Surface chemistry reveals corrosive secrets

Precise Measurements are the Molecular Lens to Seeing Chemistry

18-Oct-2021 - One can easily see with the naked eye that leaving an old nail out in the rain causes rust. What does require the keen eyes and sensitive nose of microscopy and spectroscopy is observing how iron corrodes and forms new minerals, especially in water with a pinch of sodium and calcium. Thanks to a ...

GLUT5 fluorescent probe fingerprints cancer cells

23-Apr-2018 - Determining the presence of cancer, as well as its type and malignancy, is a stressful process for patients that can take up to two weeks to get a diagnosis. With a new bit of technology--a sugar-transporting biosensor--researchers at Michigan Technological University hope to reduce that ...

Toward glow-in-the-dark tumors

New fluorescent probe could light up cancer

30-Mar-2017 - What if you could plaster cancer cells with glowing "Here We Are" signs, so surgeons could be confident that they'd removed every last speck of a tumor? That's what Haiying Liu has in mind for his new fluorescent probe. "Doctors need to pinpoint cancer tissue, but that can be hard," said Liu, a ...

Crybaby: The vitamins in your tears

13-Jan-2017 - Babies cry easily, but those tears may help shed light on the role and potential uses of vitamins in tears. Maryam Khaksari, a research specialist at the Chemical Advanced Resolution Methods (ChARM) Laboratory at Michigan Tech, is the lead author of a paper on the subject. "Our goal was to seek ...

Making a better nitrate test kit

11-Aug-2015 - The dull black plastic of the device on Joshua Pearce's desk belies its usefulness. Pearce picks up the box, which has a switch on the side and a small opening on top. A handful of vials sit in a bag nearby, and each would fit snugly in the opening. The set-up seems generic, even bland, except ...

Bringing back the magic in metamaterials

23-Jul-2015 - A single drop of blood is teeming with microorganisms - imagine if we could see them, and even nanometer-sized viruses, with the naked eye. That's a real possibility with what scientists call a "perfect lens." The lens hasn't been created yet but it is a theoretical perfected optical lens made ...

A lab in your pocket

09-May-2014 - When you get sick, your physician may take a sample of your blood, send it to the lab and wait for results. In the near future, however, doctors may be able to run those tests almost instantly on a piece of plastic about the size of credit card. These labs-on-a-chip would not only be ...