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Category: chemistry

According to management consulting firm BCG, only around half of all aluminum beverage cans are recycled in the United States, which is far behind countries such as Germany. What’s more, aluminum has one of the highest recycling rates in the U.S. — only around 19% of the durable goods sold in the U.S. are recycled, including only 14% of plastic containers and packaging. The rest is sent to landfills, where it leaches toxic chemicals into the surrounding soil and waterways.

New processes such as the one developed by the MIT researchers can hopefully make a difference in those numbers.

“We’re not just preventing waste,” said John H. Lienhard, another one of the researchers. “This membrane technology also enables a circular economy for aluminum, which could reduce the need for new mining and help mitigate some of the industry’s environmental footprint.”

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A Franco-German research team, including members from the University of Freiburg, shows that supramolecular chemistry enables efficient spin communication through hydrogen bonds. The work is published in the journal Nature Chemistry.

Qubits are the basic building blocks of information processing in quantum technology. An important research question is what material they will actually consist of in technical applications. Molecular spin qubits are considered promising qubit candidates for molecular spintronics, in particular for quantum sensing. The materials studied here can be stimulated by light; this creates a second spin center and, subsequently, a light-induced quartet state.

Until now, research has assumed that the interaction between two spin centers can only be strong enough for successful quartet formation if the centers are covalently linked. Due to the high effort required to synthesize covalently bonded networks of such systems, their use in application-related developments in the field of quantum technology is severely limited.

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Did Mars have lakes and rivers during a single period or over separate periods? This is what a recent study published in Nature Geoscience hopes to address as an international team of researchers investigated whether Mars experienced a single event of liquid water on its surface, or many events spread over millions of years. This study has the potential to help scientists better understand the early conditions on Mars and whether these conditions were suitable to support life as we know it.

“Early Mars is a lost world, but it can be reconstructed in great detail if we ask the right questions,” said Dr. Robin Wordsworth, who is a Gordon McKay Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at Harvard University and a co-author on the study. “This study synthesizes atmospheric chemistry and climate for the first time, to make some striking new predictions – which are testable once we bring Mars rocks back to Earth.”

For the study, the researchers used a series of computer models to simulate how the atmosphere on Mars billions of years ago potentially reacted to surface water-rock interactions and climate changes over time. The goal was to ascertain whether Mars experienced a single event of liquid water on its surface, or a series of events spread over millions of years with periods of dryness in between them.

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Dr. Armour, in 1991, discovered that the heart has its “little brain” or “intrinsic cardiac nervous system.” This “heart brain” is composed of approximately 40,000 neurons that are alike neurons in the brain, meaning that the heart has its own nervous system. In addition, the heart communicates with the brain in many methods: neurologically, biochemically, biophysically, and energetically. The vagus nerve, which is 80% afferent, carries information from the heart and other internal organs to the brain. Signals from the “heart brain” redirect to the medulla, hypothalamus, thalamus, and amygdala and the cerebral cortex. Thus, the heart sends more signals to the brain than vice versa. Research has demonstrated that pain perception is modulated by neural pathways and methods targeting the heart such as vagus nerve stimulation and heart-rhythm coherence feedback techniques. The heart is not just a pump. It has its neural network or “little brain.” The methods targeting the heart modulate pain regions in the brain. These methods seem to modulate the key changes that occur in the brain regions and are involved in the cognitive and emotional factors of pain. Thus, the heart is probably a key moderator of pain.

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Researchers at Cornell University on Monday showcased a pair of bio-inspired robotics running on a hydraulic fluid-powered battery. The redox flow battery (RFB) also mimics biological functions, as it releases electrolytic fluids, which dissolve to create energy through chemical reaction.

The first two robots on display are a modular worm and a jellyfish, designed by the Cornell Engineering labs. The batteries powering these systems utilize embodied energy, “an approach that incorporates power sources into the body of a machine, to reduce its weight and cost,” according to the school.

Mechanical and aerospace engineering Professor Rob Shepherd describes the underlying technology thusly: “There are a lot of robots that are powered hydraulically, and we’re the first to use hydraulic fluid as the battery, which reduces the overall weight of the robot, because the battery serves two purposes, providing the energy for the system and providing the force to get it to move.”

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Explore the latest breakthroughs in science! Learn how Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOFs) are changing chemical processes and how naked singularities could unlock the secrets of the universe. Discover how these advancements reshape technology and our understanding of physics. Watch now!
Paper link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s4146…

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction.
00:39 Advancements in Molecular Diffusion within Metal–Organic Frameworks (MOFs)
03:32 The Enigmatic Nature of Naked Singularities in Cosmology.
07:14 The Intersection of Molecular Diffusion and Cosmological Singularities.
09:20 Outro.
09:29 Enjoy.

MUSIC TITLE : Starlight Harmonies.
MUSIC LINK : https://pixabay.com/music/pulses-star…

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Spacecraft powered by electric propulsion could soon be better protected against their own exhaust, thanks to new supercomputer simulations.

Electric propulsion is a more efficient alternative to traditional chemical rockets, and it’s being increasingly used on space missions, starting off with prototypes on NASA’s Deep Space 1 and the European Space Agency’s SMART-1 in 1998 and 2003, respectively, and subsequently finding use on flagship science missions such as NASA’s Dawn and Psyche missions to the asteroid belt. There are even plans to use electric propulsion on NASA’s Lunar Gateway space station.

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Engineered enzymes are poised to have transformative impacts across applications in energy, materials, biotechnology, and medicine. Recently, machine learning has emerged as a useful tool for enzyme engineering. Now, a team of bioengineers and synthetic biologists says they have developed a machine-learning guided platform that can design thousands of new enzymes, predict how they will behave in the real world, and test their performance across multiple chemical reactions.

Their results are published in Nature Communications in an article titled, “Accelerated enzyme engineering by machine-learning guided cell-free expression,” and led by researchers at Stanford University and Northwestern University.

“Enzyme engineering is limited by the challenge of rapidly generating and using large datasets of sequence-function relationships for predictive design,” the researchers wrote. “To address this challenge, we develop a machine learning (ML)-guided platform that integrates cell-free DNA assembly, cell-free gene expression, and functional assays to rapidly map fitness landscapes across protein sequence space and optimize enzymes for multiple, distinct chemical reactions.”

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A new technique involving terahertz light has enabled the creation of chiral states in non-chiral materials, offering exciting possibilities for future technological applications.

Chirality is a key property of matter that plays a crucial role in many biological, chemical, and physical processes. In chiral solids, this property enables unique interactions with chiral molecules and polarized light, making them valuable for applications in catalysis, sensing, and optical devices. However, chirality in these materials is typically fixed during their formation—once a crystal is grown, its left-and right-handed forms, or enantiomers, cannot be switched without melting and recrystallizing it.

Now, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) and the University of Oxford have discovered a way to induce chirality in a non-chiral crystal using terahertz light. This breakthrough allows them to create either left-or right-handed enantiomers on demand. Published in Science, this finding opens exciting new possibilities for studying and controlling complex materials in non-equilibrium conditions.

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A study by the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) demonstrates that the drug WIN55,212–2 protects the brain and reverses early cognitive damage caused by dementia, while also explaining its mechanism of action.

Over two decades of research conducted by the Neurochemistry and Neurodegeneration group at UPV/EHU, led by Dr. Rafael Rodríguez-Puertas, has uncovered a promising pathway for developing therapies aimed at improving memory in cases of cognitive impairment caused by neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive neurological disorder that primarily affects older adults, leading to memory loss, cognitive decline, and behavioral changes. It is the most common cause of dementia. The disease is characterized by the buildup of amyloid plaques and tau tangles in the brain, which disrupt cell function and communication. There is currently no cure, and treatments focus on managing symptoms and improving quality of life.

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