Feature Channels: Chemistry

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Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM)—which enables the visualization of viruses, proteins, and other biological structures at the molecular level—is a critical tool used to advance biochemical knowledge. Now Berkeley Lab researchers have extended cryo-EM’s impact further by developing a new computational algorithm instrumental in constructing a 3-D atomic-scale model of bacteriophage P22 for the first time.

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Scientists at the University of Southampton working with colleagues at the University of Liverpool have developed a new method which has the potential to revolutionise the way we search for, design and produce new materials.

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The University of Adelaide has today announced the appointment of an international leader in engineering, Professor Anton Middelberg, as its new Executive Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences.

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Since a couple of decades, metal-containing drugs have been successfully used to fight against certain types of cancer. The lack of knowledge about the underlying molecular mechanisms slows down the search for new and more efficient chemotherapeutic agents. An international team of scientists, led by Leticia González from the University of Vienna and Jacinto Sá from the Uppsala University, have developed a protocol that is able to detect how metal-based drugs interact with DNA.

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Berkeley Lab researchers have successfully added thread-level parallelism on top of MPI-level parallelism in the planewave density functional theory method within the popular software suite NWChem. An important step to ensuring that computational chemists are prepared to compute efficiently on next-generation exascale machines.

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Polystyrene has a glass transition temperature of about 100 C -- at room temperature it behaves like a solid material. But as its temperature approaches the glass transition temperature, polystyrene’s mechanical properties change drastically. This makes the ability to approximate glass transitions for confined geometries in polymers highly desirable. And now, as researchers report in this week's issue of The Journal of Chemical Physics, they’ve developed a simple formula to do just that.

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Standard antidepressant medications don’t work for everyone, and even when they do they are slow to kick in. In an effort to find better depression treatments, researchers at University of California San Diego School of Medicine discovered that inhibiting an enzyme called Glyoxalase 1 (GLO1) relieves signs of depression in mice. Moreover, inhibiting GLO1 worked much faster than the conventional antidepressant Prozac.

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A multi-institutional team of researchers from Canada and the US has demonstrated steady state lasing with solution-processed nanoparticles called “colloidal quantum dots,” an important step on the path to improving laser tools for fiber optics, video projectors and more accurate medical testing technology. The work is reported today in a paper for the journal Nature.

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University of Utah engineers have discovered a new material made from a combination of the chemical elements calcium, cobalt and terbium that can create an efficient, inexpensive and bio-friendly material that can generate electricity through a thermoelectric process involving heat and cold air.

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UPTON, NY—Even plants have to live on an energy budget. While they’re known for converting solar energy into chemical energy in the form of sugars, plants have sophisticated biochemical mechanisms for regulating how they spend that energy. Making oils costs a lot. By exploring the details of this delicate energy balance, a group of scientists from the U.

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Writing in the March 17 issue of the journal Science, Missouri University of Science and Technology researchers say they have developed a way to “grow” thin layers of gold on single crystal wafers of silicon, remove the gold foils, and use them as substrates on which to grow other electronic materials.

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An algorithm based on levels of metabolites found in a blood sample can accurately predict whether a child is on the Autism spectrum of disorder (ASD), based upon a recent study.

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BGSU photochemist Dr. Alexis Ostrowski and her lab are venturing into a whole new world of materials with properties as yet unknown, but that offer the promise of beneficial applications in health, industry, agriculture and other fields.

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A team of researchers has developed a groundbreaking one-step, crystal growth process for making ultra-thin layers of material with molecular-sized pores. Researchers demonstrated the use of the material, called zeolite nanosheets, by making ultra-selective membranes for chemical separations. These new membranes can separate individual molecules based on shape and size, which could improve the energy-efficiency of chemical separation methods used to make everything from fuels to chemicals and pharmaceuticals.

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An international team of researchers found that fossil-like objects grew in natural spring water abundant in the early stages of the planet. But, they were inorganic materials that resulted from simple chemical reactions.

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A discovery, several years in the making, by University at Buffalo researchers proves that adult skin cells can be converted into neural crest cells (a type of stem cell) without any genetic modification, and that these stem cells can yield other cells that are present in the spinal cord and the brain. The applications could be significant, from studying genetic diseases in a dish to generating possible regenerative cures from the patient’s own cells.

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A new energy-efficient separation of rare earth elements could provide a new domestic source of critical materials.

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A team of NYU chemists has created self-assembled, three-dimensional DNA crystals that can bind a separate, dye-bearing strand—a breakthrough that enhances the functionality of these tiny building blocks.

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Results of tests provide evidence that exposure to a chemical mixture can disturb thyroid hormone signalling. The authors say that this adds weight to the suggestion that similar exposures can adversely affect brain development in unborn children.

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Los Alamos National Laboratory Fellow Jaqueline Kiplinger was recognized this week with the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) 2017 Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering award. Kiplinger was one of 12 women recognized this year internationally and the only recipient of this honor from the United States.

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Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory in collaboration with the University of California – Irvine (UCI) have uncovered a significant new chemical attribute of plutonium, the identification and structural verification of the +2 oxidation state in a molecular system.

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Learning and memory depend on cells' ability to strengthen and weaken circuits in the brain. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine report that a protein involved in recycling other cell proteins plays an important role in this process.

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Researchers have reversed depression symptoms in mice simply by feeding them a probiotic bacteria found in yogurt. They also discovered a specific mechanism for how the bacteria affect mood, providing a direct link between gut health and mental health.

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Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have devised a versatile molecule-building tool for creating new drugs and other chemical products.

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Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center discovered that lipocalin 2, a hormone secreted by bone cells, suppresses appetite in mice. The study findings, which reveal a new mechanism for regulating food intake and blood sugar, could lead to the development of new treatments for obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other metabolic disorders.

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When a team led by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory tried to verify that shrinking the nanoparticle size would adversely affect the mechanical properties of polymer nanocomposites, they got a big surprise.

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An international research team centered at Indiana University have engineered a molecule that uses light or electricity to convert the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into carbon monoxide -- a carbon-neutral fuel source -- more efficiently than any other method of "carbon reduction." The discovery, reported today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, is a new milestone in the quest to recycle carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere into carbon-neutral fuels and others materials.

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Scientists at Argonne have invented a new foam, called Oleo Sponge, that not only easily adsorbs spilled oil from water, but is also reusable and can pull dispersed oil from the entire water column—not just the surface.

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An international collaboration of computational physicists and chemists have shed new light on how the polymer structure bears on the glass-transition temperature in the forming of glass in atactic polystyrene (PS), a commonly used glass substance. Their work is reported this week in The Journal of Chemical Physics.

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Carbonate, bicarbonate, and carbonic acid emerge when atmospheric carbon dioxide dissolves in the oceans, which is the largest sink for this greenhouse gas. Researchers are interested in better understanding the carbonate system to potentially help facilitate carbon sequestration schemes, to help mitigate climate change. Recently, researchers made breakthrough discoveries about the carbonate species’ behavior at saltwater surfaces, like that of the ocean. They report their findings this week in The Journal of Chemical Physics.

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For most people, the drip, drip, drip of a leaking faucet would be an annoyance. But for Georgia Institute of Technology Ph.D. candidate Alexandros Fragkopoulos, what happens inside droplets is the stuff of serious science.

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Graduate student has found some synthetic chemicals in greater concentrations than many other pollutants, including the previously banned flame retardants.

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A rise in caloric consumption combined with a decrease in physical activity has contributed to a boom of metabolic diseases, such as type 2 diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases (e.g., heart failure and stroke).

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Under a collaborative partnership between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Department of Energy, a new automated measurement system developed at DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory will ensure quality production of plutonium-238 while reducing handling by workers.

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The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy has awarded Southern Research nearly $800,000 for a project that targets a more cost-efficient and environmentally friendly method of producing some of the most important chemicals used in manufacturing.

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Despite its omnipresence, water has many physical properties that are still not completely understood by the scientific community. One of the most puzzling relates to the activity of water molecules after they undergo a process called “supercooling.” Now, new findings from Roma Tre University, in Rome, Italy, on the interactions of water molecules under these exotic conditions appear this week in The Journal of Chemical Physics.

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scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and other institutes designed a new assembly-line system that rapidly replaces exposed biological samples by moving droplets along a miniature conveyor belt, timed to coincide with the arrival of the X-ray pulses. The droplet-on-tape system now allows the team to study the biochemical reactions in real-time from microseconds to seconds, revealing the stages of these complex reactions.

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Triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) convert mechanical energy harvested from the environment to electricity for powering small devices such as sensors or for recharging consumer electronics. Now, researchers have harnessed these devices to improve the charging of molecules in a way that dramatically boosts the sensitivity of a widely-used chemical analysis technique.

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Wistar scientists have shown an anti-diabetic drug can inhibit the growth of melanoma in older patients by activating an anti-aging gene that in turn inhibits a protein involved in metastatic progression and resistance to targeted therapies for the disease.

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Chemist Nathan C. Gianneschi, whose interdisciplinary research has the potential to make a significant impact in human health, will join the Northwestern University faculty, effective July 1, the University announced today. Gianneschi, a Northwestern alumnus, has developed new methods for creating nanomaterials that can sense and respond to biological signals.

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Assistant Professor Shadi Wajih Hasan is Working to Develop Wastewater Treatment Systems for the Sustainable Production of High-Quality Water.

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A new, evidenced-based clinical practice guideline on molecular biomarker testing for patients with colorectal cancer identifies opportunities for improving patient outcomes.

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Researchers at The University of Kansas Cancer Center are collaborating on the “lab-on-a-chip,” a testing platform that captures and performs analysis of various biomarkers, which are actively released by tumor cells into blood. Rather than the usual invasive and costly biopsy, the credit-card size devices will screen for circulating markers that are released from cancer cells within patients’ blood.

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Trusted, Evidence-based Resource Helps Practitioners Make Informed Drug Therapy Decisions

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Results from a new Phase 3 study conducted by the Celgene Corporation demonstrate that ozanimod, a drug candidate originally discovered and optimized at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), can reduce the frequency of multiple sclerosis relapse.

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Display manufacturers can account for a certain level of relaxation in the glass, referring to the intermolecular rearrangement, if it’s known and reproducible. But fluctuations in this relaxation behavior tend to introduce uncertainty into the manufacturing process, possibly leading to misalignment of pixels within displays. Now, researchers reports on a new modeling technique to quantify and predict glass relaxation fluctuations, important for next-generation displays.

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University of Utah and University of Michigan chemists, participating in a U.S. Department of Energy consortium, predict a better future for these types of batteries, called redox flow batteries. Using a predictive model of molecules and their properties, the team has developed a charge-storing molecule around 1,000 times more stable than current compounds.

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A tiny snail may offer an alternative to opioids for pain relief. Scientists at the University of Utah have found a compound that blocks pain by targeting a pathway not associated with opioids. Research in rodents indicates that the benefits continue long after the compound have cleared the body.

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New work shows that interactions between iron and nickel under the extreme pressures and temperatures similar to a planetary interior can help scientists understand the period in our Solar System's youth when planets were forming and their cores were created.