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The settlement occupants left an abundant and continuous record of seeds, legumes and other foods...By studying these archaeological layers, Professor Kennett and colleagues were able to discern the types of plants that were being collected in the warmer, humid days before the climate changed and in the cooler, drier days after the onset of what we know now as the Younger Dryas cool period.Before the impact, the inhabitants' prehistoric diet involved wild legumes and wild-type grains, and small but significant amounts of wild fruits and berries.In the layers corresponding to the time after cooling, fruits and berries disappeared and their...

More people are talking about dome homes and disaster-proof designs as a solution to climate threats. Why it matters: Experts say increasing extreme weather could give mass-market appeal to dome structures, which are relatively cheap to build and resilient against hurricane-force winds, Axios' Cuneyt Dil writes. What they're saying: Natural Spaces Domes, a Minnesota-based company with customers across the country, has seen demand surge in recent years. Owner Dennis Odin Johnson tells Axios he's doubled his staff and expects to sell around 40 domes this year, up from 20 last year. "Our clients are looking for something different, and...

h/t to Red Badger Recently, a team of researchers from the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), South Korea led by Director Rodney Ruoff and his colleagues at the University of Science and Technology of China led by Professor Yanwu Zhu, reported a discovery of a new form of carbon. Zhu who led the USCT team said, “Professor Ruoff explained his interest in the triply periodic minimal surfaces that were described by the mathematician Schwartz, and how trivalently bonded carbon can in principle yield identical structures at the mathematical constructs. These are now referred...

Scientists using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope have confirmed the presence of electrically-charged molecules in space shaped like soccer balls, shedding light on the mysterious contents of the interstellar medium (ISM) - the gas and dust that fills interstellar space. The molecules … are a form of carbon called "Buckminsterfullerene," also known as "Buckyballs," which consists of 60 carbon atoms (C60) arranged in a hollow sphere. C60 has been found in some rare cases on Earth in rocks and minerals, and can also turn up in high-temperature combustion soot. C60 has been seen in space before. However, this is the first...

Pure hydrogen fuel is non-polluting. Current methods of extracting hydrogen, however, use energy derived from sources that pollute. Finding ways to use the sun's energy to split water to extract hydrogen would make for a truly clean energy source. Several research efforts are using materials engineered at the molecular scale to tap the sun as an energy source to extract hydrogen from water. Researchers from Pennsylvania State University have constructed a material made from titanium dioxide nanotubes that is 97 percent efficient at harvesting the ultraviolet portion of the sun's light and 6.8 percent efficient at extracting hydrogen from water....

UCLA scientists inject silicon carbide nanoparticles into a magnesium zinc alloy. The result is a metal with 'record breaking' strength and stiffness-to-weight.Scientists at UCLA have found a new way to inject silicon carbide nanoparticles into a molten alloy of magnesium and zinc, resulting a metal nanocomposite that demonstrates "record levels" of stiffness-to-weight and specific strength, and "superior stability" at high temperatures. Magnesium is already the lightest structural metal, this lab creation maintains its light weight but makes it much stronger. The researchers said they also developed a scalable manufacturing process, opening up a door to lighter and stronger cars, planes,...

Fabrication schematic of ordered mesoporous fewlayer carbon (OMFLC). Credit: Science (2015). DOI: 10.1126/science.aab3798 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ (Phys.org) - A team of researchers working in China has found a way to dramatically improve the energy storage capacity of supercapacitors - by doping carbon tubes with nitrogen. In their paper published in the journal Science, the team describes their process and how well the newly developed supercapacitors worked, and their goal of one day helping supercapacitors compete with batteries. Like a battery, a capacitor is able to hold a charge, unlike a battery, however, it is able to be charged and discharged very quickly...

Researchers at Japan's Tohoku University are making a bold claim: an entirely new state of matter. The team, led by Kosmas Prassides, says they've created what's called a Jahn-Teller metal by inserting rubidium, a strange alkali metal element, into buckyballs, a pure carbon structure which has a spherical shape from a series of interlocking polygons (think of the Epcot Center, but in microscopic size.) Advertisement - Continue Reading Below Buckyballs, which are somewhat related to other supermaterials like graphene and carbon nanotubes, are already known for their superconductive capabilities. Here, while combining buckyballs and rubidium, the researchers created a...

It felt like Christmas had come early when I got my package of Buckyballs in the mail a few days ago. Buckyballs are small, super-strong spherical magnets made of the rare-earth metal Neodymium. A set of 216 Buckyballs fits comfortably in the palm of your hand. Obviously Buckyballs are adult toys, and Maxfield and Oberton emphatically warns users not to give them to children, eat them, inhale them, or place them near objects (such as pacemakers) that are sensitive to magnets. However, for those who use Buckyballs with common sense and due care, they are reasonably safe—just like countless other...

Buckyballs, the three-year-old innovative toy company that makes magnetic desk toys for adults, is in the fight of its life. The Obama administration’s Consumer Product Safety Commission has filed a lawsuit to stop the firm from selling its products and to issue a recall of its toys. Several retailers have yanked the magnets, despite the company’s clear warning that Buckyballs and Buckycubes are for adults — not children. Buckyballs executives have taken to social media and radio airwaves to save the company.

University of Western Ontario astronomer Jan Cami holds a model of the C60 molecule buckminsterfullerene, also known as a buckyball, which he and his team have discovered in space using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. (CRAIG GLOVER/QMI Agency) The buckyballs have been found — and by a Londoner, no less. The what? you ask. One of the strongest molecular structures known to man, buckyballs are rare carbon molecules that resemble the structure of a soccer ball. Discovered 25 years ago, by scientists who picked up a Nobel Prize for the achievement, buckyballs were thought to exist in outer space. But two...

ChaeaSoccer-ball–shaped carbon nanoparticles called buckyballs may keep water flowing through filters, new research shows. As water passes through treatment plants, communities of bacteria called biofilms sometimes stay behind and gum up the works, a harmful process known as biofouling. Biofouling costs the United States billions of dollars each year in equipment damage, contamination, energy loss and medical costs stemming from bad water, according to the Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montana State University in Bozeman...

Computer simulations show that a common nanoparticle called a buckyball has the potential to damage DNA. The simulations suggest that buckyballs bind strongly to the DNA strands, distorting the molecules and interfering with functions like self-repair. Researchers caution that the simulations do not prove that buckyballs actually do any damage in the real world. But the work does raise another concern about possible dangers of nanotechnology. On Thursday, the US Environmental Protection Agency released a draft paper that called for more research into the safety of nanotechnology, saying that there are a number of unanswered questions about possible effects on...

Nobel laureate Richard Smalley, a Rice University professor who helped discover buckyballs, the soccer ball-shaped form of carbon, and championed the field of nanotechnology, has died at the age of 62. Smalley, who had battled cancer, died Friday at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Rice University said. "We will miss Rick's brilliance, commitment, energy, enthusiasm and humanity," Rice President David Leebron said. He shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry with fellow Rice chemist Robert Curl and British chemist Sir Harold Kroto for the discovery of the new form of carbon, which they dubbed buckminsterfullerene — buckyballs for short — because...

Nobel winner who discovered 'buckyballs' dead at 62 Fri Oct 28, 8:17 PM ET HOUSTON (Reuters) - Rice University professor Richard Smalley, who shared a 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery of "buckyballs," has died of cancer at the age of 62, the university said on Friday. Buckyballs, short for buckminsterfullerenes, were a form of carbon that had 60 atoms arranged in a hollow sphere and whose discovery in 1985 opened the way for the development of the field of nanotechnology. Smalley, fellow Rice chemist Robert Curl and British chemist Harold Kroto shared the prize for their work...

Oct. 28, 2005 - Richard Smalley, the Nobel Prize-winning nanotechnology researcher who was also an ardent supporter of commercial nanotechnology development, died today of cancer. He was 62. Smalley shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1996 with Robert Curl and Sir Harry Kroto for discovering the C60 molecule, a soccer ball-shaped form of carbon called buckminsterfullerene, or buckyballs. Born June 6, 1943, Smalley studied at Hope College in Michigan and the University of Michigan before earning a Ph.D. in chemistry at Princeton University in 1973. He joined the faculty at Rice University in Houston in 1976 where he rose...

Using the parts inside a single molecule, scientists have constructed the world's smallest car. It has a chassis, axles and a pivoting suspension. The wheels are buckyballs, spheres of pure carbon containing 60 atoms apiece. It'd be a real squeeze to take it for a spin, however. The whole car is no more than 4 nanometers across. That's slightly wider than a strand of DNA. A human hair is about 80,000 nanometers thick. Other groups have made car-shaped nanoscale objects. But this is the first one that rolls "on four wheels in a direction perpendicular to its axles," the researchers...

Buckyballs, described by some scientists as "the perfect molecule" and a hallmark of Rice University research, may cause more havoc in the environment than researchers originally thought. A team of researchers at Rice and Georgia Tech universities has found that the ultra-tiny, soccer-ball-shaped buckyballs, contrary to what they had thought, do in fact dissolve in water, a finding that suggests they could pose a risk for wildlife and water supplies. The new results compound concerns raised by earlier studies that found buckyballs can cause brain damage in bass and harm human cells. Discovered nearly two decades ago at Rice, buckyballs...

<p>The nascent nanotechnology industry collectively cringed last week after a study showed that fish exposed to nanoparticles suffered brain damage. Critics say the much-hyped multibillion-dollar nano industry has a dark side few want to talk about.</p> <p>"How many more studies showing toxicity are needed before regulators step in?" asks Kathy Jo Wetter of the Winnipeg-based ETC Group. ETC and other environmental groups are calling for a moratorium on the commercial production of nanoparticles.</p>

Buckyballs, a spherical form of carbon discovered in 1985 and an important material in the new field of nanotechnology, can cause extensive brain damage in fish, according to research presented yesterday at a national meeting of the American Chemical Society in Anaheim, Calif. Eva Oberdörster, an environmental toxicologist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said the buckyballs also altered the behavior of genes in liver cells of the juvenile largemouth bass she studied. Buckyballs are part of a group of materials called fullerenes for their structural resemblance to the geodesic domes designed by Buckminster Fuller. Synthetically produced buckyballs, along with...