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Category: chemistry – Page 287

The US power grid needs all of support it can get. Sad that some would stand in the way of progress.

There is no love lost between the notorious Koch brothers and the nation’s railroad industry, and the relationship is about to get a lot unlovelier. A massive new, first-of-its-kind renewable energy transmission line is taking shape in the Midwest, which will cut into the Koch family’s fossil energy business. It has a good chance of succeeding where others have stalled, because it will bury the cables under existing rights-of-way using railroad rights-of-way and avoid stirring up the kind of opposition faced by conventional above-ground lines.

The Koch brothers and their family-owned company, Koch Industries, have earned a reputation for attempting to throttle the nation’s renewable energy sector. That makes sense, considering that the diversified, multinational firm owns thousands of miles of oil, gas, and chemical pipelines criss-crossing the US (and sometimes breaking down) in addition to other major operations that depend on rail and highway infrastructure.

Koch Industries owns fleets of rail cars, but one thing it doesn’t have is its own railroad right-of-way. That’s a bit ironic, considering that railroads provided the initial kickstart for the family business back in the 1920s, but that is where trouble has been brewing today.

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Material scientists have developed a fast method for producing epsilon iron oxide and demonstrated its promise for next-generation communications devices. Its outstanding magnetic properties make it one of the most coveted materials, such as for the upcoming 6G generation of communication devices and for durable magnetic recording. The work was published in the Journal of Materials Chemistry C, a journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Iron (III) is one of the most widespread oxides on Earth. It is mostly found as the mineral hematite (or alpha , α-Fe2O3). Another stable and common modification is maghemite (or gamma modification, γ-Fe2O3). The former is widely used in industry as a red pigment, and the latter as a magnetic recording medium. The two modifications differ not only in crystalline structure (alpha-iron oxide has hexagonal syngony and gamma-iron oxide has cubic syngony) but also in magnetic properties.

In addition to these forms of iron oxide (III), there are more exotic modifications such as epsilon-, beta-, zeta-, and even glassy. The most attractive phase is epsilon iron oxide, ε-Fe2O3. This modification has an extremely high coercive force (the ability of the material to resist an external magnetic field). The strength reaches 20 kOe at room temperature, which is comparable to the parameters of magnets based on expensive rare-earth elements. Furthermore, the material absorbs in the sub-terahertz frequency range (100−300 GHz) through the effect of natural ferromagnetic resonance. The frequency of such resonance is one of the criteria for the use of materials in wireless communications devices—the 4G standard uses megahertz and 5G uses tens of gigahertz. There are plans to use the sub-terahertz range as a working range in the sixth generation (6G) , which is being prepared for active introduction in our lives from the early 2030s.

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The new system streamlines the process of fermenting plant sugar to fuel by helping yeast survive industrial toxins.

More corn is grown in the United States than any other crop, but we only use a small part of the plant for food and fuel production; once people have harvested the kernels, the inedible leaves, stalks and cobs are left over. If this plant matter, called corn stover, could be efficiently fermented into ethanol the way corn kernels are, stover could be a large-scale, renewable source of fuel.

“Stover is produced in huge amounts, on the scale of petroleum,” said Whitehead Institute Member and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) biology professor Gerald Fink. “But there are enormous technical challenges to using them cheaply to create biofuels and other important chemicals.”

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In fall of 2019, we demonstrated that the Sycamore quantum processor could outperform the most powerful classical computers when applied to a tailor-made problem. The next challenge is to extend this result to solve practical problems in materials science, chemistry and physics. But going beyond the capabilities of classical computers for these problems is challenging and will require new insights to achieve state-of-the-art accuracy. Generally, the difficulty in performing quantum simulations of such physical problems is rooted in the wave nature of quantum particles, where deviations in the initial setup, interference from the environment, or small errors in the calculations can lead to large deviations in the computational result.

In two upcoming publications, we outline a blueprint for achieving record levels of precision for the task of simulating quantum materials. In the first work, we consider one-dimensional systems, like thin wires, and demonstrate how to accurately compute electronic properties, such as current and conductance. In the second work, we show how to map the Fermi-Hubbard model, which describes interacting electrons, to a quantum processor in order to simulate important physical properties. These works take a significant step towards realizing our long-term goal of simulating more complex systems with practical applications, like batteries and pharmaceuticals.

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Move over, gene-editing proteins—there’s a smaller, cheaper, more specific genetic engineering tool on the block: DNAzymes—small DNA molecules that can function like protein enzymes.

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a technique that, for the first time, allows DNAzymes to target and cut double-stranded DNA, overcoming a significant limitation of the technology. DNAzymes have been used in biosensing, DNA computing and many other applications. However, when it comes to genetic engineering applications such as gene editing or , they have faced a challenge: DNAzymes have only been able to target sites on single-stranded DNA, while the DNA coding for genes in cells is double-stranded. The researchers published their new technique in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

“DNAzymes have many advantages, including higher stability, smaller size and lower cost than protein enzymes. These advantages perfectly fit the requirement for genetic engineering tools,” said study leader Yi Lu, a professor of chemistry at Illinois. “No DNAzymes could alter double-stranded DNA until this work. By making that happen, we open the door for DNAzymes to enter the entire world of genetic engineering.”

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I am waiting for tricorders.

The idea of visiting the doctor’s office with symptoms of an illness and leaving with a scientifically confirmed diagnosis is much closer to reality because of new technology developed by researchers at McMaster University.

Engineering, biochemistry and medical researchers from across campus have combined their skills to create a hand-held rapid test for bacterial infections that can produce accurate, reliable results in less than an hour, eliminating the need to send samples to a lab.

Their proof-of-concept research, published today in the journal Nature Chemistry, specifically describes the test’s effectiveness in diagnosing urinary tract infections from real clinical samples. The researchers are adapting the test to detect other forms of bacteria and for the rapid diagnosis of viruses, including COVID-19. They also plan to test its viability for detecting markers of cancer.

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😃

Last July, NASA successfully launched the Mars Perseverance rover into space. After traveling for 203 days and 300 million miles at the speed of about 24600 miles per hour, NASA Perseverance Rover landed on Mars on February 18, 2021. Today, the top speed ever reached by NASA ion thruster-powered spacecraft is 200000 mph.

So, what about if NASA wants to explore other planets like Proxima b which is 4.24 light-years away? Unfortunately, we can’t. The current rocket propulsion technology hasn’t changed significantly since it was originally developed in the 1920s. As astronaut Scott Kelly pointed out, it’ll take us 800000 years to get to the TRAPPIST-1 star system. However, with today’s current space propulsion technology.

At this point in human history, every rocket we’ve ever launched into space is propelled by chemical-based fuel–solid or liquid fuel. NASA and private space agencies use both fuels rely on this fuel technology to get rockets off Earth. Unfortunately, this type of rocket fuel is very limiting and not suitable for manned interstellar travel.

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These results suggest that IL-12 and IFN-γ could one day be measured along with other biomarkers to predict future brain health in cognitively normal people–a tool that doesn’t yet exist in medicine.

Summary: Higher levels of two cytokines were associated with slower cognitive decline in aging adults, a new study reports.

Source: Mass General

Research has previously linked inflammation to Alzheimer’s disease (AD), yet scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the Harvard Aging Brain Study (HABS) have made a surprising discovery about that relationship.

In a new study published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association, they report that elevated levels of two chemical mediators of inflammation, known as cytokines, are associated with slower cognitive decline in aging adults.

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will reconsider decisions underlying a rule governing emissions of a chemical that it has deemed carcinogenic following a request from an industry group.

The agency told stakeholders in letters dated last week that it would reconsider its risk information for ethylene oxide, a chemical the EPA currently says is carcinogenic if it is inhaled.

The EPA also said it would reconsider its prior decision not to use a much lower risk finding from the state of Texas as an alternative risk value.

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Circa 2020

Self-propelling magnetic nanorobots capable of intrinsic-navigation in biological fluids with enhanced pharmacokinetics and deeper tissue penetration implicates promising strategy in targeted cancer therapy. Here, multi-component magnetic nanobot designed by chemically conjugating magnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticles (NPs), anti-epithelial cell adhesion molecule antibody (anti-EpCAM mAb) to multi-walled carbon nanotubes (CNT) loaded with an anticancer drug, doxorubicin hydrochloride (DOX) is reported. Autonomous propulsion of the nanobots and their external magnetic guidance is enabled by enriching Fe3O4 NPs with dual catalytic-magnetic functionality. The nanobots propel at high velocities even in complex biological fluids. In addition, the nanobots preferably release DOX in the intracellular lysosomal compartment of human colorectal carcinoma (HCT116) cells by the opening of Fe3O4 NP gate.

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