Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: chemistry – Page 27

Scientists have discovered a potentially greener way to produce a crucial industrial chemical used to make many everyday products, from plastics and textiles to antifreeze and disinfectants, according to a study published in Science and co-authored by Tulane University chemical engineer Matthew Montemore.

The breakthrough could significantly reduce from the manufacture of ethylene oxide, which has an estimated $40 billion global market. The current production process requires chlorine, which is toxic and emits millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.

The research team, led by Montemore, as well as Tufts University chemistry professor Charles Sykes and University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) chemical engineering professor Phillip Christopher, found that adding small amounts of nickel atoms to silver catalysts can maintain while eliminating the need for chlorine in the process.

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Finding the right lubricant for the right purpose is a task that is often extremely important in industry. Not only to reduce friction, overheating and wear, but also to save energy. At TU Wien, the research groups of Prof Carsten Gachot (Tribology, Mechanical Engineering) and Prof Dominik Eder (Chemistry) are therefore working together to develop innovative, improved lubricants.

The team has now presented a new type of material with special properties: The lubricant COK-47 is not liquid like lubricating oil, but a powdery solid substance. On a nanoscale, it consists of stacks of atomically thin sheets, like a tiny stack of cards.

When the material comes into contact with , these platelets can slide past each other very easily—a so-called tribofilm is created, which ensures extremely low . This makes COK-47 a highly interesting in .

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Here’s more evidence that your drinking water may be unsafe.

A new analysis out of Sweden reports that disinfecting water with chlorine creates chemical byproducts that can increase the risk of bladder cancer by 33% and colorectal cancer by 15%.

The culprit appears to be trihalomethanes (THMs), which are made up of four compounds — chloroform, bromodichloromethane, dibromochloromethane and bromoform. THMs are found in nearly all public water systems in the US and European Union.

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Chemistry researchers at Case Western Reserve University have identified specific markers that could pave the way for new blood tests to detect diseases.

Almost every disease involves some degree of inflammation, yet standard blood tests cannot precisely identify which organs or tissues are affected.

Now, researchers at Case Western Reserve University have developed an antibody-based method to detect inflammation, which could pave the way for blood tests that identify disease-specific biomarkers. This advancement has potential applications in diagnosing conditions such as heart disease, Alzheimer’s.

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A new study examines how complex chemical mixtures evolve under changing environmental conditions, offering insights into the prebiotic processes that may have led to life. Researchers exposed organic molecules to repeated wet-dry cycles and observed continuous transformations, selective organization, and synchronized population dynamics.

The findings indicate that environmental conditions played a crucial role in fostering the molecular complexity necessary for life’s emergence. By simulating early Earth’s conditions, the team found that instead of reacting randomly, molecules self-organized, evolved over time, and followed predictable patterns.

This challenges the notion that early chemical evolution was purely chaotic. Instead, the study suggests that natural environmental fluctuations guided the formation of increasingly complex molecules, ultimately contributing to the development of life’s fundamental building blocks.

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Researchers at North Carolina State University have demonstrated a new technique that uses light to tune the optical properties of quantum dots—making the process faster, more energy-efficient and environmentally sustainable—without compromising material quality.

The findings are published in the journal Advanced Materials.

“The discovery of quantum dots earned the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2023 because they are used in so many applications,” says Milad Abolhasani, corresponding author of a paper on the work and ALCOA Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at NC State. “We use them in LEDs, , displays, quantum technologies and so on. To tune their , you need to tune the bandgap of quantum dots—the minimum energy required to excite an electron from a bound state to a free-moving state—since this directly determines the color of light they emit.

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Physicists have found a simple and effective way to skip over an energy level in a three-state system, potentially leading to increased quantum computational power with fewer qubits.

Nearly a century ago, Lev Landau, Clarence Zener, Ernst Stückelberg, and Ettore Majorana found a mathematical formula for the probability of jumps between two states in a system whose energy is time-dependent. Their formula has since had countless applications in various systems across physics and chemistry.

Now physicists at Aalto University’s Department of Applied Physics have shown that the jump between different states can be realized in systems with more than two via a virtual transition to an intermediate state and by a linear chirp of the drive frequency. This process can be applied to systems where it is not possible to modify the energy of the levels.

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Researchers at NIMTE have turned metal corrosion into a tool for efficient biomass upgrading, achieving high HMF-to-BHMF conversion rates with a CoCuMW/CF electrode. Their findings offer a low-cost, sustainable solution for bio-based chemical production.

A research team led by Prof. Jian Zhang from the Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has harnessed metal corrosion to develop high-performance electrodes, facilitating the efficient and cost-effective upgrading of bio-based 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF). Their findings were published in Chem Catalysis.

While corrosion is typically associated with material degradation and economic loss, researchers are now investigating its potential for advantageous applications, particularly in biomass upgrading.

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Researchers have created a new AI algorithm called Torque Clustering, which greatly enhances an AI system’s ability to learn and identify patterns in data on its own, without human input.

Researchers have developed a new AI algorithm, Torque Clustering, which more closely mimics natural intelligence than existing methods. This advanced approach enhances AI’s ability to learn and identify patterns in data independently, without human intervention.

Torque Clustering is designed to efficiently analyze large datasets across various fields, including biology, chemistry, astronomy, psychology, finance, and medicine. By uncovering hidden patterns, it can provide valuable insights, such as detecting disease trends, identifying fraudulent activities, and understanding human behavior.

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Despite today’s AI-driven tools for modeling a bioprocess and a host of sensors to track the progress of a bioprocess in action, an expert’s hand still plays a key role in making protein-based drugs. As Hiller put it: “The science (or art!) of preparing very concentrated feed mixtures often relies on the careful order of addition of chemicals, manipulation of pH (up and down) and temperature, and separate preparation of certain concentrated solutions before addition to the bulk feed mixture.”

Culturing cells always included some art, with a bit of superstition thrown in the mix. When I worked in a cell-culture lab in the early 1980s, there were rumors of cells dying when an incubator was moved from one side of a room to another. So people rarely moved anything. Plus, if the media included horse serum, scientists shuddered if a batch came from a different herd. Maybe some of the superstition disappeared over the decades, but some of the art remains, as Hiller confirmed.

Still, science underlies the ongoing attempt to replicate a cell’s natural environment during a bioprocess. Instead of just putting the cells in a vat filled with medium, which is the essence of batch processing, perfusion can add nutrients and remove waste. As Hiller noted, perfusion culture “is somewhat analogous to the processes that occur for cells within an organ in the body.”

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