As a SciFri holiday tradition, we present highlights from the 28th first annual Ig Nobel Awards ceremony.
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Year: 2018
Researchers have developed catalysts that can convert carbon dioxide—the main cause of global warming—into plastics, fabrics, resins, and other products.
The electrocatalysts are the first materials, aside from enzymes, that can turn carbon dioxide and water into carbon building blocks containing one, two, three, or four carbon atoms with more than 99 percent efficiency.
Two of the products—methylglyoxal (C3) and 2,3-furandiol (C4)—can be used as precursors for plastics, adhesives, and pharmaceuticals. Toxic formaldehyde could be replaced by methylglyoxal, which is safer.
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Mars is lacking in the vast supply of natural resources we’ve come to rely on here on Earth, and astronauts attempting to colonize, or even just visit, the red planet can only bring a limited supply of materials with them. Learning to make do with what Mars has to offer is one of the biggest challenges of visiting our nearest neighbor, but the results of the European Space Agency’s latest 3D-printing experiments prove it isn’t impossible.
We’ve sent probes and rovers to Mars, but to date it’s only been a one-way trip. Our knowledge of what Mars is made from is limited to what Spirit and Opportunity can learn from samples, and studying Martian meteorites that have made their way to Earth. Like our moon, if there’s one thing Mars isn’t lacking, it’s dust. So as a stand in for genuine Mars ingredients, researchers have turned to a simulated version of lunar soil, also known as lunar regolith.
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If you are diagnosed with cancer today there are often several treatment options, with your doctor forming a plan of attack that will feature multiple approaches. Chemotherapy is one of the most popular weapons against cancer, but new research suggests it may be possible to get chemo-like results without actually putting a patient through a chemotherapy routine.
In a new paper published in Nature Communications, scientists discuss the possibility of using the natural “kill code” of human cells to fight tumors. That code, which is used by our body to recycle cells and kills them off when they are old, isn’t used by cancer cells and that allows the bad cells to fester and spread.
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THE International Space Station is infested with mysterious space bugs that may be leaving astronauts at risk of ‘serious harm’, according to a new study.
Scientists discovered a thriving ecosystem of “infectious organisms” aboard the station which are similar to bugs found in hospitals on Earth.
A NASA team found five different varieties of Enterobacter, with researchers calculating that there is a “79% probability that they may potentially cause disease”.
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In this episode of #EarthfromSpace, the Copernicus Sentinel-3A satellite takes us over the Gulf from the ESA Web TV studios.
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A French physicist has won an Ig Nobel Prize for using mathematical formulas to determine whether cats are liquid or solid.
The Ig Nobel prizes are awarded every year by Improbable Research, an organization devoted to science and humor. The goal is to highlight scientific studies that first make people laugh, then think.
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