Lifeboat Foundation

Inside cells, droplets of biomolecules called condensates merge, divide and dissolve. Their dance may regulate vital processes.

Scientists have figured out a cheaper, more efficient way to conduct a chemical reaction at the heart of many biological processes, which may lead to better ways to create biofuels from plants.

Scientists around the world have been trying for years to create biofuels and other bioproducts more cheaply; this study, published today in the journal Scientific Reports, suggests that it is possible to do so.

“The process of converting sugar to alcohol has to be very efficient if you want to have the end product be competitive with fossil fuels,” said Venkat Gopalan, a senior author on the paper and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at The Ohio State University. “The process of how to do that is well-established, but the cost makes it not competitive, even with significant government subsidies. This new development is likely to help lower the cost.”

It’s like the hydrogen bonds found in water, but way stronger.

Similar to the bonds found in water, but way more powerful, this new bond could offer deep insight into the true workings of chemical reactions.

Looks like living cells may have a lot more surprises to offer. 😃

Seeing our world through the eyes of a migratory bird would be a rather spooky experience. Something about their visual system allows them to ‘see’ our planet’s magnetic field, a clever trick of quantum physics and biochemistry that helps them navigate vast distances.

Now, for the first time ever, scientists from the University of Tokyo have directly observed a key reaction hypothesised to be behind birds’, and many other creatures’, talents for sensing the direction of the planet’s poles.

Continue reading “Birds Have a Mysterious ‘Quantum Sense’. For The First Time, Scientists Saw It in Action” »

Summary: Heating up cancer cells as they are being targeted with chemotherapy appears to be a highly effective way of killing them off.

Source: UCL

The study, published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry B, found that “loading” a chemotherapy drug on to tiny magnetic particles that can heat up the cancer cells at the same time as delivering the drug to them was up to 34% more effective at destroying the cancer cells than the chemotherapy drug without added heat.

A team working with Roland Fischer, Professor of Inorganic and Metal-Organic Chemistry at the Technical University Munich (TUM) has developed a highly efficient supercapacitor. The basis of the energy storage device is a novel, powerful and also sustainable graphene hybrid material that has comparable performance data to currently utilized batteries.

Usually, energy storage is associated with batteries and accumulators that provide energy for electronic devices. However, in laptops, cameras, cellphones or vehicles, so-called supercapacitors are increasingly installed these days.

Unlike batteries they can quickly store large amounts of energy and put it out just as fast. If, for instance, a train brakes when entering the station, supercapacitors are storing the energy and provide it again when the train needs a lot of energy very quickly while starting up.

Researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore have developed a new type of adhesive that could lead to a different form of 3D printing.

Magnetocuring

Continue reading “Magnetocuring Technology Could Point To A New Form Of 3D Printing” »

Discovery of liquid glass sheds light on the old scientific problem of the glass transition: An interdisciplinary team of researchers from the University of Konstanz has uncovered a new state of matter, liquid glass, with previously unknown structural elements—new insights into the nature of glass and its transitions.

While glass is a truly ubiquitous material that we use on a daily basis, it also represents a major scientific conundrum. Contrary to what one might expect, the true nature of glass remains something of a mystery, with scientific inquiry into its chemical and physical properties still underway. In chemistry and physics, the term glass itself is a mutable concept: It includes the substance we know as window glass, but it may also refer to a range of other materials with properties that can be explained by reference to glass-like behavior, including, for instance, metals, plastics, proteins, and even biological cells.

While it may give the impression, glass is anything but conventionally solid. Typically, when a material transitions from a liquid to a solid state the molecules line up to form a crystal pattern. In glass, this does not happen. Instead, the molecules are effectively frozen in place before crystallization happens. This strange and disordered state is characteristic of glasses across different systems and scientists are still trying to understand how exactly this metastable state forms.

“It’s all thanks to the sacrifice of the hawk moth Manduca sexta, which is an extremely sensitive smeller, like other moths. When a moth picks up a scent, like that of a flower or a potential mate, the odors bind to proteins inside the antennae, and these proteins in turn activate neurons dedicated to specific chemicals. That means the antennae are producing electrical signals that researchers can tap into. In order to create a sort of moth-drone cyborg, mechanical engineer Melanie Anderson of the University of Washington cold-anesthetized a hawk moth in a freezer before removing its antennae. Then she cut both ends off of a single antenna and attached each to an itty-bitty wire hooked up to an electrical circuit. “A lot like a heart monitor, which measures the electrical voltage that is produced by the heart when it beats, we measure the electrical signal produced by the antenna when it smells odor,” says Anderson, lead author on a recent paper in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics describing the research. “And very similarly, the antenna will produce these spike-shaped pulses in response to patches of odor.””

Researchers slap a living antenna on a drone to give the machine an insanely keen sense of smell. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the “Smellicopter.”