The world’s population is growing, people are living longer, and industry continues to expand. These changes bring many benefits, but they can also increase risks to human health. Over time, people are exposed to many substances in the environment, some of which may be harmful. At the same time, greater industrial activity means more chemicals […]
Catalysis • Chemical engineering • Chemistry • Materials • Mechanical Engineering
Steel and metal production are among the largest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for approximately 10% of global CO2 emissions. At the same time, modern technology relies on tailored steels and metals for applications in fields such as mobility, energy, infrastructure, safety and medicine. Hydrogen-based metal production offers a promising CO2-free alternative and […]
Chemistry • DIPC Computational and Theoretical Chemistry • Quantum chemistry
Chemical bonds are among the most familiar ideas in science. They explain why hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water, why carbon atoms build long chains in organic molecules, and why every substance has the shape and properties it does. Yet, despite their central role in chemistry, bonds are not directly observable objects. They are […]
Author: José Iriarte, Professor of Archaeology, University of Exeter From the air, you see it only through the constant jolt, tilt and shudder of the low-flying Cessna aircraft. The landscape of the Llanos de Moxos, northern Bolivia, appears as a disconnected patchwork of open grassland savannahs, forest islands and lakes. It feels random, almost unreadable […]
Biochemistry • Biology • Chemistry • Geosciences • Planetary Science
Asteroids and planetesimals regularly bombarded Earth between about 4.6 billion and 3.5 billion years ago, during the Hadean and Archean eons. Because few rocks today are more than 4 billion years old, our understanding of the planet’s environment during that time is limited. However, samples from the moon and its cratered surface hint at the […]
In our previous entry, I explicated two different concepts that in many languages are subsumed under a single term ‘life’, or equivalent, but that in ancient Greek were separated as two truly distinct things: zoé , or life in the biological sense, and bíos , or life in the biographical sense. I argued that these […]
Over a century ago, quantum physics revealed a surprising fact: truly identical particles do not behave like tiny billiard balls. When two indistinguishable particles meet under the right conditions, they can interfere with each other in ways that have no classical explanation. One of the most famous demonstrations of this phenomenon is the Hong–Ou–Mandel effect […]
Author: Kovi Rose, Astrophysics PhD Candidate, University of Sydney Kovi Rose, University of Sydney A pair of stars spiralling around each other. That’s the origin of a new source of repeating radio bursts we’ve detected, called ASKAP J1745. In recent years, astronomers have been puzzling over mysterious bursts of radio signals, known as long-period transients […]
Climate change and sea level rise are altering the chemistry of Biscayne Bay in ways that could threaten South Florida’s coastal ecosystems, water resources, fisheries, and recreation, according to a study led by scientists from the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science and Miami-Dade County’s Department of Environmental Resources Management […]
One of the principal values of philosophical thought has traditionally been the promotion of conceptual clarity: helping us to understand as well as possible what it is we are thinking when we think what we think. In the debate over the moral aspects of the limits of life, it is therefore important to reflect on […]