by Miriam Krause It’s National Chemistry Week! This year’s theme is “Solving Mysteries Through Chemistry,” so today we have a roundup of past blog posts about how nanotechnology is used in forensics.
Sustainable Nano
What’s With All Those Flaming Cell Phones? A Primer on Battery Safety
by Bob Hamers By now you’ve probably heard about Samsung’s recall of all Galaxy Notes 7s. Several years ago the entire worldwide fleet of 787 “Dreamliners” was grounded due to onboard battery fires. You might …
How to Understand Nobel Science? Food!
by Miriam Krause Every year the Nobel Prizes bring some extra attention to science in the award categories of medicine, physics, and chemistry. This is a great opportunity for the general public to hear about …
Let’s Talk About Responsible Science Communication…
by Christy Haynes I am a TED enthusiast. TED is an organization that describes itself as a “nonpartisan nonprofit devoted to spreading ideas, usually in the form of short, powerful talks.” Chances are you’ve seen a …
Nanoparticles Delivering Drugs Through the Skin
by Denise Williams edited by Alicia McGeachy Did you know that the skin is the body’s largest organ? It covers about 1.8 square meters!1 It serves as the body’s outermost protective layer by limiting the …
Magnetic Nanoparticles in Cancer Treatment
by Ellen Purdy edited by Joe Buchman Although nanomedicine may sound like something out of a science fiction film, it is already being put to use in treating a range of human illnesses. Magnetic nanoparticles …
Bob’s Beautiful Blue Glacier
by Bob Hamers Recently I had the fortune to visit the state of Alaska. While there, I took a boat trip around the Kenai Peninsula, where there are glaciers moving from the Harding Icefield toward …
What’s in a Unit Anyway? Part 2: When is a Kilogram Not a Kilogram?
by Mike Schwartz In my last post, I told you about how scientists measure amazingly cool things that can be vastly different in size, like elementary particles or very distant dwarf planets and their moons. …
What’s in a Unit Anyway? Part 1: From Protons to Galaxies
by Mike Schwartz If you’re like me, you often find yourself thinking about random things. For example, just the other day I was thinking to myself, “what’s the diameter of a gold nanoparticle* in light …
Thus Spake Paracelsus*
by Joel Pedersen The Swiss Renaissance physician, alchemist and founder of toxicology Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus (!) von Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus (Figure 1), said it well: “All substances are poisons; there is none …