During a heart attack, clots or narrowed arteries block blood flow, harming or killing cells within the tissue. But the damage doesn't end after the crushing pain subsides. Instead, the heart's walls thin out, the organ becomes enlarged, and scar tissue forms. If nothing is done, the patient can eventually experience heart failure. But scientists now report they have developed gels that, in animal tests, can be injected into the heart to shore up...

In developing nations, the current test to diagnose TB is error-prone, complicated and time-consuming. Furthermore, patients in these resource-limited areas can't easily travel back to a clinic at a later date to get their results. To make diagnoses simpler, faster and more accurate, chemists have developed a quick and easy diagnostic tool. Field trials of the experimental test began in June in South Africa, which has a high incidence of TB.

Whether severe trauma occurs on the battlefield or the highway, saving lives often comes down to stopping the bleeding as quickly as possible. Many methods for controlling external bleeding exist, but at this point, only surgery can halt blood loss inside the body from injury to internal organs. Now, researchers have developed nanoparticles that congregate wherever injury occurs in the body to help it form blood clots, and they've validated these...

The developing world is awash in substandard, degraded or falsified medications, which can either directly harm users or deprive them of needed treatment. And with internet sales of medications on the rise, people everywhere are increasingly at risk. So, a team of researchers has developed a simple, inexpensive paper-based device to screen suspicious medications. The researchers will present their work at the 252nd National Meeting & Exp...

Although rechargeable batteries in smartphones, cars and tablets can be charged again and again, they don't last forever. Old batteries often wind up in landfills or incinerators, potentially harming the environment. And valuable materials remain locked inside. Now, a team of researchers is turning to naturally occurring fungi to drive an environmentally friendly recycling process to extract cobalt and lithium from tons of waste batteries.

What do squid and jellyfish skin have in common with human skin? All three have inspired a team of chemists to create materials that change colour or texture in response to variations in their surroundings. These materials could be used for encrypting secret messages, creating anti-glare surfaces, or detecting moisture or damage, they say. The researchers will present their work at the 252nd National Meeting & Exposition of the American ...

Most people start racking up scars from an early age with scraped knees and elbows. While many of these fade over time, more severe types such as keloids and scars from burns are largely untreatable. These types of scars are associated with permanent functional loss and, in severe cases, carry the stigma of disfigurement. Now scientists are developing new compounds that could stop scars from forming in the first place.

At the grocery store, most foods - meats, breads, cheeses, snacks - come wrapped in plastic packaging. Not only does this create a lot of non-recyclable, non-biodegradable waste, but thin plastic films are not great at preventing spoilage. And some plastics are suspected of leaching potentially harmful compounds into food. To address these issues, scientists are now developing a packaging film made of milk proteins - and it is even edible.

When it comes to even the most advanced materials, the adage "if it does not bend, it breaks" is often true. But before that final snap, most materials experience microscopic damage that could be fixed—but only if you know it's there. In a study published in ACS Central Science, researchers introduce a technique that detects and illuminates damage in various types of materials.

Ripped pants or a torn shirt usually means a trip to the tailor or a garbage can is in one's future. But scientists could be closing in on a new solution. They report in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces a fabric coating made of squid proteins that allows rips in cotton, linen and wool to "heal" themselves. Damage to a variety of surfaces, ranging from biomedical implants to clothing, can limit a product's usefulness.

Hydrogen is widely regarded as a promising and clean alternative energy source. The traditional source of H2 for fuel cell use is water, which is split into H2 and O2. But O2 is a low-value product. So, this week in ACS Central Science, researchers report a new approach and a new catalyst that can produce not just hydrogen but also valuable chemicals, including the most common ingredient in nail polish.

By carefully arranging many nanoblocks to form pixels on a metasurface, researchers have demonstrated that they can manipulate incoming visible light in just the right way to create a colour "meta-hologram." The method of creating holograms has an order of magnitude higher reconstruction efficiency than similar color meta-holograms, and has applications for various types of 3D colour holographic displays and achromatic planar lenses.

These days, it seems like gadgets are constantly improving, and now the next big development may be organic light-emitting diodes, or OLEDs. The technology promises to improve your phones' quality, durability and even foldability. An article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, takes a look at the market for this technology and why it is expected to more than double by 2020.

Today's mobile lifestyle depends on rechargeable lithium batteries. But to take these storage devices to the next level—to shore up the electric grid or for widespread use in vehicles, for example—they need a big boost in capacity. To get lithium batteries up to snuff for more ambitious applications, researchers report in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces a new solution that involves low-cost, renewable loofah sponges...

The IoT could make cities "smarter" by connecting an extensive network of tiny communications devices to make life more efficient. But all these machines will require a lot of energy. Rather than adding to the global reliance on fossil fuels to power the network, researchers say they have a new solution. Their report on a single device that harvests wind and solar energy appears in the journal ACS Nano.

Summer is around the corner—time for cookouts and sunbathing. But too much sun can result in sunburn, which is the main cause of skin cancer. Because the time it takes to get burned depends on many factors, it is not easy to tell when to seek shade. To help people stay safe, researchers report in ACS Sensors the development of a paper-based sensor for monitoring sun exposure given different skin tones and sunscreen levels.

Scientists report in the journal ACS Nano a self-powered, transparent smart skin that is simpler and less costly than many other versions that have been developed. Endowing robots and prosthetics with a human-like sense of touch could dramatically advance these technologies. Toward this goal, scientists have come up with various smart skins to layer onto devices.

Instead of applying a deicing agent to strip ice from an aircraft's wings before stormy winter takeoffs, airport personnel could in the future just watch chunks slide right off without lifting a finger. Scientists report they have developed a liquid-like substance that can make wings and other surfaces so slippery that ice cannot adhere. The slick substance is secreted from a film on the wing's surface as temperatures drop below freezing and retr...

Athletes, the elderly and others who suffer from injuries and arthritis can lose cartilage and experience a lot of pain. Researchers are now reporting, however, that they have found a way to produce cartilage tissue by 3D bioprinting an ink containing human cells, and they have successfully tested it in an in vivo mouse model. The development could one day lead to precisely printed implants to heal damaged noses, ears and knees.

A team of scientists is exploring an unusual source of electricity—damaged tomatoes that are unsuitable for sale at the grocery store. Their pilot project involves a biological-based fuel cell that uses tomato waste left over from harvests in Florida. The researchers present their work today at the 251st National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).