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Archive for the ‘chemistry’ category: Page 145

Jun 12, 2022

New Class of Atom Cooled to Near Absolute Zero

Posted by in categories: chemistry, particle physics, quantum physics

Researchers have cooled indium atoms to a temperature close to 1 mK, making indium the first group-III atom to be made ultracold.

At temperatures near to absolute zero, atoms move slower than a three-toed sloth, allowing physicists to gain unprecedented experimental control over these systems. New phases of matter can form when atoms become ultracold and quirky quantum properties can emerge, yet much of the periodic table remains unexplored in the ultracold regime. Now, Travis Nicholson of the National University of Singapore and colleagues have successfully cooled indium to close to 1 mK [1]. Indium is the first “main group-III” atom—a specific group of transition metals on the periodic table—to be cooled to such a low temperature. The demonstration opens the door to studying systems with properties previously unexplored by ultracold physicists.

For their experiments, Nicholson and colleagues used a magneto-optical trap—a standard tool for trapping and cooling atoms. But because this was the first attempt at making indium atoms ultracold, the team had to make their own version of the apparatus rather than using one designed to cool other atoms. “The systems used for this research are highly customized to specific atoms,” Nicholson says. So every part of the setup from designing the laser systems to picking the screws had to be “hashed out by us.” With their custom setup, the group loaded 500,000,000 indium atoms into the trap using a laser beam and then cooled them.

Jun 12, 2022

Cartographers of the Brain: Mapping the Connectome

Posted by in categories: chemistry, mapping, neuroscience

Scientists are attempting to map the wiring of the nearly 100 billion neurons in the human brain. Are we close to uncovering the mysteries of the mind or are we only at the beginning of a new frontier?

PARTICIPANTS: Deanna Barch, Jeff Lichtman, Nim Tottenham, David Van Essen.
MODERATOR: John Hockenberry.
Original program date: JUNE 4, 2017

Continue reading “Cartographers of the Brain: Mapping the Connectome” »

Jun 10, 2022

Synapse Study Explores the “Dark Matter of the Brain”

Posted by in categories: biological, chemistry, cosmology, neuroscience

They are part of the brain of almost every animal species, yet they remain usually invisible even under the electron microscope. “Electrical synapses are like the dark matter of the brain,” says Alexander Borst, director at the MPI for Biological Intelligence, in foundation (i.f). Now a team from his department has taken a closer look at this rarely explored brain component: In the brain of the fruit fly Drosophila, they were able to show that electrical synapses occur in almost all brain areas and can influence the function and stability of individual nerve cells.

Neurons communicate via synapses, small contact points at which chemical messengers transmit a stimulus from one cell to the next. We may remember this from biology class. However, that is not the whole story. In addition to the commonly known chemical synapses, there is a second, little-known type of synapse: the electrical synapse. “Electrical synapses are much rarer and are hard to detect with current methods. That’s why they have hardly been researched so far,” explains Georg Ammer, who has long been fascinated by these hidden cell connections. “In most animal brains, we therefore don’t know even basic things, such as where exactly electrical synapses occur or how they influence brain activity.”

An electrical synapse connects two neurons directly, allowing the electrical current that neurons use to communicate, to flow from one cell to the next without a detour. Except in echinoderms, this particular type of synapse occurs in the brain of every animal species studied so far. “Electrical synapses must therefore have important functions: we just do not know which ones!” says Georg Ammer.

Jun 10, 2022

Whole human genome sequencing for $100

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, computing, genetics, health

“When the Human Genome Project began in 1990, it had a projected budget of $3 billion. […] Now, one company claims to have achieved the major milestone of whole genome sequencing for just $100.”


Ultima Genomics, a biotech company based in California, has emerged from stealth mode with a new high-throughput, low-cost sequencing platform that it claims can deliver a $100 genome.

When the Human Genome Project began in 1990, it had a projected budget of $3 billion. Some researchers believed it would take centuries to map all 20,000+ genes and to determine the sequence of chemical base pairs making up DNA, though in the end it took 13 years. Since then, genome sequencing has undergone technology and cost improvements at a rate faster than Moore’s Law (a long-term trend in the computer industry that involves a doubling of performance every two years). What used to require billions of dollars and many years of work is now several orders of magnitude cheaper and possible in a matter of hours.

Continue reading “Whole human genome sequencing for $100” »

Jun 9, 2022

Earth-abundant solar pixels found to produce hydrogen for weeks

Posted by in categories: chemistry, energy

Devices made of readily available oxide and carbon-based materials can produce clean hydrogen from water over weeks — according to new research (Nature Materials, “Long-term solar water and CO2 splitting with photoelectrochemical BiOI–BiVO 4 tandems”).

The findings, co-led by Dr Virgil Andrei, a Research Fellow at St John’s College, University of Cambridge, with academics at Imperial College London, could help overcome one of the key issues in solar fuel production, where current earth-abundant light-absorbing materials are limited through either their performance or stability.

Multiple BiOI and BiOI-BiVO 4 pixels on a device. (Image: Dr Virgil Andrei)

Jun 8, 2022

Researchers say they’ve found the chemistry that gave rise to life on Earth

Posted by in categories: chemistry, space

Researchers believe they’ve found the chemical process that gave rise to RNA, and not only is it remarkably simple, it could have happened on Mars, too.

Jun 7, 2022

Flame-Throwing Tractor Needs No Chemicals to Get Rid of Weeds

Posted by in categories: chemistry, energy, engineering, food

Organic farmers are returning to an unusual tool in the fight against weeds — fire. Called ‘flame weeding’ the process involves either using a small, handheld flamethrower, or installing a pretty hardcore row of flamethrowers onto the front of a tractor and slowly driving through fields of crops singeing the weeds in between the rows.

Flame Engineering, Inc. specializes in developing and selling flame weeding equipment and says the technique is rooted in science. The company’s website explains that the technique is not about blasting the weeds to kingdom come, but rather about focusing on destroying cell structure.

Continue reading “Flame-Throwing Tractor Needs No Chemicals to Get Rid of Weeds” »

Jun 7, 2022

New trove of data from Europe’s Gaia mission will lead to best Milky Way map ever

Posted by in categories: chemistry, space

This time, astronomers will see all the way to the Milky Way’s edge.


The upcoming release will add some previously unavailable information, including about the chemical compositions, ages and masses of millions of stars.

Related: 4 big Milky Way mysteries the next Gaia mission data dump may solve.

Jun 6, 2022

New NASA spacecraft could survive a hellish descent on Venus

Posted by in categories: chemistry, space

NASA will launch a mission that will both fly by Venus and descend through its harsh atmosphere in 2029. Called DAVINCI, the Deep Atmosphere Venus Investigation of Noble gases, Chemistry and Imaging mission will be the first to study Venus through both flybys and descent.

The spacecraft is expected to explore the layered Venusian atmosphere and reach its surface by June 2031. The DAVINCI mission will be able to capture data about Venus that scientists have been eager to measure since the early 1980s.

Only two NASA missions have previously visited the second planet from our sun – Pioneer in 1978 and Magellan in the early ’90s.

Jun 4, 2022

Novel method for early disease detection using DNA droplets

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, chemistry, computing, nanotechnology

Aqueous droplet formation by liquid-liquid phase separation (or coacervation) in macromolecules is a hot topic in life sciences research. Of these various macromolecules that form droplets, DNA is quite interesting because it is predictable and programmable, which are qualities useful in nanotechnology. Recently, the programmability of DNA was used to construct and regulate DNA droplets formed by coacervation of sequence designed DNAs.

A group of scientists at Tokyo University of Technology (Tokyo Tech) led by Prof. Masahiro Takinoue has developed a computational DNA droplet with the ability to recognize specific combinations of chemically synthesized microRNAs (miRNAs) that act as biomarkers of tumors. Using these miRNAs as molecular input, the can give a DNA logic computing output through physical DNA droplet phase separation. Prof. Takinoue explains the need for such studies, “The applications of DNA droplets have been reported in cell-inspired microcompartments. Even though regulate their functions by combining biosensing with molecular logical computation, no literature is available on integration of DNA droplet with molecular computing.” Their findings were published in Advanced Functional Materials.

Developing this DNA droplet required a series of experiments. First, they designed three types of Y-shaped DNA nanostructures called Y-motifs A, B, and C with 3 sticky ends to make A, B, and C DNA droplets. Typically, similar droplets band together automatically while to join dissimilar droplets a special “linker” molecule is required. So, they used linker molecules to join the A droplet with the B and C droplets; these linker molecules were called AB and AC linkers, respectively.