweden have presented fresh evidence that confirms the existence of a previously unknown chemical element. The new, super-heavy element has yet to be named. An international team of researchers, led by physicists from Lund University, have confirmed the existence of what is considered a new element with atomic number 115.

Knocking out a single enzyme dramatically cripples the ability of aggressive cancer cells to spread and grow tumors, offering a promising new target in the development of cancer treatments, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley. The paper, published today (Monday, Aug.

ANN ARBOR-University of Michigan researchers and their University of Hawaii colleagues say they've solved the longstanding mystery of how mercury gets into open-ocean fish, and their findings suggest that levels of the toxin in Pacific Ocean fish will likely rise in coming decades. Using isotopic measurement techniques developed at U-M, the researchers determined that up to 80 percent of the toxic form of mercury, called methylmercury, found in the tissues of deep-feeding North Pacific Ocean fish is produced deep in the ocean, most likely by bacteria clinging to sinking bits of organic matter.

Paper: "Effect of Particle Diameter and Surface Composition on the Spontaneous Fusion of Monolayer-Protected Gold Nanoparticles with Lipid Bilayers" Gold nanoparticles with special coatings can deliver drugs or biosensors to a cell's interior without damaging it. Cells are very good at protecting their precious contents - and as a result, it's very difficult to penetrate their membrane walls to deliver drugs, nutrients or biosensors without damaging or destroying the cell.

An often-overlooked form of manganese, an element critical to many life processes, is far more prevalent in ocean environments than previously known, according to a study by U.S. and Canadian researchers published this week in Science. The discovery alters scientists' understanding of the chemistry that moves manganese and other elements, like oxygen and carbon, through the natural world.