Google’s X “moonshot factory” this week announced its latest graduate. Heritable Agriculture is a data-and machine learning-driven startup aiming to improve how crops are grown.
As the firm noted in an announcement post published Tuesday, plants are incredibly efficient and impressive systems. “Plants are solar powered, carbon negative, self-assembling machines that feed on sunlight and water,” Heritable wrote.
Yet agriculture puts a massive strain on the planet and its resources, accounting for around 25% of anthropogenic greenhouse emissions. It’s the planet’s largest consumer of groundwater and can lead to soil erosion and water pollution via pesticides, fertilizers, and other chemicals.
The structural design of molecular machines and motors endows them with externally controlled directional motion at the molecular scale. Molecular machines based on both interlocked and non-interlocked molecules and driven by a variety of external stimuli such as light, electrical-or thermal energy, and chemical-or redox processes have been reported. With the field moving forward, they were incorporated into surfaces and interfaces to realize amplified directional molecular motion at the nanoscale which can be applied in the control of macroscopic material properties. More recently, molecular motors and molecular machines based on interlocked molecules have been organized into three dimensional materials to expand their functionality in the solid state and enrich their applicability.
Cis-trans photoisomerization is a key process for many processes in biology and materials science, but only careful and time-consuming quantum chemistry methods can describe such reaction in detail. Here, a predictive tool is presented requiring few and affordable calculations, evaluating the efficiency of paradigmatic and modified photoswitches.
Organic photoredox catalysts enable diverse chemical transformations, but predicting their activity is challenging due to complex properties. Now, a two-step data-driven approach is introduced for targeted organic photoredox catalysts synthesis and reaction optimization. Using Bayesian optimization, promising catalysts can be efficiently identified, yielding competitive results with iridium catalysts.
Computational chemistry has remained largely inaccessible to the experimental chemistry community. Here we report the VIRTUAL CHEMIST, a software suite free for academic use, that enables organic chemists without expertise in computational chemistry to perform virtual screening experiments for asymmetric catalyst discovery and design.
A groundbreaking discovery by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) has challenged a long-standing rule in organic chemistry known as Bredt’s Rule. Established nearly a century ago, this rule stated that certain types of specific organic molecules could not be synthesized due to their instability. UCLA’s team’s findings open the door to new molecular structures that were previously deemed unattainable, potentially revolutionizing fields such as pharmaceutical research.
To grasp the significance of this breakthrough, it’s helpful to first understand some basics of organic chemistry. Organic chemistry primarily deals with molecules made of carbon, such as those found in living organisms. Among these, certain molecules known as olefins or alkenes feature double bonds between two carbon atoms. These double bonds create a specific geometry: the atoms and atom groups attached to them are generally in the same plane, making these structures fairly rigid.
In 1924, German chemist Julius Bredt formulated a rule regarding certain molecular structures called bridged bicyclic molecules. These molecules have a complex structure with multiple rings sharing common atoms, akin to two intertwined bracelet loops. Bredt’s Rule dictates that these molecules cannot have a double bond at a position known as the bridgehead, where the two rings meet. The rule is based on geometric reasons: a double bond at the bridgehead would create such significant structural strain that the molecule would become unstable or even impossible to synthesize.
The fact that the cold, dry Mars of today had flowing rivers and lakes several billion years ago has puzzled scientists for decades. Now, Harvard researchers think they have a good explanation for a warmer, wetter ancient Mars.
Building on prior theories describing the Mars of yore as a hot again, cold again place, a team led by researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have determined the chemical mechanisms by which ancient Mars was able to sustain enough warmth in its early days to host water, and possibly life.
“It’s been such a puzzle that there was liquid water on Mars, because Mars is further from the sun, and also, the sun was fainter early on,” said Danica Adams, NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow and lead author of the new paper in Nature Geoscience.
Muon spin rotation (µSR) spectroscopy is a powerful technique that helps to study the behavior of materials at the atomic level. It involves using muons—subatomic particles similar to protons but with a lighter mass. When introduced into a material, muons interact with local magnetic fields, providing unique insights into the material’s structure and dynamics, especially for highly reactive species such as radicals.
In a new study, a team of researchers led by Associate Professor Shigekazu Ito, from the School of Materials and Chemical Technology, Institute of Science Tokyo, Japan, utilized µSR spectroscopy to investigate the regioselective muoniation of peri-trifluoromethylated 12-phosphatetraphene 1. This compound is a phosphorus congener (a variant of a common chemical structure).
The process of µSR spectroscopy initially involves the formation of a muonium (Mu), which is formed when a positively charged muon (µ+) captures an electron (e–). This process continues as the reaction of a muonium (Mu = [µ+e–]) with the phosphorus-containing compound, resulting in the formation of a muoniated radical at the phosphorus site.
Nanoscale ‘diamond rings’ provide unconventional giant ’magnetoresistance‘ for the development of new quantum devices
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In recent years, technological advancements have made it possible to create synthetic diamonds that have similar physical and chemical properties to natural diamonds. While synthetic diamonds are not considered “fake” or “imitation,” they are often more affordable than their natural counterparts, making them a popular choice for those who want the beauty of a diamond without the high cost. Synthetic diamonds are also often more environmentally friendly, as they do not require the same level of mining and extraction as natural diamonds.
In its pristine state, diamond is a non-conductive material, devoid of free electrons or “holes” that can facilitate electrical conduction (Figure 1). However, by introducing boron atoms into the diamond crystal lattice, its optical and electrical properties can be significantly altered. As the concentration of boron is increased, the diamond’s color shifts from its characteristic clear hue to a delicate shade of blue, while its electrical conductivity transforms from an insulator to a semiconductor.
Further increases in the boron content result in a lustrous blue shade that resembles the sheen of metallic surfaces and eventually culminates in a deep, ebony coloration. Such heavily boron-doped diamond (BDD) is also as electrically conducting as some metals, and at low temperatures, exhibits superconductivity, allowing electrical conduction with no resistance.