Carbon

Carbon dioxide is an all too common waste product of industry, belched into the air from smokestacks. Now, researchers have developed a new type of fluorinated membrane that can selectively filter CO2 out of flue gas at the point of release.

Technology could really use some more sustainable sources, and now researchers at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) have turned to an unusual one. The team has shown that human hair from barber shops can be used to create OLED displays.

The world of atoms and molecules is tricky to study, not just because it’s so small but because events occur so quickly at that scale. Now, researchers have captured slow motion video of the movements of single molecules at 1,600 frames per second.

Computer modeling has shown that an energy storage system based on diamond nanothread bundles could store three times as much energy as lithium-ion batteries. And because it stores energy mechanically rather than chemically, it would be much safer.

Graphene may be versatile, but it’s not all that good at dispersing in water. Now, researchers at Umeå University have found a relatively simple way to do it – use graphene oxide instead, which can then be used as a kind of graphene paint.

Ordinarily, when composite items are being manufactured, huge ovens and autoclaves have to be utilized. The production process could soon be much simpler, cheaper and more energy-efficient, however, thanks to the use of carbon nanotube films.

Researchers have created bacteria that can effectively eat air. By carefully directing the evolution of E. coli in the lab, the team managed to wean them off their preferred diet of sugar, and make the switch to carbon dioxide in the air around them.

Astronomers have detected complex carbon molecules – previously only thought to be made in a lab setting – in interstellar space. Now scientists have created them under space-like conditions, hinting at how they can naturally form between the stars.

During and after nuclear bomb tests, levels of the radioactive isotope carbon-14 spiked in the atmosphere and in our bodies. Now, researchers have used that to carbon date our immune cells, helping solve a mystery about how our immune systems age.

Researchers from ETH Zurich have refined a process that can detect modern fakes of paintings by measuring excessive levels of the isotope carbon-14 released into the atmosphere through nuclear testing in the 20th century.

New research led by the University of Cambridge has found that forests may not be as useful a carbon sink as we thought. The team found that a warming climate makes trees grow faster and die younger, releasing their captured carbon back into the air sooner.

​Do meal kits have a larger carbon footprint than regular grocery store shopping? A team of environmental researchers set out to crunch the numbers ​discovering that despite the extra plastic waste meal kits may produce less environmental emissions than conventional grocery shopping.