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Category: chemistry – Page 199

Dr. Robert Floyd, Ph.D. — Executive Secretary, Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization

Dr. Robert Floyd, Ph.D. is Executive Secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO — https://www.ctbto.org/), the organization tasked with building up the verification regime of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, a multilateral treaty opened for signature in 1996 by which states agree to ban all nuclear explosions in all environments, for military or civilian purposes.

Prior to joining CTBTO, Dr. Floyd was the Director General of the Australian Safeguards and Non-proliferation Office (ASNO), where he was responsible for Australia’s implementation of and compliance with various international treaties and conventions including the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material (CPPNM) and the Chemical Weapons Convention.

During his time as Director General of ASNO, Dr. Floyd also chaired the advisory group to the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency on safeguards implementation (SAGSI), co-chaired the Preparatory Committee for the review of the amended CPPNM, co-chaired one of the working groups of the International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification, was the lead official for Australia in the Nuclear Security Summit process, and chaired the Asia-Pacific Safeguards Network.

Prior to his appointment with ASNO, Dr. Floyd served for more than seven years in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet where he held a number of senior executive positions providing advice to the Prime Minister on policy issues covering counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation, emergency management, and homeland and border security.

Dr. Floyd was awarded a commemorative medal on the 30th anniversary of Kazakhstan’s independence in recognition of the strong and enduring partnership between the CTBTO and Kazakhstan on nuclear non-proliferation, disarmament, peace, and security. Dr. Floyd also received the Australian Nuclear Association (ANA) award for 2021 in recognition of his outstanding leadership role as Director General of the ASNO.

With a Ph.D. in population ecology, Dr. Floyd spent the first 20 years of his career as a research scientist with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO).

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A user-friendly platform for virtual exploration of chemical reactions

A new online platform to explore computationally calculated chemical reaction pathways has been released, allowing for in-depth understanding and design of chemical reactions.

Advances in have lead to the discovery of new reaction pathways for the synthesis of high-value compounds. Computational chemistry generates much data, and the process of organizing and visualizing this data is vital to be able to utilize it for future research.

A team of researchers from Hokkaido University, led by Professor Keisuke Takahashi at the Faculty of Chemistry and Professor Satoshi Maeda at the Institute for Chemical Reaction Design and Discovery (WPI-ICReDD), have developed a centralized, interactive, and user-friendly platform, Searching Chemical Action and Network (SCAN), to explore reaction pathways generated by computational chemistry. Their research was published in the journal Digital Discovery.

Unraveling a Quantum Enigma: How Tantalum Enhances Qubit Performance

Whether it’s baking a cake, constructing a building, or creating a quantum device, the caliber of the finished product is greatly influenced by the components or fundamental materials used. In their pursuit to enhance the performance of superconducting qubits, which form the bedrock of quantum computers, scientists have been probing different foundational materials aiming to extend the coherent lifetimes of these qubits.

Coherence time serves as a metric to determine the duration a qubit can preserve quantum data, making it a key performance indicator. A recent revelation by researchers showed that the use of tantalum in superconducting qubits enhances their functionality. However, the underlying reasons remained unknown – until now.

Scientists from the Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN), the National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), the Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage (C2QA), and Princeton University investigated the fundamental reasons that these qubits perform better by decoding the chemical profile of tantalum.

Dr. Brad Ringeisen, Ph.D. — Executive Director, Innovative Genomics Institute (IGI)

Is the Executive Director of the Innovative Genomics Institute (https://innovativegenomics.org/people/brad-ringeisen/), an organization founded by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Jennifer Doudna, on the University of California, Berkeley campus, whose mission is to bridge revolutionary gene editing tool development to affordable and accessible solutions in human health and climate.

Dr. Ringeisen is a physical chemist with a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from Wake Forest University, a pioneer in the field of live cell printing, and an experienced administrator of scientific research and product development.

Before joining the IGI, Dr. Ringeisen was Director of the Biological Technologies Office at DARPA, where he managed a division working at the cutting edges of biology, physical sciences and engineering. Programs in his office included research in genome editing, epigenetics, neurotechnology, food security and biomanufacturing, as well as diagnostics and therapeutics development.

Prior to DARPA, Dr. Ringeisen ran his own research group at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory as the head of the Bioenergy and Biofabrication Section where he oversaw diverse research programs including the development and application of laser-assisted printing approaches to biology, development of organs-on-a-chip, microbial energy harvesting and extracellular electron transfer as well as microbial discovery and microbiome characterization.

Dr. Ringeisen now uses his amazing expertise to guide IGI’s scientific and development strategy, but his duties also include promoting entrepreneurship, working with biotech investors and companies to ensure commercial translation of technologies, donor outreach and development, scientific project development and team building, communication with campus leadership, personnel management and mentoring, program management, and reporting and engagement with both Governance and Scientific Advisory Boards.

New drug delivery method can reverse senescence of stem cells

As we age, our bodies change and degenerate over time in a process called senescence. Stem cells, which have the unique ability to change into other cell types, also experience senescence, which presents an issue when trying to maintain cell cultures for therapeutic use. The biomolecules produced by these cell cultures are important for various medicines and treatments, but once the cells enter a senescent state they stop producing them, and worse, they instead produce biomolecules antagonistic to these therapeutics.

While there are methods to remove older cells in a culture, the capture rate is low. Instead of removing older cells, preventing the cells from entering in the first place is a better strategy, according to Ryan Miller, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Hyunjoon Kong (M-CELS leader/EIRH/RBTE), a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering.

“We work with , that are derived from fat tissue, and produce biomolecules that are essential for therapeutics, so we want to keep the cell cultures healthy. In a clinical setting, the ideal way to prevent senescence would be to condition the environment that these stem cells are in, to control the oxidative state,” said Miller. “With , you can pull them the cells out of this senescent state and make them behave like a healthy stem cell.”

This Plasma Engine Could Get Humans to Mars on 100 Million Times Less Fuel

Year 2015 😗😁

Physicists in France have figured out how to optimise an advanced type of electric rocket thruster that uses a stream of plasma travelling at 72,420 km/h (45,000 mph) to propel spacecraft forward, allowing them to run on 100 million times less fuel than conventional chemical rockets.

Known as a Hall thruster, these engines have been operating in space since 1971, and are now routinely flown on communication satellites and space probes to adjust their orbits when needed. These things are awesome, and scientists want to use them to get humans to Mars, except there’s one — rather large — problem: the current lifespan of a Hall thruster is around 10,000 operation hours, and that’s way too short for most space exploration missions, which require upwards of 50,000 hours.

Hall thrusters work just like regular ion thrusters, which blast a stream of charged ions from an anode to a cathode (positively and negatively charged electrodes), where they get neutralised by a beam of electrons. This causes the elections to shoot one way, and the attached rocket to shoot another, propelling it forward.

Artificially cultured brains improve processing of time series data, shows study

The brain comprises billions of interconnected neurons that transmit and process information and allow it to act as a highly sophisticated information processing system. To make it as efficient as possible, the brain develops multiple modules tasked with different functions, like perception and body control. Within a single area, neurons form multiple clusters and function as modules—an important trait that has remained essentially unchanged throughout evolution.

Still, many unanswered questions remain regarding how the specific structure of the brain’s network, such as the modular structure, works together with the physical and chemical properties of neurons to process information.

Reservoir computing is a inspired by the brain’s powers, where the comprises a large number of interconnected nodes that transform input signals into a more complex representation.

Oxygen restriction helps fast-aging lab mice live longer

For the first time, researchers have shown that reduced oxygen intake, or “oxygen restriction,” is associated with longer lifespan in lab mice, highlighting its anti-aging potential. Robert Rogers of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, US, and colleagues present these findings in a study published May 23rd in the open access journal PLOS Biology.

Research efforts to extend healthy lifespan have identified a number of chemical compounds and other interventions that show promising effects in mammalian lab animals— for instance, the drug metformin or . Oxygen restriction has also been linked to longer lifespan in yeast, nematodes, and fruit flies. However, its effects in mammals have been unknown.

To explore the anti-aging potential of oxygen restriction in mammals, Rogers and colleagues conducted lab experiments with mice bred to age more quickly than other mice while showing classic signs of mammalian aging throughout their bodies. The researchers compared the lifespans of mice living at normal atmospheric oxygen levels (about 21%) to the lifespans of mice that, at 4 weeks of age, had been moved to a living environment with a lower proportion of oxygen (11%—similar to that experienced at an altitude of 5,000 meters).

New mass spectrometry combo offers promise for tapping nature’s unknown chemical universe

The universe is awash in billions of possible chemicals. But even with a bevy of high-tech instruments, scientists have determined the chemical structures of just a small fraction of those compounds, maybe 1%.

Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are taking aim at the other 99%, creating new ways to learn more about a vast sea of unknown compounds. There may be cures for disease, new approaches for tackling climate change, or new chemical or biological threats lurking in the chemical universe.

The work is part of an initiative known as m/q, or “m over q” —shorthand for mass divided by charge, which signifies one of the ways that scientists measure chemical properties in the world of .