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Category: chemistry – Page 503

Scientists discover new clue behind age-related diseases and food spoilage

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have made a surprising discovery that could help explain our risk for developing chronic diseases or cancers as we get older, and how our food decomposes over time.

What’s more, their findings, which were reported recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), point to an unexpected link between the ozone chemistry in our atmosphere and our cells’ hardwired ability to ward off disease.

“The beauty of nature is that it often decides to use similar chemistries throughout a system, but we never thought that we would find a common link between atmospheric chemistry, and the chemistry of our bodies and food,” said Kevin Wilson, the deputy director of Berkeley Lab’s Chemical Sciences Division who led the study. “Our study is the first to explore another chemical pathway that might affect how well the cells in our bodies — and even our food — can respond to oxidative stress, such as pollution, over time.”

Five Scientific Discoveries Made in Dreams

“[Einstein] dreamt that he was riding a sled down a steep, snowy slope and, as he approached the speed of light in his dream, the colors all blended into one. He spent much of his career, inspired by that dream, thinking about what happens at the speed of light.”

By Tara MacIsaac, Epoch Times

In Beyond Science, Epoch Times explores research and accounts related to phenomena and theories that challenge our current knowledge. We delve into ideas that stimulate the imagination and open up new possibilities.

1. Dmitri Mendeleev, Periodic Table

Dmitri Mendeleev (1834–1907) wanted to organize the 65 known elements somehow. He knew there was a pattern to be discerned, and it had something to do with atomic weight, but the pattern remained elusive. Then, Mendeleev later reported, “In a dream I saw a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper.” Mendeleev’s words were quoted in “On the Question of Scientific Creativity,” by Russian chemist B.M. Kedrov.

Scientists Sculpt Nanoparticle Shells with Light

For the first time, researchers have used light to control the shape of nanoparticles and create micron-size hollow shells from crystals of cuprous oxide (copper and oxygen). Such particles could have future applications as a low-cost catalyst to help pull excess carbon dioxide from the air, a way to improve microscopic imaging and more, says Bryce Sadtler, a chemist at Washington University in St. Louis and senior author of a study on the new method, published last October in Chemistry of Materials.

Hollowed-out microcrystals could lock away carbon.

Astronomers Have Detected Molecular Oxygen in Another Galaxy For The First Time

In a wild galaxy over half a billion light-years away, astronomers have detected molecular oxygen. It’s only the third such detection ever outside the Solar System — and the first outside the Milky Way.

Oxygen is the third most abundant element in the Universe, behind hydrogen (naturally) and helium. So its chemistry and abundance in interstellar clouds are important for understanding the role of molecular gas in galaxies.

Astronomers have searched for oxygen again and again, using millimetre astronomy, which detects the radio wavelengths emitted by molecules; and spectroscopy, which analyses the spectrum to look for wavelengths absorbed or emitted by specific molecules.

Chemistry in Coronavirus Research: A Free to Read Collection from the American Chemical Society

ACS Publications is providing free access to articles related to the #coronavirus, in support of the on-going coronavirus outbreak relief efforts in #China.

View the Virtual Issue to access all available articles:

In light of the current outbreak of a novel coronavirus (2019–nCoV), ACS Publications would like to share this Virtual Issue that features a collection of articles on coronavirus research. Chemistry has a key role to play in understanding everything from viral structure to pathogenesis, isolation of vaccines and therapies, as well as in the development of materials and techniques used by basic researchers, virologists and clinicians. This Virtual Issue aims to provide a brief overview of the important contributions of chemistry to understanding and controlling the spread of coronaviruses and includes articles from„„, and as well as the preprint server ChemRxiv. We hope the research contained in this Virtual Issue will provide you with important insight into challenges and approaches in virus research.

MIT’s solid-state battery breakthrough may see phones last for days

One of the many ways scientists hope to improve the performance of today’s lithium batteries is by swapping out some of the liquid components for solid ones. Known as solid-state batteries, these experimental devices could greatly extend the life of electric vehicles and mobile devices by significantly upping the energy density packed inside. Scientists at MIT are now reporting an exciting advance toward this future, demonstrating a new type of solid-state battery architecture that overcomes some limitations of current designs.

In a regular lithium battery, a liquid electrolyte serves as the medium through which the lithium ions travel back and forth between the anode and cathode as the battery is charged and discharged. One problem is that this liquid is highly volatile and can sometimes result in battery fires, like those that plagued Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 smartphone.

Replacing this liquid electrolyte for a solid material wouldn’t just make batteries safer and less prone to fires, it could also open up new possibilities for other key components of the battery. The anode in today’s lithium batteries is made from a mix of copper and graphite, but if it were made of pure lithium instead, it could break the “energy-density bottleneck of current Li-ion chemistry,” according to a recent study published in Trends in Chemistry.

Researchers create ‘intelligent’ interaction between light and material

A collaboration between McMaster and Harvard researchers has generated a new platform in which light beams communicate with one another through solid matter, establishing the foundation to explore a new form of computing.

Their work is described in a paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Kalaichelvi Saravanamuttu, an associate professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at McMaster, explains that the technology brings together a form of hyrdrogel developed by the Harvard team with manipulation and measurement techniques performed in her lab, which specializes in the that respond to light.

Keth-seq for transcriptome-wide RNA structure mapping

RNA secondary structure is critical to RNA regulation and function. We report a new N3-kethoxal reagent that allows fast and reversible labeling of single-stranded guanine bases in live cells. This N3-kethoxal-based chemistry allows efficient RNA labeling under mild conditions and transcriptome-wide RNA secondary structure mapping. The authors designed a chemical probe, azido-kethoxal, to specifically label guanosine in single-strand RNAs in live cells that could be used to determine transcriptome-wide RNA secondary structures.

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