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Category: chemistry – Page 348

Multiferroics – materials that exhibit both magnetic and electric order – are of interest for next-generation computing but difficult to create because the conditions conducive to each of those states are usually mutually exclusive. And in most multiferroics found to date, their respective properties emerge only at extremely low temperatures.

Two years ago, researchers in the labs of Darrell Schlom, the Herbert Fisk Johnson Professor of Industrial Chemistry in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Dan Ralph, the F.R. Newman Professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, in collaboration with professor Ramamoorthy Ramesh at UC Berkeley, published a paper announcing a breakthrough in multiferroics involving the only known material in which magnetism can be controlled by applying an electric field at room temperature: the multiferroic bismuth ferrite.

READ MORE ON CORNELL UNIVERSITY | CORNELL CHRONICLE

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Bioquark, Inc., (http://www.bioquark.com) a life sciences company focused on the development of novel, natural bio-products for health, wellness and rejuvenation, has entered a collaboration whereby Forest Organics LLC & I-Beauty Charm LLC, a unique, integrated facial and body cosmetology facility, and their state-licensed, highly skilled skin care specialists, will be utilizing novel, natural Bioquantine™ extract complexes as part of their spa procedures, as well as providing consumer access to a range of proprietary skin care products (http://www.forestorganics.life).

“We are very excited about this first company collaboration in the area of beauty care and cosmetology,” said Ira S. Pastor, CEO, Bioquark Inc. “It is another step forward towards the wide applicability of our natural combinatorial bio-products, across a broad range of health and wellness segments, as well as future franchise opportunities.”

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The integrated Forest Organics LLC & I-Beauty Charm LLC model was conceived by local Tampa business women, Nadia Goetzinger and Tatyana Reshetnikova, to offer a new generation of products and services related to skin beautification and rejuvenation.

“We look forward to working closely with Bioquark Inc. on this initiative and providing an exclusive range of services and products to customers throughout the greater Tampa metropolitan area,” said Ms. Goetzinger”

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About Bioquark, Inc.

Bioquark Inc. is focused on the development of natural biologic based products, services, and technologies, with the goal of curing a wide range of diseases, as well as effecting complex regeneration. Bioquark is developing both biopharmaceutical candidates, as well as non-Rx products for the global consumer health and wellness market segments.

About Forest Organics LLC & I-Beauty Charm LLC

Forest Organics LLC & I-Beauty Charm LLC operate a unique, integrated facial and body cosmetology facility providing novel rejuvenative spa and cosmetology services and products.

Detailed commentary on the new SENS Research videos about aging and rejuvenation biotechnology.

The SENS Research Foundation has assembled a set of narrated cellular biochemistry animations that serve as an introduction to the various distinct projects that make up the field of rejuvenation biotechnology. The videos outline the forms of cell and tissue damage that are the root cause of aging and age-related disease, as well as the classes of therapy that could, once constructed, either repair that damage or bypass it entirely. Since aging is exactly an accumulation of damage and the consequences of that damage, repair of the damage is the basis for rejuvenation, the reversal and prevention of degenerative aging and all age-related disease. The goal for the near future is to align ever more of the research community and its funding institutions with this goal, and make real progress towards bringing an end to the pain, suffering, and disease of aging.

Introducing SENS — Metabolism, Damage, Pathology

Continue reading “A Visual Introduction to SENS Rejuvenation Research” | >

UCLA’s new method to smaller molecule machines.

UCLA nanoscience researchers have determined that a fluid that behaves similarly to water in our day-to-day lives becomes as heavy as honey when trapped in a nanocage of a porous solid, offering new insights into how matter behaves in the nanoscale world.

“We are learning more and more about the properties of matter at the nanoscale so that we can design machines with specific functions,” said senior author Miguel García-Garibay, dean of the UCLA Division of Physical Sciences and professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

The research is published in the journal ACS Central Science.

Continue reading “UCLA chemists report new insights about properties of matter at the nanoscale” | >

On a cool Sunday evening in March, a geochemist named Sun Weidong gave a public lecture to an audience of laymen, students, and professors at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, the capital city of the landlocked province of Anhui in eastern China. But the professor didn’t just talk about geochemistry. He also cited several ancient Chinese classics, at one point quoting historian Sima Qian’s description of the topography of the Xia empire — traditionally regarded as China’s founding dynasty, dating from 2070 to 1600 B.C. “Northwards the stream is divided and becomes the nine rivers,” wrote Sima Qian in his first century historiography, the Records of the Grand Historian. “Reunited, it forms the opposing river and flows into the sea.”

In other words, “the stream” in question wasn’t China’s famed Yellow River, which flows from west to east. “There is only one major river in the world which flows northwards. Which one is it?” the professor asked. “The Nile,” someone replied. Sun then showed a map of the famed Egyptian river and its delta — with nine of its distributaries flowing into the Mediterranean. This author, a researcher at the same institute, watched as audience members broke into smiles and murmurs, intrigued that these ancient Chinese texts seemed to better agree with the geography of Egypt than that of China.

In the past year, Sun, a highly decorated scientist, has ignited a passionate online debate with claims that the founders of Chinese civilization were not in any sense Chinese but actually migrants from Egypt. He conceived of this connection in the 1990s while performing radiometric dating of ancient Chinese bronzes; to his surprise, their chemical composition more closely resembled those of ancient Egyptian bronzes than native Chinese ores. Both Sun’s ideas and the controversy surrounding them flow out of a much older tradition of nationalist archaeology in China, which for more than a century has sought to answer a basic scientific question that has always been heavily politicized: Where do the Chinese people come from?

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Computadores qu nticos estão chegando. O mundo pode não estar pronto.
A mec nica qu ntica, Carl Sagan observou certa vez, é tão estranho que o “senso comum é quase inútil em se aproximar dela.” Os cientistas ainda não entendem exatamente por que a matéria se comporta como faz no nível qu ntico. No entanto, eles estão ficando melhor a exploração dos seus din mica peculiar — de maneiras que podem em breve revolucionando o negócio tecnoloco.

Não é surpresa, então, o investimento no campo está crescendo. IBM, Microsoft e Google são todos construção de laboratórios de pesquisa qu ntica. Startups estão se preparando. Os bancos estão muito interessados na verdade. Governos ver aplicações para a exploração espacial, a investigação médica e de coleta de inteligência. Agência de Segurança Nacional dos Estados Unidos, na verdade, foi discretamente tentando construir um computador qu ntico, durante anos, na esperança de que ele iria fazer um código-breaker imparável.

Via Bloomberg.

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Our friends at the Methuselah Foundation are working on macular degeneration.

Typically, a fellowship and participation in a research study to cure a major disease would occur years after completing undergrad, possibly even after earning a PhD. But Jennifer DeRosa is not a typical student.

As early as high school, DeRosa was already in the lab, conducting research in plant biotechnology at the College of Environmental Science and Forestry (SUNY-ESF) before graduating valedictorian from Skaneateles High School. As a freshman student at Onondaga Community College, she continued to develop skills in molecular biology, analytical chemistry, and cell biology. She logged over 1,600 hours in academic and industry laboratories while maintaining a perfect 4.0 GPA, completing her associate’s degree in Math and Science in only one year.

Although she had planned to continue to a bachelor’s program, DeRosa elected to defer enrollment after being offered a Methuselah Foundation research fellowship. “The fellowship provides distinguished students a year-long stipend to work in any laboratory of their choosing that conducts work on age-associated diseases,” said Methuselah Foundation CEO David Gobel. “We are very pleased that she chose to complete her fellowship at Ichor Therapeutics, where she has been working as a paid intern. Methuselah Foundation has a high degree of confidence in the quality and scope of work being conducted there.”

Continue reading “Methuselah Foundation Fellowship Award Winner Tackles Research in Macular Degeneration” | >

Watching DNA self-repair itself.

After 2015’s Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded for advancements in our understanding of DNA repair, a recent Nature report characterises the mechanism in molecular detail. The implications for cancer research are vast.

Researchers in Paris, France, and Bristol, England, have leveraged recent advances in microscopy and fluorescent imaging to characterise the entire process of DNA repair at the molecular level. They were able to observe RNA polymerase, which ‘reads’ DNA and initiates its replication, as it moved along the DNA strand.

When it encountered damage inflicted by UV radiation, the enzyme stalled, and a number of proteins descended on the site. The team followed them as they acted in an ordered step-wise fashion and elucidated the critical steps of the DNA repair process: first, a protein called Mfd coordinates to RNA polymerase, then it directs a sort of relay team of UvrA, UvrB and UvrC. This deeper understanding of the mechanism could bolster efforts towards treatments for a variety of conditions.

Continue reading “Now we can watch DNA Repair itself!” | >

Scientists have developed self-propelling liquid metals that could be used for future electronic circuits.

Current electronic technology is based on solid state components with fixed metallic tracks and semiconductors. Researchers are investigating soft circuit systems that act like live cells, communicating with each other to form new circuits when possible. In one study, Professor Kalantar-zadeh from RMIT University in Australia, along with his researchers immersed a number of different metallic elements, in the form of liquid droplets, in water.

Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh said: “Putting droplets in another liquid with an ionic content can be used for breaking symmetry across them and allow them to move about freely in three dimensions. We adjusted the concentrations of acid, base and salt components in the water and investigated the effect. Simply tweaking the water’s chemistry made the liquid metal droplets move and change shape, without any need for external mechanical, electronic or optical stimulants.”

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