Crystals And Catalysts

On the back of any container of anti-ageing serum or cream, you read a long incomprehensible list of chemicals that you might not know what their exact roles are within the product. Below is list a top 10 ingredients that have been used in anti-ageing products that are in the market today, for you to read and know what exactly contributes to removing years of our faces.

Within this sequence of posts I will be reviewing collagen and why it’s beneficial to us. I will also be breaking down anti ageing products and what’s inside them and whether they actually work.  But before we talk about anti-ageing products we have to understand what we are treating first which is the most important thing: collagen.

Journal: Exploring Host-Microbiome Interactions using an in Silico Model of biomimetic robots and engineered living cells – Published in Scientific Reports. Dr’s : Heyde and Ruder Funded by : National science Foundation, USA Understanding the human body is vital to understanding how the body works and how drugs can interact with the body. Microbiomes play an important role in the regulation of the behaviour and health of its host (which could be the human body or part of it). Within this new piece of research, scientists have prepared an in silico model of a living microbiome, engineered with synthetic biology, which interfaces with a biomimetic, robotic host. They used this technique to copy complex behaviours in the host giving larger understandings of the exploration of inter-kingdom ecological relationships.  The researchers studied two different topologies of information flow, critical for host-microbiome interactions to help us understand biochemi...

Journal : Tuning Organic Carbon Dioxide Absorbents for Carbonation and Decarbonation : Dr's: Kim, Park &   Rajamanickam Funded by Ministry of Education. Science and Technology of the Korean Government Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) is a gas / waste product that is given off by motor engines and with it other harmful gases that affect us and affect pollution and air quality. In this new piece of research the trio of scientists have aimed to find a way to capture carbon and recycle it, from carbon dioxide and at the same time release the safe molecule oxygen (O 2 ). In their research the scientists have aimed to manipulate the unique chemistry of super bases for carbon capture technology. It is beneficial to be able to control the process of carbonation and decarbonation in an easily controllable manner. ·          Superbase = alkylcarbonyl salt ·          Reverse at elevated temperatur...

New Chemistry research:  Black phosphorus could help engineers surmount one of the big challenges for future electronics: designing energy-efficient transistors. This is a schematic of the "puckered honeycomb" crystal structure of black phosphorus. Credit: Vahid Tayari/McGill University Published in the journal: Nature Communications , the researchers are utilising black phosphorus as a material to pack more transistors on a chip, making them more energy-efficient.  The work is a result of a multidisciplinary collaboration among Szkopek's nanoelectronics research group, the nanoscience lab of McGill Physics Prof. Guillaume Gervais, and the nanostructures research group of Prof. Richard Martel in Université de Montréal's Department of Chemistry. Reporting on their finds, the scientists at McGill University, have found that when electrons move in a phosphorus transistor, they do so only in two dimensions. This will help in designing new energy-efficient t...

Everybody loves chocolate, who doesn't? Unless you are allergic to it. Almost every month, new research conducted on chocolate is published proving that chocolate is good for you and can even keep the doctor away .  Even though chocolate already contains beneficial compounds for our health, scientists have been working on integrating other chemicals in chocolate which can reduce the levels of potentially harmful chemicals in our body, such as cholesterol. Infographic: Click to enlarge. In a study conducted in the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, researchers have produced phytosterol-enriched dark chocolate, as a potential functional food, which can lower cholesterol.  Before this can even reach the public, the enriched chocolate has to go through several trials. In one of the researchers’ trials, they aimed to test the oxidative stability of the dark chocolate bar containing phytosterols. The oxidative stability of the samples was evaluated during 5 mon...

I am reincarnating a series I started a couple of months ago, called 2 words 2 definitions where I provide the definitions of words that seem like they have similar meanings and can be confused with each other. This posts words are: Disease, Disorder & Syndrome . All three of these words have different meanings but they may sound like they all have the same meaning, if you don’t know the difference. Disease is an impairment of the normal state of the living animal or plant body or one of its parts that interrupts or modifies the performance of the vital functions, is typically manifested by distinguishing signs and symptoms, and is a response to environmental factors (as malnutrition, industrial hazards, or climate), to specific infective agents (as worms, bacteria, or viruses), to inherent defects of the organism (as genetic anomalies), or to combinations of these factors. The cause or causes of which are known. Example: Parkinson's Disease Disorder is an abnormal ...

This is also coincides with my 100th post!  Yay! Today is finally day 30 of the 30 Day Science Blog Challenge. You can read the rest of the months posts here . Just under two months ago I came up with the idea to prepare a 30 day blogging challenge for science bloggers. planning it wasn't easy, but I tried to make all the topics universal to science bloggers, so that anyone can join in at any time. The goal was to post consecutively for  30 days, responding to the topics given here .  So now that this is my 30th and final blog post in the challenge, how did I do and how did I find this challenge? What made this blog so challenging? Apart from a little technical glitch in May ( read about it here ) , which caused me to delay the challenge till June, the 30 day challenge was easy at times and difficult at other times. I think the hardest posts to prepare were the "controversial topics in science" posts since I had to decide on a topic that was controvers...

I can't believe that the 30 days I had planned are almost coming to an end. I had been planing this project since May and I couldn't wait to start it. Its now already 29th June and we're 29 days into the challenge. Time flies when your having fun. :) Now that the 30 day challenge is over I now have to plan for the future months on this blog. Since the 30 Day challenge recieved a great response I think I will make it a yearly thing. It will be really interesting to see how my responses change to the topics next year.  But in regards to next month I will be... ...Returning to #SOTW Scientist of the Week... SOTW  is posted every Friday, where I give a condensed profile of a scientist that may be famous or not.  You can check out the previous ones here . Let me know, in the comments section below, if you want me to construct a profile of a scientist that may not be well known and you'd like to find out more about them. ...Posting frequently during the week... ...

This weeks science news: understanding speech and sleep, fatty diets that harm the brain, fake pills, restricting antibiotics and asthma caused by pollution. Click to enlarge image!