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The specific self-assembly between α-cyclodextrin and KAuBr4 leads to the precipitation of nanowires © Dennis CaoUS researchers have discovered a way to selectively isolate and recover gold from raw materials, including alloys, using a simple sugar derived from corn starch. The work could offer a greener and cheaper alternative to conventional processes, which use cyanide and often result in environmental contamination.Gold is typically recovered from mined ore and waste materials, including electronic waste, using highly poisonous cyanide to convert gold into a water-soluble coordination complex through a process known as leaching. But while effective, this process poses a risk...

Scientists flew a plane into high up cirrus clouds and used a sampler that resembled a hair dryer to examine cloud formation © Karl FroydMineral dust that swirls up into the atmosphere from Earth’s surface plays a far more important role in both cloud formation and cloud chemistry than was previously realised. The findings will feed into models of cloud formation and chemistry to help produce more accurate assessments of the role of clouds in climate change.Relatively little is understood about the formation of cirrus clouds, wispy ‘horsetails’ that are made of ice crystals and form at extremely high altitudes...

The products of thermally exfoliating graphite oxide to make graphene are much more complex than previously thought, new research shows. The volatile compounds formed vary with reaction conditions, and may influence the graphene’s structure.The most common way to prepare graphene is by thermally reducing – or ‘exfoliating’ – graphite oxide. But the graphene produced often contains defects and lacks the perfect honeycomb structure. One explanation is that these defects may be the result of organic by-products forming and escaping as gases during the reaction.‘It has been commonly believed that the only gaseous products of graphite oxide exfoliation are water, carbon...

Enlarge Image Deadly powder. New technology could help bomb-sniffing devices spot black powder. Credit: Lord Mountbatten/Wikimedia Commons The Boston marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev reportedly purchased several pounds of black powder explosive before the bombing. Used in fireworks and bullets, the explosive substance is both deadly and widely available. It's also very hard to detect. Now, researchers have modified one bomb-sniffing device to accurately spot very small amounts of black powder, an advance that could make us safer from future attacks. Invented in China as early as the 7th century, black powder is a mixture of charcoal, sulfur,...

Sixteen-year-old Kiera Wilmot’s curiosity was apparently piqued when a friend told her that if you mixed hydrochloric acid and aluminum, an exciting reaction happened. So she did what countless amateur chemists before her have done: She went ahead and tried it. She mixed toilet bowl cleaner—essentially colored hydrochloric acid—and balls of aluminum foil in a small water bottle. The top of the bottle blew off with a satisfying bang, and there was even a puff of smoke. Unfortunately, Kiera got more excitement than she bargained for. When a teenage Oliver Sacks experimented with explosive reactions of aluminum in his basement...

Science experiments don't always go the way they are intended. This, a 16-year-old Florida teenager knows all too well. This week, Kiera Wilmot went to school and mixed some household chemicals in a tiny 8-ounce water bottle. It looked like a simple chemistry project but then the top popped off when a small explosion occurred. Wilmot, who is in good standing as a student, said it was an accident. The Bartow High School principal told a local television station that the teen made a “bad choice” and called her a a good kid who has never previously been in trouble....

Cuttlefishes' camouflage skills have many admirersInspired by the camouflage abilities of marine organisms, such as the cuttlefish, US researchers have created striped ellipsoid particles using controlled self-assembly of diblock copolymers. By swelling and rotating the particles their colour can be changed, which could lead to a variety of optical applications including computer displays and better camouflage.Cuttlefish blend into their environment because their skin has cells containing striped structures. These structures have a layer of pigmented sacs called chromatophores and a layer of reflecting plates called iridophores. By contracting and relaxing muscles attached to chromatophores they can control the amount of...

A UK court has found a man guilty of illegally altering pre-clinical trial data. Steven Eaton, a former employee at drug discovery and development firm Aptuit’s Riccarton site in Scotland, produced flawed data over six years. This is the first case of someone being successfully prosecuted under current Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) Regulations. A spokesman for the UK’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) underlines how unusual this is. ‘This type of activity is very rare and, based on the results of a significant number of inspections, we have no evidence to indicate the problem is widespread,’ he tells...

Companies have put biofuels on the back burner to aim for higher margin chemicals, as Emma Davies finds out Tom Welton gives the wooden desk in his office a sharp rap with his knuckles. ‘That’s the sound of lignin,’ he says, grinning. ‘Have you seen its structure? It’s beautiful, full of aromatics, lovely compounds that make you think: I could make something useful from this.’Welton, who is head of chemistry at Imperial College London, UK, views lignin – the ‘really hard stuff’ that protects plants from biological attack – as a valuable source of renewable speciality chemicals. His group has...

Can you tell the difference between a tasty paddy straw mushroom and a toxic death cap? Emma Shiells talks to the experts about the potentially deadly chemistry hidden in those gills Death cap mushrooms are, as the name suggests, deadly © Science Photo LibraryOn a damp and drizzly autumnal morning you may think there are better places to be than foraging in the undergrowth of an orchard, but amateur mushroom hunters are sure to disagree with you. Martin Newcombe, an ecologist and fungi enthusiast, is one of those hooked.‘The fact that fungi can grow so quickly makes them fascinating,’ says...

© Science Photo LibraryRecycling old magnets, so that rare-earth metals can be re-used, could help to solve an urgent raw material supply problem in the electronics industry. Researchers from the University of Leuven, Belgium, have used ionic liquids to separate neodymium and samarium from transition metals like iron, manganese and cobalt – all elements that are used in the construction of permanent rare-earth magnets, which are found in electronic devices ranging from hard drives to air conditioners and wind turbines.‘The process involves the liquid-liquid extraction of rare-earth metals from the other elements present in neodymium-iron-boron and samarium-cobalt magnets,’ explains Koen...

Ferrocene 'hooks' (yellow) fit into cucurbituril 'loops' (grey) to hold the two sheets of silicon together © Wiley-VCHSouth Korean scientists have developed a chemical velcro that shows promise as a strong and reversible underwater adhesive. The team suggests it could have many applications that require controllable adhesion in aqueous environments.Previous efforts to create underwater adhesives have mainly focused on biomimetic catechol-based polymers that are secreted by marine organisms, including mussels. However, these require curing agents and work by covalent crosslinking, which results in permanent adhesion.Now, Kimoon Kim and colleagues at Pohang University of Science and Technology, have developed a reversible...

With this morning's announcement by North Korea that it has conducted its third nuclear test, experts are closely watching a network of seismic monitoring stations for hints of what sort of test it was. Ratios of radioisotopes could help to verify the explosion and perhaps even provide clues about the type of device detonated — but only if the radioactive gases can be identified before they decay. Seismic stations detected the underground blast at 9:57 a.m. local time. The data, from the US Geological Survey and the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), showed a sudden, strong...

The skeleton showing curvature of the spine (scoliosis) consistent with historical accounts © University of LeicesterThe mortal remains of England's warrior king Richard III have been found, bringing to a close a mystery that has puzzled scholars for centuries. Analytical tests on a skeleton found under a Leicester car park have confirmed the last resting place of the final king in the Plantagenet line.The announcement comes after months of feverish speculation. In September 2012, the University of Leicester announced that its detective work combing ancient texts had led its team to conclude that the King was buried at Greyfriars Monastery...

Japanese researchers have developed a marshmallow-like material that can mop up hydrocarbons like a sponge and can then be wrung out.1 The work could one day lead to a cheap and simple solution for cleaning up large oil spills such as one that decimated the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. Although similar materials have been made before, they have had shortcomings for large-scale clean-up operations including a lack of hydrophobicity, difficult or expensive production methods and an inability to be reused. Now, researchers at Kyoto University have made marshmallow-like macroporous gels that are free from all of these drawbacks.The...

With the climate change debate as heated as ever, how do scientists reconstruct what the weather was like in the past? Jon Evans looks at the detective chemistry behind such environmental forensic work © Pete Bucktrout/British Antarctic SurveyThe Earth is not particularly good at keeping records, especially of its past climate. Like those of a disorganised businessman, its climate records are difficult to find, hard to interpret and often contradictory. But like diligent auditors, scientists are making great efforts to get to the bottom of the Earth’s disorganised records, both to understand how the Earth’s climate behaved in the past...

Marie Curie (1867–1934) is not only the most important woman scientist ever; she is arguably the most important scientist all told since Darwin. Einstein? In theoretical brilliance he outshone her — but her breakthroughs, by Einstein’s own account, made his possible. She took part in the discovery of radioactivity, a term she coined; she identified it as an atomic property of certain elements. When scoffers challenged these discoveries, she meticulously determined the atomic weight of the radioactive element she had revealed to the world, radium, and thereby placed her work beyond serious doubt. Yet many male scientists of her day...

I’ve been expecting you Mr Bond This year saw more work probing the nature of bonding. In Germany, Holger Braunschweig of Julius-Maximillians University in Würzberg, found that reacting a bis(N-heterocyclic carbene)-stabilised tetrabromodiborane with sodium naphthalene gave diborene or diboryne compounds with the world’s first stable boron–boron triple bond.1 Although boron has been an obvious target for triple bond creation, up until now the element has been reluctant and had only formed a triple bond at a chilly 8K. The new work, at room temperature, is distinctly warmer. The world's first stable germanium–oxygen double was created © NPG And if...

Protein engineers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have tapped into a hidden talent of one of nature's most versatile catalysts. The enzyme cytochrome P450 is nature's premier oxidation catalyst -- a protein that typically promotes reactions that add oxygen atoms to other chemicals. Now the Caltech researchers have engineered new versions of the enzyme, unlocking its ability to drive a completely different and synthetically useful reaction that does not take place in nature. The new biocatalysts can be used to make natural products -- such as hormones, pheromones, and insecticides -- as well as pharmaceutical drugs, like antibiotics,...

Explosive debut A droplet of xylene containing a tin compound is ignited, and then explodes to produce uniform nanoparticles (courtesy: Ch. Rosebrock & L. Mädler, Univ. Bremen). It was a pretty explosive premiere for a movie about a chemical reaction. A microscopic droplet drifted across the screen — almost in homage to the panning gun barrel of the James Bond movies — and then: bang! Scientists watching the scene last week at a meeting of the Materials Research Society (MRS) in Boston, Massachusetts, were gripped, because the death of the droplet was also an act of creation. Lutz Mädler, a...