Boost your battery with seaweed

An extract from brown algae - seaweed - could give rechargeable lithium-ion batteries a boost by allowing silicon nanopowder to be used as a high-capacity alternative to graphite electrodes. The potential improvement is almost an order of magnitude boost, the researchers say. Seaweed extract gives lithium batteries a boost.

Making fluorine reactions stick

Fluorine in organic chemistry is an important topic across the synthetic pharmaceutical, agrochemical and materials areas because switching out hydrogen atoms selectivity for this element allows chemists to tune the reactivity of specific groups within a given molecule. Now, chemists in Switzerland have turned to fluorine to help them make specific carbon-carbon bonds. The formation […]

10 chemical picks

Researcher lists more than 4,000 components of blood chemistry - After three years of exhaustive analysis led by a University of Alberta researcher, the list of known compounds in human blood has exploded from just a handful to more than 4,000. Bone drug zoledronic acid may help prevent spread of early lung cancer - A […]

Slinn Pickings latest 10

Reprogrammed stem cells hit a roadblock - An international study shows that reprogramming cells leads to genomic aberrations. Blocking enzyme cut cancer spread - Scientists at the UK's Institute of Cancer Research have prevented breast cancer spreading to other organs in mice by blocking a chemical. In their experiments, they showed that blocking the enzyme […]

Top ten chemical picks: Slinn Pickings

Math may help calculate way to find new drugs for diseases - Using mathematical concepts, Princeton researchers have developed a method of discovering new drugs for a range of diseases by calculating which physical properties of biological molecules may predict their effectiveness as medicines. A Second Pathway for Antidepressants - Berkeley Lab researchers developed a […]