You can make your very own glow in the dark mountain dew by using only baking soda and hydrogen peroxide (aka oxygenated water). The chemical reaction from this mix gives a pretty cool glow!

It's amazing how a simple reaction on earth, becomes so spectacular in space. The bubbles form, unite, and explode in a different way than you'd expect. Very cool! Enjoy!

Here’s a cool demonstration about how some special sand expands from a tiny amount to fifty times it’s own size. Pretty cool! Instant sand!

Here's a cool chemical reaction that makes a foam which looks like marshmallows. Pretty yummy, huh? Enjoy!

Some clips of Thermite from Brainiac science abuse. Thermite burns at around 4000 °F (2500 °C) and can cut just about anything. Watch it destroy anything in its path! Cool.

The particles of cobalt-chromium can cause DNA damage even if they do not come physically into contact with the cells. The nano-particles manage to damage the DNA of cells protected by a barrier made up of cellular membranes, without physically entering into contact with the cell, but rather through a multitude of chemical signals. This was found in a study coordinated at the Bristol Implant Research Center, proving that it brings out a new risk associated with nanotechnology, but also the opportunity to exploit this behavior in an innovative way. Nano-particles are now widely used. In surgery, for example, are an integral part of prostheses and implants. The research conducted so far on the risks of nanoparticles, however, relates mainly to the effects of direct exposure, while very little is known about what can cause the indirect exposure. In the new study, researchers have wondered if a barrier device was able to protect cells from the effects of nano-particles consisting of chromium and cobalt in the tissues of the clothes and orthopedic implants. The researchers interposed a barrier between nanoparticles formed out of multilayer chromium-cobalt (in quantities thousands of times greater than those with whom we come in contact normally) and a culture of human fibroblasts (connective tissue cells). Although nano-particles have not managed to cross the membrane, the fibroblasts had DNA mutations which were ten times more than the control fibroblasts. According to scholars, the effect is due to chemical signals between the cell membrane and fibroblasts. If the lines of communication between them are broken, the rate of DNA damage returned to normal.

Can we act on stopping the process of infection, without the risk to develop strains resistant to antibiotics ? Small molecules that interrupt the chemical signals by which bacteria communicates by blocking the process of infection have been identified. The discovery, published in Molecular Cell, as well as representing a new option in the treatment of infections, reduces the risk of growth of bacteria strains resistant to antibiotics. Bacteria will exchange information with a system of intercellular communication, called quorum sensing, which allows them to perceive and respond to changes in density and to coordinate actions of the group. As soon as the conditions are favorable to population growth, for example if they are within a host, the bacteria sends chemical signals to molecules that bind to receptors inside: LuxR-type proteins or proteins of the type LuxN, located on membrane of each cell. In this way the infection proceeds without hitches. " Blocking the communications of the enemy has always been a winning weapon. The researchers searched the key to succeeding, and found in an old acquaintance. In a previous study Bassler and colleagues had discovered that a class of molecules called lactose acilomoserina (AHL), is able to compete with the signals acting on LuxN proteins, preventing them from binding to the receptor. In the recent study, researchers have realized that the AHL can also bind to proteins of the LuxR type. In this way was brought into light the AHL the ability to bind to both receptors, although the two proteins have two completely different structure and location mechanisms.

Twenty years after the first partially successful attempt to cold fusion, a new experiment seems to have reopened the hopes of obtaining nuclear reactions at low energy (LENR low-energy nuclear reactions). This was announced by a team of researchers led by Pamela Mosier-Boss of the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center San Diego (California), with a study presented at the annual meeting of American Chemical Society, the first visible evidence of the production of neutrons, the particles subatomic whose presence demonstrates the atomic reaction occurred. It was 1989 when Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons showed that it has obtained experimentally the Cold Fusion, arousing great outcry in the scientific community. Fusion is the reaction that takes place inside of stars, their source of energy, able to reproduce in the laboratory at room temperature this process would be an amazing achievement. Further research then disappointed initial expectations: the rare attempts (for example, those of 2000 and 2002) to reproduce the results of 1989 and have not convinced the path of nuclear reaction at low energy has not proved viable as an alternative to "clean" nuclear fission, which is based on the common operation of nuclear power.

It was finally demonstrated how atoms arrange themselves inside the materials. This opens new possibilities for designing ultraresistant objects. Glass is a material called 'amorphous', whose atoms that is, are not disposed in a regular type structures crystal. The substance is not considered a solid but, rather, a liquid with very high viscosity. An international research team, led by Paddy Royall University of Bristol (Great Britain), in collaboration with Japanese and Australian scholars, is now able to demonstrate that during the solidification particles have in-shaped structures that prevent the icosahedron formation of crystals. Unlike solid crystalline form, in which the atoms are fixed to one another by chemical bonds into regular geometric structures, glass appears' solid 'just because the movement of each particle is physically prevented by the presence of other neighbouring atoms. The particles, that is, hinder each other. It was thus finally confirmed, with a simulation test, a 50 years old theory that explains many of the characteristics of this material and that could allow us to build, for example, non-crystalline metals much more resistant than traditional ones.

A newly discovered molecule, Isx-9, is able to make stem cells mature into brain cells. The study in Nature Chemical Biology They came across this behavior, while they were stimulating stem cells to give rise to cardiac cells, when researchers from the Southwestern Medical Center at the University of Texas at Dallas, have discovered that some of the molecules tested have matured however into neural cells. Completely random, therefore, this lead to the isolation of Isx-9, the most powerful among the compounds tested, capable, at very low concentrations, to create differentiated neurons. The study, conducted by researchers led by Jay Schneider and Jenny Hsieh was published on the number of Nature Chemical Biology. Scientists began testing 147 thousand molecules for the project in order to isolate those who could stimulate embryonic stem cells to differentiate into cardiac cells. Stunningly, American researchers have noted that five of these compounds caused the stem to rise to neurons. One of these molecules was selected because it was acting to lower concentrations of the other and was more soluble in water. This, has given life to the compound Isx-9 that has been tested on neural stem cells from the brain, particularly those of the hippo campus of laboratory animals. In the test tube, the stem, under the action of Isx-9, could form the clusters and develop the first steps towards the formation of neurons.

In the blood of alligators and crocodiles proteins were discovered with high antibacterial and antifungal activity. Unlike men, alligators can combat fungi, viruses and bacteria without the body being previously subjected to these micro-organisms. The researchers have demonstrated the McNeese State University and Louisiana State University who collected the blood from alligators and analyzed the white blood cells, which are the cells appointed to immune defense.

The procedural memory remains imprinted in the chemical synapses. It is not the merit of a cell constant. When we drive a car or we tie a shoe knot, we store a series of gestures that are accessed faster and automatically whenever you need that action again. It is the so-called working memory or procedural memory, whose operation resembles that of cache memory of a computer, for example, allows us to more quickly open a website already visited. A study conducted by Gianluigi Mongillo of French Cnrs research, and Omri Barak and Misha Tsodyks the Weizmann Institute (Israel) would seem to refute the widespread belief that this type of memory is fixed thanks to a number of specific neurons. On the contrary, the procedural memory is recorded at the level of chemical changes in cells that remain after the transition pressure in nervous synapses (points of contact and communication between neurons).

How can you convert waste into energy in the most efficient way possible? The secret is in riboflavin. The microorganisms have the ability to change the chemistry of the environment. This is known for a long time, but if some of these can generate energy from the degradation of organic compounds has not yet been clarified. One answer comes from an American study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Pnas): BioTechnology researchers from the Institute of the University of Minnesota have found that the riboflavin, better known as vitamin B-2, is the key to the production of electricity by the microorganism Shewanella, a bacterium that is commonly found in water and soil.

A survey published on PloS Medicine considers the effects of "the happiness pill clinically nonexistent". And in Great Britain this survey resulted in an outbreak of controversy. Prozac, the antidepressant Seroxat and in general antidepressants do not produce clinically significant benefits. It had the effect of an earthquake relationship. Irving Kirsch, director of the psychology department of Hull University, which - published in the online journal PloS Medicine - assess the outcomes of total 47 studies (known and unpublished) of British and American experts on the real effects of "happiness pill", Prozac. Printed immediately on the front pages of major British newspapers, The Guardian and The Independent Times immediately attacked by the pharmaceutical companies concerned. The study argues that this type of medicines - given annually by more than 40 million people around the world -- found minimal improvements compared to the simple placebo, amounting to just two points on the Hamilton depression scale (comprising 51 points total). Findings for fluoxetine (Prozac), venlafaxine (Efexor), paroxetine (Seroxat) and similar molecules have been put on the market, but which do not reach the three points needed by the British National Institute for Clinical Excellence (Nice) to recognize their significant clinical differences .

No more black and white images: a new electronic tool will observe the chemical species to the wavelengths of visible The color images provided by an ordinary microscope can not make a resolution at the level of individual atoms, while the electronic microscopes, capable of atomic resolution, providing black and white images. In these images different atoms appear as different shades of grey. Now, an electron microscope of a new generation, recently designed and installed at Cornell University and the subject of a study published in Science, will obtain color images at atomic resolution.

Infm-Cnr and Federico II University have developed a technique ultra-miniaturized to study the behavior of red blood cells. In the film "Fantastic Journey" of 1966, to study the physiology of the human body some scientists were miniaturized and were injected with their micro-bus, in the bloodstream. Today is, in a sense, the opposite: to understand the behavior of red blood cells reproduces the circulatory network on a device the size of a chip. The device has been developed by researchers of the center Coherentia at the National Institute for Physics of Matter (Infm-Cnr) and the Department of Chemical Engineering University Federico II of Naples. Their results were presented today at the conference "The research ideas to work" in the Corsican town.