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Category: chemistry – Page 3

Batteries are nearing their limits in terms of how much power they can store for a given weight. That’s a serious obstacle for energy innovation and the search for new ways to power airplanes, trains, and ships. Now, researchers at MIT and elsewhere have come up with a solution that could help electrify these transportation systems.

Instead of a battery, the new concept is a kind of fuel cell which is similar to a battery but can be quickly refueled rather than recharged. In this case, the fuel is liquid sodium metal, an inexpensive and widely available commodity.

The other side of the cell is just ordinary air, which serves as a source of oxygen atoms. In between, a layer of solid ceramic material serves as the electrolyte, allowing sodium ions to pass freely through, and a porous air-facing electrode helps the sodium to chemically react with oxygen and produce electricity.

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Recent technological advances have opened new possibilities for the efficient and sustainable synthesis of various valuable chemicals. Some of these advances rely on nanotechnologies, systems or techniques designed to design and study materials or devices at the nanometer scale.

Nanoreactors are nanotechnologies designed to host and control within confined spaces. These small structures serve as tiny “reaction vessels” that enable the precise manipulation of the reactants, catalysts and conditions to elicit desired chemical reactions.

Researchers at Inner Mongolia University, Fudan University and Julin University in China recently developed a new paddle-like mesoporous silica nanoreactor that can stir itself when exposed to a rotating magnetic field. This nanoreactor, outlined in a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology, can mix chemicals at a , enhancing the efficiency of reactions and thus potentially enhancing the synthesis of various compounds.

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Using the Magellan Clay Telescope, astronomers have performed a spectroscopic study of blue straggler stars in the globular cluster NGC 3201. Results of the new study, published May 21 on the arXiv preprint server, could help us better understand the properties and chemical composition of this cluster.

First identified in the 1950s, the blue straggler stars (BSSs) are unique main-sequence (MS) stars that are brighter, bluer, and appear younger than their coeval counterparts, hence more massive than MS stars. They are positioned to the left and above the main-sequence turnoff (MSTO) in the optical color-magnitude diagram (CMD).

One of the places to look for and investigate the BSS population are (GCs)—gravitationally bound groups of stars. Due to their relatively high masses, the blue straggler stars can be used to probe the internal dynamics of GCs.

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The origin of lithium (Li), the third element of the periodic table, has long been shrouded in mystery. This element, commonly found in cosmic rays as two stable isotopes, 6 Li and 7 Li, is crucial to understanding the origins of the universe and the evolution of its chemical elements.

In a recent study, an international team of researchers used the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) aboard the International Space Station to measure the cosmic-ray fluxes of 6 Li and 7 Li based on data accumulated from May 2011 to October 2023.

Based on information from over 2 million nuclei amassed across 12 years, the team formulated a hypothesis that strengthens the case for one possible origin of lithium while challenging another previously accepted explanation.

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Some of the most promising materials for future technologies come in layers just one atom thick, such as graphene, a sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal lattice, prized for its exceptional strength and conductivity. While hundreds of such materials exist, truly merging them into something new has remained a challenge. Most efforts simply stack these atom-thin sheets like a deck of cards, but the layers typically lack significant interaction between them.

An international team of researchers led by Rice University materials scientists has succeeded in creating a genuine 2D hybrid by chemically integrating two fundamentally different 2D materials—graphene and —into a single, stable compound called glaphene, according to a study published in Advanced Materials.

“The layers do not just rest on each other; electrons move and form new interactions and vibration states, giving rise to properties neither material has on its own,” said Sathvik Iyengar, a doctoral student at Rice and a first author on the study.

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All-perovskite tandem solar cells (TSCs) are a class of solar cells comprised of two or more sub-cells that absorb light with different wavelengths, all of which are made of perovskites (i.e., materials with a characteristic crystal structure known to efficiently absorb light). These solar cells have been found to be highly promising energy solutions, as they could convert sunlight into electricity more efficiently than existing silicon-based solar cells.

Despite their potential, most all-perovskite TSCs developed to date only perform well when they are small and their performance rapidly declines as their size increases. This has ultimately prevented them from being manufactured and deployed on a large-scale.

Researchers at Wuhan University and other institutes in China recently introduced a new strategy for enhancing the performance of all-perovskite TSCs irrespective of their size, which could in turn contribute to their future commercialization. Their proposed approach for fabricating these cells, outlined in a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology, entails the use of piracetam, a chemical additive that can help to control the initial phase of crystal formation (i.e., nucleation) in wide-bandgap perovskites.

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Amidst the continued struggle to treat non-small-cell lung cancer, a new study led by Stanford University scientists suggests that a patient’s response to immunotherapy may hinge on how immune cells cluster around tumors. Their results reveal that spatial arrangements of certain immune cells within tumors can serve as powerful predictors of treatment response, surpassing existing biomarker tests.

Lung cancer leads global cancer mortality, and non-small-cell variants make up more than 80% of cases. Immune checkpoint inhibitors have transformed therapy yet help only 27–45% of recipients.

Reliable predictive biomarkers for immunotherapy response have eluded clinicians, who currently rely on PD-L1 immunohistochemistry, tumor mutational burden, and microsatellite stability tests, each offering modest predictive performance across trials and are prone to inconsistency.

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Researchers have identified how variations in a gene called TRIO can influence brain functions and result in distinct neurodevelopmental diseases. The study, published in the journal eLife, could pave the way for future therapeutic developments.

TRIO encodes a diverse group of proteins that control the function and structure of the cytoskeleton—a cell’s internal scaffolding. Rare damaging variants in this gene have been identified in individuals with , , schizophrenia, and related disorders. However, the mechanisms underlying the associations aren’t yet understood.

“It’s really extraordinary that different variants in this can have such dramatically different effects on and function,” says Anthony Koleske, Ph.D., Ensign Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale School of Medicine (YSM) and the study’s senior author.

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Juan Casado Cordón, Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Malaga, considers graphene—an infinite layer of carbon atoms—as one of the greatest discoveries of the last 20 years due to its “unique properties” such as high electrical and thermal conductivity or its great flexibility and, also, resistance. Qualities that become exceptional, he explains, with a recently found evolution consisting in joining two layers of this material—bilayer graphene.

Researchers from the University of Malaga, led by Casado Cordón, and from the Complutense University, under the coordination of Professor Nazario Martín, have taken a step further and created an unprecedented molecular model of that is capable of controlling rotation, which in turn allows controlling conductivity and achieving “potentially spectacular semiconducting properties.”

The result is a new model molecule of bilayer graphene. “By designing covalently bound molecular nanographenes we can simulate the search for the magic angle between graphene-like sheets, which is where semiconductivity is achieved, a key property in, for example, the construction of transistors, the basic units of computers,” explains this scientist from the Faculty of Science. This finding has been published in Nature Chemistry.

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In recent years, scientists discovered something strange: When mice with Alzheimer’s disease inhale menthol, their cognitive abilities improve.

It seems the chemical compound can stop some of the damage done to the brain that’s usually associated with the disease.

In particular, researchers noticed a reduction in the interleukin-1-beta (IL-1β) protein, which helps to regulate the body’s inflammatory response – a response that can offer natural protection but one that leads to harm when it’s not controlled properly.

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