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Category: chemistry – Page 159

How nanobots and nanomedicine will improve our health

Nanotechnology sounds like a futuristic development, but we already have it in the form of CPU manufacturing. More advanced nanotech could be used to create independent mobile entities like nanobots. One of the main challenges is selecting the right chemicals, elements, and structures that actually perform a desired task. Currently, we create more chemically oriented than computationally oriented nanobots, but we still have to deal with the quantum effects at tiny scale.

One of the most important applications of nanotechnology is to create nanomedicine, where the technology interacts with biology to help resolve problems. Of course, the nanobots have to be compatible with the body (e.g. no poisonous elements if they were broken down, etc).

We dive into an interesting study on creating nanobarrels to deliver a particular payload within the bloodstream (currently in animals, but eventually in humans). This study is able to deliver RNA to cancer cells that shuts them down, without affecting the rest of the body. This type of application is why the market for nanotechnology keeps growing and will have a substantial impact on medicine in the future.

#nanotech #nanobots #medicine.

DNA origami nanobots – The University of Sydney Nano Institute.
https://www.sydney.edu.au/nano/our-research/research-program…obots.html.

ASU scientists have successfully programmed nanorobots to shrink tumors by cutting off their blood supply.

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Extracellular Matrix-Based Biomaterials for Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering

Regenerative medicine and tissue engineering strategies have made remarkable progress in remodeling, replacing, and regenerating damaged cardiovascular tissues. The design of three-dimensional (3D) scaffolds with appropriate biochemical and mechanical characteristics is critical for engineering tissue-engineered replacements. The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a dynamic scaffolding structure characterized by tissue-specific biochemical, biophysical, and mechanical properties that modulates cellular behavior and activates highly regulated signaling pathways. In light of technological advancements, biomaterial-based scaffolds have been developed that better mimic physiological ECM properties, provide signaling cues that modulate cellular behavior, and form functional tissues and organs.

OpenAI forms new team to assess “catastrophic risks” of AI

OpenAI’s new preparedness team will address the potential dangers associated with AI, including nuclear threats.

OpenAI is forming a new team to mitigate the “catastrophic risks” associated with AI. In an update on Thursday.

The team will also work to mitigate “chemical, biological, and radiological threats,” as well as “autonomous replication,” or the act of an AI replicating itself. Some other risks that the preparedness team will address include AI’s ability to trick humans, as well as cybersecurity threats.

We believe that frontier AI… More.

The preparedness team will address several potential threats.

Slow-moving quasiparticles make the fastest semiconductor in the world

It could improve limits on information transfer speed but is made of a super expensive ingredient that might make it financially infeasible.

Researchers at Columbia University in the US have developed the fastest and most efficient superconductor that works at room temperature, a press release said. The superconductor is made of superatomic material only known by its chemical formula, Re6Se8Cl2.

In a short span of time, silicon has become an integral part of most modern-day equipment ranging from cell phones to cars, computers to smart homes. However, scientists have found that silicon will soon reach its limits. This is because of the atomic structure of the semiconductor.

Adapting Ritalin to tackle cocaine abuse

Cocaine use continues to be a public health problem, yet despite concerted efforts, no drugs have been approved to resolve cocaine addiction. Research suggests that the attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder drug methylphenidate (MPH; Ritalin) could serve as a cocaine-replacement therapy, but clinical results have been mixed. Although several labs have produced MPH derivatives for testing, parts of the molecule remained chemically inaccessible. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Central Science have cleared that hurdle.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 5 million Americans reported actively using cocaine in 2020, and almost 25,000 Americans died of a cocaine-related overdose in 2021. Although small-molecule drugs have proven effective in treating other drug addictions—for example, methadone as a therapy for heroin abuse—no such medication exists for cocaine abuse.

MPH has been considered a potential treatment because it behaves similarly to the illicit drug, increasing dopamine levels in the brain by blocking dopamine reuptake. Additionally, have shown that MPH has a lower risk of abuse than cocaine.

JWST captures immense, rare explosion

In March of this year, astronomers detected a brilliant burst of gamma rays more than a million times more luminous than our entire galaxy. It was the second brightest gamma-ray burst (GRB) ever detected and lasted some 200 seconds.

A study published today in Nature reports that this object was a collision of neutron stars one million light-years distant. What’s more, thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers were able to see that the blast also served as a cosmic chemical factory, forging some of the rarest chemicals found on Earth.

“The most robust evidence that the merger of two neutron stars caused this burst comes from its kilonova,” says lead author Andrew Levan of Radboud University in the Netherlands, referring to the optical and infrared light coming from the uber-sized explosion.

Physics has long failed to explain life — but we’re testing a groundbreaking new theory in the lab

Modern physics can explain everything from the spin of the tiniest particle to the behaviour of entire galaxy clusters. But it can’t explain life. There’s simply no formula to explain the difference between a living lump of matter and a dead one. Life seems to just mysteriously “emerge” from non-living parts, such as elementary particles.

Assembly theory is a bold new approach to explaining life on a fundamental scale, with its framework recently published in Nature. It assumes that complexity and information (such as DNA) are at the heart of it. The theory provides a a way to understand how these concepts emerge in chemical systems.

Emergence is a word physicists use to explain something that is bigger than the sum of its parts – such as how water can feel wet when individual water molecules don’t. Wetness is an emergent property.

Norepinephrine Chemistry’s Electrical Signals Tracked in Conscious Human Brains

The results of a human study carried out by an international research team have provided valuable new insights into the activity of the brain’s noradrenaline (NA) system, which has been a longtime target for medications to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, depression, and anxiety. The study employed what the researchers claim is a groundbreaking methodology, developed to record real-time chemical activity from standard clinical electrodes implanted into the brain routinely for epilepsy monitoring.

The results offer up new insights into brain chemistry, which could have implications for a wide array of medical conditions, and also demonstrate use of the new strategy for acquiring data from the living human brain.

“Our group is describing the first ‘fast’ neurochemistry recorded by voltammetry from conscious humans,” said Read Montague, PhD, the VTC Vernon Mountcastle research professor at Virginia Tech, and director of the Center for Human Neuroscience Research and the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory of the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC. “This is a big step forward and the methodological approach was implemented completely in humans – after more than 11 years of extensive development.” Montague is senior, and co-corresponding author of the researchers’ published paper in Current Biology, which is titled “Noradrenaline tracks emotional modulation of attention in human amygdala.” In their paper the authors concluded, “By showing that neuromodulator estimates can be obtained from depth electrodes already in standard clinical use in the conscious human brain, our study opens the door to a new area of research on the neuromodulatory basis of human health and disease.”

Tucatinib plus Trastuzumab Effective in HER2+ Biliary Cancer

Next generation sequencing is now essential for patients with metastatic biliary cancer given the identification of targetable pathways, including fibroblast growth factor receptor and isocitrate dehydrogenase 1, for which there are approved treatments. HER2 has emerged as a target in metastatic biliary cancer, with studies finding 5% to 15% of cancers positive for overexpression or gene amplification.

Investigators now report results of an industry-sponsored, phase 2 basket study (SGNTUC-019) testing the combination of tucatinib — a HER2 tyrosine kinase inhibitor — and trastuzumab in patients with HER2-positive advanced biliary cancer that progressed on first-line gemcitabine/cisplatin–based chemotherapy. Local testing for HER2 was permissible via immunohistochemistry, fluorescence in situ hybridization, or next generation sequencing of tissue or blood.

Of 30 patients, half were men, 77% were Asian, half had gallbladder primaries, and half had intrahepatic or extrahepatic cholangiocarcinomas. During a median follow-up of 10.8 months, the primary endpoint of antitumor response rate was 46.7%, and duration of response was 6 months. The median progression-free survival was 5.5 months; median overall survival was 15.5 months. Treatment-related grade 3 or 4 serious adverse events were uncommon and attributable to tucatinib in 10% of patients and to trastuzumab in 6.7%; grade 3 diarrhea occurred in 6.6%.

How a Piece of Roman Glass Became a Photonic Crystal

As it lay buried for two millennia, a fragment of glass gradually acquired a nanostructured surface that reflects light like a butterfly’s wings.

The ancient Roman city of Aquileia was situated close to Italy’s modern border with Slovenia. Over the centuries since its founding in 181 BCE, Aquileia suffered floods, earthquakes, sieges, and sackings. Little remains of this ancient city of 100,000 inhabitants, but archaeologists have uncovered relics from that early period. One such specimen is a glass shard discovered in 2012 on farmland in the outskirts of the modern city of Aquileia. The shard is striking in its coloration: an iridescent surface of deep blue and shiny gold atop a substrate of dark green. Now, after subjecting the shard to a string of chemical and physical tests, Giulia Guidetti of Tufts University, Massachusetts, and her collaborators have identified the origin of the shard’s appearance: a chemical transformation of the amorphous glass into a nanolayered material, a photonic crystal [1].

Glassmaking was invented independently by several Bronze Age civilizations (3300 BCE to 1,200 BCE), including those of ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley. Glass beads, vessels, and figurines remained luxury items until the Romans invented the technique of glassblowing in the first century CE. As blowing technology spread, glassware became cheaper and faster to produce in a greater variety of shapes. Items manufactured in the Roman Empire included jars for cosmetics, jugs for condiments, and cups for wine.