Feature Channels: Chemistry

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A collaborative group of parent-driven organizations seeking a cure for Angelman syndrome has teamed up with F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd, (Roche), one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical and diagnostics companies, in the first phase of a study that will support the design of human clinical trials and treatment development for the disorder.

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Teams of researchers working in a multi-lab collaboration have designed, built, and tested two magnetic devices called superconducting undulators. The effort could lead to a next generation of more powerful, versatile, compact, and durable X-ray lasers.

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In a new study appearing this week in The Journal of Chemical Physics, researchers demonstrate a new method to calculate excitation energies. They used a new approach based on density functional methods, which use an atom-by-atom approach to calculate electronic interactions. By analyzing a benchmark set of small molecules and oligomers, their functional produced more accurate estimates of excitation energy compared to other commonly used density functionals, while requiring less computing power.

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A team of researchers led by the University of California San Diego has identified for the first time what drives the observed differences in the chemical make-up of sea spray particles ejected from the ocean by breaking waves.

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Scientists have measured a thin film made of a single type of conjugated polymer — a conducting plastic — as it interacted with ions and electrons. They show how there are rigid and non-rigid regions of the film, and that these regions could accommodate electrons or ions — but not both equally.

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A new study at the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine (VCOM) and the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine at Virginia Tech has found a connection between common household chemicals and birth defects.

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AACC, a global scientific and medical professional organization dedicated to better health through laboratory medicine, is pleased to announce that the impact factor of its journal, Clinical Chemistry, has risen to 8.008 in the 2016 Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports. This impact factor places Clinical Chemistry in the top 2.6% of 12,062 ranked academic journals and speaks to the significant influence of the science it publishes on laboratory medicine and patient care.

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Javier Vela, scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory, believes improvements in computer processors, TV displays and solar cells will come from scientific advancements in the synthesis of low-dimensional nanomaterials.

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The investigation found that the drug, geranylgeranyltransferase inhibitor GGTI-2418 suppresses a new defective PTEN cancer pathway discovered by Pagano’s group.

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A team led by New York University researchers has identified and described how a major player in the repair process, called nucleotide excision repair or NER, works to recognize certain lesions for subsequent removal by the NER machinery.

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By tagging a cell’s proteins with fluorescent beacons, Cornell University researchers have found out how E. coli bacteria defend themselves against antibiotics and other poisons. Probably not good news for the bacteria.

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Chemical reactions that make improvements in water purification and batteries possible occur at scales too small to see. A team including a UD researcher has developed a way to produce real-time observations documenting the reactions that happen between liquids and solids.

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UNC School of Medicine researchers have cracked a long-standing mystery about an important enzyme called Set2 found in virtually all organisms other than bacteria. The basic science finding may have implications for understanding cancer development and how to halt it.

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Chemical reactions necessarily involve molecules coming together, and the way they interact can depend on how they are aligned relative to each other. By knowing and controlling the alignment of molecules, a great deal can be learned about how chemical reactions occur. This week in The Journal of Chemical Physics, scientists from Denmark and Austria report a new technique for aligning molecules using lasers and very cold droplets of helium.

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The classic method for studying how electrons interact with matter is by analyzing their scattering through thin layers of a known substance. This happens by directing a stream of electrons at the layer and analyzing the subsequent deviations in the electrons’ trajectories. But researchers in Switzerland have devised a way to examine the movement of low-energy electrons that can adversely impact electronic systems and biological tissue. They discuss this in this week’s The Journal of Chemical Physics.

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An X-ray technique, coupled with theoretical work, revealed how oxygen atoms embedded very near the surface of a copper sample had a more dramatic effect on the early stages of the reaction with carbon dioxide (CO2) than earlier theories could account for. This information could prove useful in designing new types of materials to further enhance reactions and make them more efficient in converting carbon dioxide into liquid fuels and other products.

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Microbes play important roles in regulating Earth’s biogeochemical cycles and in Nature Biotechnology, U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute scientists report the release of 1,003 phylogenetically diverse bacterial and archaeal reference genomes—the single largest release to date.

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UIC receives NSF grant to develop high school programs to study urban 'heavy metals' pollution in Chicago.

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Weizmann Institute of Science researchers used aeronautical engineering to devise a simple method of reducing shockwaves and brightening beams. The method was inspired by the similarity of the “skimmers” used in physics experiments to the air intake mechanisms on air and spacecraft.

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A chemical currently being used to ward off mosquitoes carrying the Zika virus and a commonly used insecticide that was threatened with a ban in the United States have been associated with reduced motor function in Chinese infants, a University of Michigan study found.

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A new study from the University of Iowa shows that a pair of common chemicals that manufacturers use to make plastic food containers, water bottles, and other consumer products do not contribute to obesity to the extent of the chemical it’s replacing.

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With the most highly focused power of the world’s most powerful X-ray laser, scientists from a number of institutions around the world – including Argonne National Laboratory – have conducted a new experiment that takes apart molecules electron by electron.

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Argonne has named Cynthia Jenks the next director of the laboratory’s Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division. Jenks currently serves as the assistant director for scientific planning and the director of the Chemical and Biological Sciences Division at Ames Laboratory.

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Two out of three cancer patients are treated with radiation, but the therapy often fails to wipe out the tumor or slow its growth. Southern Research is working to develop a new class of drugs that will help the radiation deliver a more powerful punch to the disease.

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A Northwestern University-led research team has discovered an inexpensive and renewable material that rapidly removes PFOA, a highly toxic pollutant, from water. The treatment effectively eliminates the micropollutant, which has plagued several U.S. communities' water supplies last year.

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Wisconsin’s Eck Industries has signed an exclusive license for the commercialization of a cerium-aluminum (Ce-Al) alloy co-developed by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory that is ideal for creating lightweight, strong components for advanced vehicles and airplanes.

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Researchers have developed a detailed computational model of the soybean plasma membrane that provides new structural insight at the molecular level, which may have applications for studying membrane proteins and may be useful for engineering plants to produce biochemicals, biofuels, drugs and other compounds, and in understanding how plants sense and respond to stressful conditions. The group report their findings this week in The Journal of Chemical Physics.

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Despite the importance of predicting solubility, it is not an easy matter. One approach, using “brute force” simulations, requires long computing times. Other techniques, while faster, fail to predict accurate solubility values. This week in The Journal of Chemical Physics, researchers report a new type of software that enables convenient solubility estimations of essentially any molecular substance over wide temperature and pressure ranges.

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A multidisciplinary team of researchers has received a $25,000 seed grant from the Penn State Institute for CyberScience to develop a modeling platform to predict the deformability and morphological changes of diseased and aged red blood cells.

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The American Institute of Physics (AIP) and AIP Publishing are pleased to announce the launch of a new online magazine, Bioengineering Today. Bioengineering Today offers news and information about the intersection of biology, chemistry and physics with medicine. The articles cover everything from biomedical discoveries, research, new devices, new imaging technologies, engineering and applications of physics to bioengineering as well as disease detection, prevention and treatment.

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The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology announced this week the election and appointment of seven new society leaders. They begin their terms July 1.

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A molecular system for artificial photosynthesis is designed to mimic key functions of the photosynthetic center in green plants—light absorption, charge separation, and catalysis—to convert solar energy into chemical energy stored by hydrogen fuel.

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A faculty-student research team in the chemistry lab at the University of Redlands has advanced a new approach to a critical process in pharmaceutical drug development that could reduce the time and cost of bringing a drug from concept to market.

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Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and supported by the National Institutes of Health, identifies a previously unknown mechanism of the anesthetic propofol that may help to explain its outcomes, knowledge that could lead to safer anesthetics.

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The Blavatnik Family Foundation and the New York Academy of Sciences today announced the Finalists for the 2017 Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists. From a pool of 308 nominees – the most promising scientific researchers aged 42 years and younger at America’s top academic and research institutions – the 30 Finalists will now compete for the largest unrestricted awards of their kind for early career scientists and engineers.

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Using genomics, a chemistry lab has worked out the biosynthetic machinery that makes a new class of antibiotic compounds called the beta-lactones. Like the beta-lactams, they have an unstable four-member ring. The key to their kill mechanism it is also difficult to synthesize.

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Neutron-scattering studies reveal surprising formation of ammonia after acetonitrile is turned into graphitic polymer, opening doors for catalyst-free industrial reactions at room temperature.

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How water relates to and interacts with biological systems – like DNA, the building block of all living things – is of critical importance, and a Cornell University group has used a relatively new form of spectroscopy to observe a previously unknown characteristic of water.

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A unique partnership between MTSU and the Centre of Molecular and Macromolecular Studies at the Polish Academy of Sciences will allow MTSU undergraduate students to interact daily with European scientists as the students conduct National Science Foundation-funded research on liquid crystals.

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UW synthetic biology researchers have demonstrated a new method for digital information processing in living cells, analogous to the logic gates used in electric circuits. In a key step in the ability to program living cells, the team built the largest circuits published to date in eukaryotic cells, using DNA instead of silicon and solder.

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A team of researchers from the University of Delaware have discovered how to label and light the sugar backbone of a bacterial cell wall. The findings will advance immune system research.

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Ronen Marmorstein, PhD, a professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, is one of five investigators who received a grant from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation for the creation of a state-of-the-art cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) facility. The investment supports research in chemistry and the life sciences and will also go towards maintaining the cryo-EM facilities and hiring of new faculty skilled in its uses.

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The common perception that many of the world’s most valuable minerals, such as copper and aluminum, are becoming scarce is challenged report that also highlights the environmental and social keys to unlocking future resources.in a new

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Clostridium botulinum is the bacterium that causes the neurointoxication, which produces one of the most potent toxins on earth and is classified as a potential bioterrorism threat. While no cure exists—and botulism treatment options are limited—a serendipitous discovery by scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) may provide a new therapy that can stop the neurotoxin even in its more severe, advanced stages of action.

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First, diesel vehicles tainted their reputation with soot particles, then high nitric oxide emissions. So are owners of new gasoline cars environmentally friendly? Not always, says a new study led by Empa scientists: some direct-injection gasoline engines emit just as many soot particles as unfiltered diesel cars did in the past. Particle filters can remedy this.

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Technion researchers say a combination of metals and organic acids is an effective way to eradicate cholera, salmonella, pseudomonas, and other pathogenic bacteria. The combination also works on bacteria that attack agricultural crops.

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A new mathematical “shortcut” developed by Berkeley Lab researchers is speeding up molecular absorption calculations by a factor of five, so simulations that used to take 10 to 15 hours to compute can now be done in approximately 2.5 hours. These algorithms will be incorporated in an upcoming release of the widely used NWChem computational chemistry software suite later this year.

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New research into osmosis-driven behavior now provides a more granular theoretical understanding of the deterministic mechanisms, appearing as a pair of publications this week in The Journal of Chemical Physics. The first paper deconstructs the molecular mechanics of osmosis with high concentrations, and generalizes the findings to predict behavior for arbitrary concentrations. The second piece of the study then simulates via molecular modeling two key forms of osmotic flow in a broadly utilizable way.

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Research led by the University of Adelaide is paving the way for safer and more effective drugs to treat type 2 diabetes, reducing side effects and the need for insulin injections.