Newscripts
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December 21, 2009
- A Chemical Christmas Tree, 40 Years Of Cheery Christmases —To appreciate their Christmas tree up close, the folks at the USDA Agricultural Research Service's Russell Research Center in Athens, Ga., need...Read more
December 14, 2009
- Ginkgogate: The Stench Of Scandal —It was the fall 2008 election season in Washington, D.C., and the smell of possibility was in the air...Read more
December 7, 2009
- Dan Brown Thrills With Science —Dan Brown books, such as "The Da Vinci Code," that feature the character Robert Langdon...Read more
November 30, 2009
- Deck The Halls With Crystals And Chromatography — If you're decorating this holiday season and find yourself short on ornaments...Read more
November 23, 2009
- The Science And Smells Of Thanksgiving — Diane M. Bunce works hard to educate both the public and her students about chemistry. So hard, in fact, that she...Read more
November 16, 2009
- Stealing Metal, Metal Allergy — If you are the type who can ignore ethical, moral, religious, and legal constraints on your behavior, then stealing stuff...Read more
November 9, 2009
- Cardboard Scents, Splatter Science, Bear Break-Ins — No one likes coming home to find rain-soaked parcels on the doorstep. It's not just the feel of wet cardboard...Read more
November 2, 2009
- Mark Trail Update, Hair-Pulling Relief — The chemical adventures of comic strip do-gooder Mark Trail were unfolding on this page a few months ago...Read more
October 26, 2009
- Halloween Treats, Support Your Favorite Element! — Just in time for Halloween this weekend, two research papers are out expounding the antimicrobial and antioxidant benefits of...Read more
October 19, 2009
- A Whiff Of Knowledge, Muscle Makeovers — It's midnight, and you're up cramming for an important exam that begins in a mere eight hours. You drain another pot of coffee...Read more
October 12, 2009
- How To Silk A Spider, Preventing Space-Dust Damage — During the rainy seasons of the past four years, scores of workers in Madagascar spent their days collecting more than a million female GOLDEN ORB SPIDERS...Read more
October 5, 2009
- 2009 Ig Nobel Prizes — It's that time of year when science, that normally staid and straight-faced sector of society, vogues some of its more oddball ideas to generate a few hearty guffaws...Read more
September 28, 2009
- Bionic Eyesight, Cell-phone Microscopes — The visionary gadgets that electrical engineer Babak A. Parviz has in his sights are definitely not Ye Olde Contact Lenses...Read more
September 21, 2009
- Science Is Child's Play — As millions of preschoolers, my daughter included, move up to the big leagues of kindergarten this month, let's consider an interesting bit of history...Read more
September 14, 2009
- Scofflaws' Just Deserts — The Department of Justice (DOJ) goes after society's bad guys. Last month alone, for example, prosecutors sent a man to jail for...Read more
September 7, 2009
- Beetle Chemistry, Walking In Circles — Ground beetles aren't celebrity insects. Unlike ants, Disney hasn't personified them in movies, and considering that they make their homes under logs and tree bark...Read more
August 31, 2009
- An Eye On Cancer, A Smiling Death —For pioneering sheep ranchers in central Idaho, it must have seemed like a curse. Pregnant sheep in their herds sometimes would birth lambs with a single eye...Read more
August 24, 2009
- Breaths Of Chocolate, No Sweat Research —Now, you can indulge in one of the world's finest flavors without gaining weight...Read more
August 17, 2009
- Pocket Protector Professor —Many a great idea has come out of the ACS national meetings. For chemist John A. Pojman Sr., one of these inspirational moments came during the 2000 national meeting in San Francisco when he happened across a pocket protector at the ACS store....Read more
August 10, 2009
- Human Echolocation, Bird Beauty, Lessons From Locusts —Dolphins, pigeons, and locusts, oh my! Rather than retaining the negative connotation from Dorothy's original fear-of-animals version of that phrase...Read more
August 3, 2009
- Fish Oil For Chickens, Biomedical Use For Digital Waste —Fish oil supplements and foods fortified with OMEGA-3 FATTY ACIDS are all the rage these days. It's hard to find a disease or medical condition that researchers somewhere haven't indicated...Read more
July 27, 2009
- Ancient Ointment, Arctic Goo —When aristocrat Thana Presnti Plecunia Umranalisa was cremated in the second half of the second century B.C., an intricate urn...Read more
July 20, 2009
- Taking On The Locoweed, Bee Medicine —When settlers pushed forward on America's western frontier in the 1800s, they noticed that their horses, cattle, and other livestock sometimes began to stagger and skitter and stare vacantly...Read more
July 13, 2009
- Work-And-Play Fabric, Translucent Concrete —Say it's raining on the day of a board meeting, but you still want to bike to work—and afterward ride to that new restaurant that opened downtown—without changing your clothes...Read more
July 6, 2009
- Sugar High ... Jinks —Recently, I wrote a C&EN News of the Week article about Coca-Cola's plans to substitute petrochemically derived ethylene glycol with glycol made from sugar and molasses to make polyethylene terephthalate beverage bottles...Read more
June 29, 2009
- Quidditch For Chemists —Players wearing capes whip by on broomsticks. With one hand on broomstick, the other free to toss a white ball back and forth, they try to earn points for their teams by zinging the ball through one of three hoops...Read more
June 22, 2009
- Mark Trail Chemistry, Chemistry In Haiti —Chemistry has popped up unexpectedly in the "Mark Trail" newspaper comic strip...Read more
June 15, 2009
- Cold Fusion Lives, High-Cholesterol Tail-Chasers —Cold fusion celebrated a 20-year milestone back in March at the American Chemical Society national meeting in Salt Lake City...Read more
June 8, 2009
- Chemtweets —As at least one C&EN colleague likes to say, almost ad nauseum, "chemistry is everywhere," and...Read more
June 1, 2009
- Bidding Adieu To An Old Friend —Longtime readers of Newscripts likely remember the not-so-long-ago days when the column was written solely by KENNETH M. REESE. Sadly, Ken passed away on March 3 at the age of 85....Read more
May 25, 2009
- Dispatches From The War On Bugs —Nobody can accuse the armed forces of failing to explore all possible options in the fight against disease-carrying pests...Read more
May 18, 2009
- Phone Hugs Trees, Money Is Also Green —Thank heavens for the marketing crowd. Because of them, green will never be thought of as just the color of grass or leaves...Read more
May 11, 2009
- Fluorescent Puppies, Maskbusters —For Adoption: Five adorable, unique dogs, part beagle, part nightlight. Born by a surrogate mother and laboratory-reared, these dogs may have a tint of red...Read more
May 4, 2009
- Barrel Chemistry, Chemistry As Label Art —Oak has long been the wood of choice for cooperages that manufacture winemaking barrels...Read more
April 27, 2009
- Earth-Friendly Fashion Show, DNA Day —If you needed an excuse to party last week and you happened to be in Palo Alto, Calif., you could have ended up at a schmoozefest fit for environmental activists...Read more
April 20, 2009
- Klingon Chemistry, Hairy Fish —Just in time for the release of the long-awaited movie "Star Trek" in May, one of the American Chemical Society's journals has embraced sci-fi geekdom and gone Klingon...Read more
April 13, 2009
- Rites Of Spring —Ah, spring is here. Every year I look forward to the longer, brighter, warmer days....Read more
April 6, 2009
- RoboCarp, Dreams Of Electronic Sheep —Polluters in the northern Spanish seas may soon find their befouling ways caught by an ODD NEW SCHOOL of chemical detectives With Videos...Read more
March 30, 2009
- Let Them Eat Sweets, Squid Snacks —Don't let your kids read the latest issue of the journal Physiology & Behavior (2009, 96, 574)—unless you're willing to surrender parental leverage over how many sweets they eat...Read more
March 23, 2009
- Soap On A Shoestring, It's No Lye —My wife's family is from Piaui, a small, arid state in Brazil's poor northeast region. ...Read more
March 16, 2009
- A lint trap —Navel fluff is most likely to gather on bellies with hair...Read more
March 9, 2009
- Units Of Old, Joy Of Calories —"Measure for Measure," a fat little book (4 by 6 inches) with 864 pages, takes on the ambitious task of describing the INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM OF UNITS, known more often as SI...Read more
March 2, 2009
- China Tricks Mother Nature, Chemistry In Mandarin —Snow fell in Beijing last week, but not by the will of Mother Nature...Read more
February 23, 2009
- Time Perception, Periodic Table Graphics —Two weeks from this issue's publication date, the hour of sleep we lose to daylight savings will leave many of us feeling a little groggy or a bit behind schedule...Read more
February 16, 2009
- Synthetic Ice Rinks, Historic Hot Cocoa —Thankfully, nothing like the Ice-nine that threatened to solidify the oceans in Kurt Vonnegut's book "Cat's Cradle," SYNTHETIC ICE is a nonfiction, low-friction alternative to real ice...Read more
February 9, 2009
- Ant Adultery, Brainiac Studs, No Fathers Required —Passionate love, whirlwind romance, happy monogamy: That's what it's all about—on Valentine's Day, that is...With VideoRead more
February 2, 2009
- Men Of Science, Men Of Faith —Galileo versus the Inquisition. Scopes versus the State of Tennessee. And let's not forget Scully versus Mulder on "The X-Files" and Jack Shephard versus John Locke on "Lost"...Read more
January 26, 2009
- Lingerie Legends, Lost in Translation —The patent for a brassiere that can do double duty as a pair of particulate-filtering FACEMASKS featured in Newscripts has prompted quite the stir...Read more
January 19, 2009
- Presidential Portraits And Pets —Looking for some memorabilia to commemorate this week's historic inauguration of President Barack Obama?...Read more
January 12, 2009
- Rah-Rah For Science —Serving as cheerleaders for science is, in a figurative sense, one of the roles that organizations like the ACS and AAAS play...Read more
January 5, 2009
- Haber At The Oscars, 69-Molecule Answer —Fritz Haber (1868-1934), one of the most enigmatic figures in the history of chemistry, could become the basis for an ACADEMY AWARD via a film about the first use of chemical warfare...Read more
