Tag: chemistry

  • Renewable Biochemical Spin-Offs Land Small Business Grants

    Two start-up companies, founded to commercialize research on renewable biochemicals at Iowa State University at Ames, received small business research grants from National Science Foundation to develop their technologies for the marketplace. The companies — OmegaChea Biorenewables in Ames and Glucan Biorenewables in St. Louis — are spin-off enterprises from Iowa State’s Center for Biorenewable Chemicals. OmegaChea Biorenewables,…

  • Scripps Institute, Sigma-Aldrich to Partner on Reagents

    Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California is collaborating with Sigma-Aldrich Corp. in St. Louis to speed the availability of new chemical reagents for drug discovery to the scientific community. The deal calls for payments to Scripps from Sigma-Aldrich, a chemical and laboratory services company, although the size of the payments is not disclosed. Under…

  • Gold Nanoparticles Configured into Stretchable Conductors

    Engineers and physicists at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor devised a method for transforming gold nanoparticles into conductive chains that stretch to nearly six times their original length and still conduct a current. The team led by Michigan chemical engineering professor Nicholas Kotov, with participants from the Korea Basic Science Institute in Daejeon, published…

  • University Research Leads to Non-Toxic Insect Repellant

    Research by an entomology professor at University of California in Riverside led to a company licensing his discoveries that announced its first product, a non-toxic patch that repels mosquitoes for 48 hours. Olfactor Laboratories, a company co-founded by and licensing the research of Anandasankar Ray, makes the Kite mosquito patch, which yesterday started a crowd-funding…

  • Foundation Funds Study of Glass Formation Processes

    A research team at University of Akron in Ohio is studying the formation of glass materials, processes that cover much more than materials found in windows. The team led by Akron polymer engineering professor David Simmons is funded by a $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation. Simmons is joined in the project by…

  • 3-D Conductive Structures Built with Liquid Metal

    Engineers at North Carolina State University in Raleigh developed techniques to build three-dimensional objects with electrical conductivity from liquid metal at room temperature. A team from the lab of chemical engineering professor Michael Dickey published its findings online last week in the journal Advanced Materials. The NC State researchers devised a series of methods using…

  • Lighter, Stronger Metallic Bubble Wrap Developed

    Engineers at North Carolina State University in Raleigh created a flexible metal foam material that’s lighter and stronger than sheet metal, but more heat and chemical resistant than plastic bubble wraps. The team of Advanced Materials Research Lab director Afsaneh Rabiei and doctoral candidate Di Miao presented their findings on 24 June at the Conference…

  • Hydrogen Fuel Cells Found Feasible for Ships Docked in Port

    An analysis by Sandia National Lab in Livermore, California indicates hydrogen fuel cells offer an economical and environmentally feasible alternative for powering commercial ships docked in seaports. Sandia Lab, a division of the U.S. Department of Energy, published the study, conducted for the department’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, earlier this year. Ships docked…

  • More Feasible CO2 Emission Control Technology Devised

    Chemical engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology devised a lab-scale process that can more efficiently remove carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel emissions and work more readily with today’s power plants than current technologies. The team led by MIT’s Alan Hatton published its findings online earlier this month in the journal Energy and Environmental Science. Current emission-control…

  • AstraZeneca, Roche to Share Preclinical Research Data

    The global pharmaceutical companies AstraZeneca and Roche agreed to share early-stage drug research data to speed product development and identify candidates with a greater chance of success. Financial aspects of the collaboration were not disclosed. The two companies will furnish their research data on investigational compounds to a third party, MedChemica, a computational chemistry service…