For some years now, John McGeehan, a biologist and the director of the Center for Enzyme Innovation in Portsmouth, England, has been searching for a molecule that could break down the 150 million tons ...

Common in nature and found in DNA and amino acids, chiral molecules are asymmetric with a structure that’s different from its mirror image. Chiral amino acids are “left-handed” and cannot be swapped ...

Lasers are used to carry out functions ranging from reading a bar code label at the grocery store to shooting down enemy missiles in space. Now, chemists at Purdue University are using lasers to coax ...

Water is a familiar substance that is present virtually everywhere. The properties of the first few layers of water molecules in contact with the surface of materials (called 'surface water') are ...