Feature Channels: Chemistry

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Scientists from UC San Diego have confined a long-contemplated diatomic molecule by isolating a metal compound containing the elusive “BF.”

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Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology are looking at bee "glue" as a potential bioinspired adhesive because of its unique adhesive properties and ability to remain sticky through a range of conditions.

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Researchers demystify how the nitrogenase enzyme breaks bonds to learn a better way to make ammonia.

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The April cover article of SLAS Discovery features “Addressing Antimicrobial Resistance through New Medicinal and Synthetic Chemistry Strategies,” by Monika I. Konaklieva, Ph.D., an online ahead-of-print article first published in December 2018.

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Cook will use the CAREER funding to design and study self-assembling molecules. As their name suggests, these compounds assemble themselves from Lego-like chemical building blocks that “snap” together when they’re added to a flask, heated and mixed.

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A research team at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has developed an innovative computational tool offering researchers an efficient method for detecting the different ways RNA is pieced together (spliced) when copied from DNA.

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A fungicide commonly used by the agricultural industry to protect grains, fruit and vegetables from mold damage seems to kill fungi by a previously uncharacterized mechanism that delivers a metabolic shock to cells, new research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison finds.

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Exposure to the widely used chemical bisphenol A (BPA) during pregnancy, even at levels lower than the regulated “safe” human exposure level, can lead to changes in circadian rhythms, according to a mice study to be presented Monday at ENDO 2019, the Endocrine Society’s annual meeting in New Orleans, La. The researchers report these changes may be a contributing factor in hyperactivity seen in BPA-exposed mice.

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When you flush the toilet, you probably don’t think about the traces of the medicine and personal care products in your body that are winding up in sewage treatment plants, streams, rivers, lakes, bays and the ocean. But Rutgers scientists have found that bacteria in sewage treatment plants may be creating new contaminants that have not been evaluated for potential risks and may affect aquatic environments, according to a study in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry.

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Scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago have developed a way to identify the beginning of every gene — known as a translation start site or a start codon — in bacterial cell DNA with a single experiment and, through this method, they have shown that an individual gene is capable of coding for more than one protein.

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An unassuming pulse of light illuminates a possible way to separate a troubling element, americium, from a soup of similar elements. The diverse team at the Center for Actinide Science & Technology Energy Frontier Research Center is finding fast, efficient, safe ways to separate compounds.

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Scientists challenge textbook conception of how chemistry happens by theoretically, computationally designing a novel quantum device that supports ultrafast tuning of chemical reactions between physically separate catalysts and reactants.

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New Cornell research advances the design of solid-state batteries, a technology that is inherently safer and more energy-dense than today’s lithium-ion batteries, which rely on flammable liquid electrolytes for fast transfer of chemical energy stored in molecular bonds to electricity. By starting with liquid electrolytes and then transforming them into solid polymers inside the electrochemical cell, the researchers take advantage of both liquid and solid properties to overcome key limitations in current battery designs.

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Johns Hopkins researchers have discovered that use of the synthetic psychedelic 5-methocy-N,-N-dimethyltryptamine (5-MeO-DMT) appears to be associated with unintended improvements in self-reported depression and anxiety when given in a ceremonial group setting. 5-MeO-DMT is a psychedelic that is found in the venom of Bufo Alvarius toads, in a variety of plants species, and can be produced synthetically.

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New findings, published today in AACC’s Clinical Chemistry journal, add to a growing body of evidence suggesting that no legal driving limit for cannabis can catch impaired recreational users without unfairly penalizing unimpaired regular or medicinal users.

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The diseases are very different – cancer and Parkinson’s – but Dr. Mary Alpaugh’s goal is the same: if not to eradicate them, then at least to find effective drugs to treat them.

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An intense, diverse group at the IDREAM Energy Frontier Research Center is providing answers around aluminum and other troublemakers in waste from Cold War-era nuclear arsenal production.

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WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - A fascination with movie technology that showed robots perform self-repair through a liquid formula inspired a Purdue University professor to make his own discoveries - which are now helping to lead the way for advancements in self-powering devices such as consumer electronics and defense innovations.

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Researchers at the University of New Hampshire have created a hydrogel that could one day be made into a contact lens to more effectively treat corneal melting, a condition that is a significant cause for blindness world-wide.

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Scientists have revealed that the partnership between an alga and bacteria is making the essential element nitrogen newly available in the Arctic Ocean. The microbial process of "nitrogen fixation" converts the element into a form that organisms can use, and was discovered recently in the frigid polar waters. This shift may be a result of climate change and could affect global chemical cycles, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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With a few genetic tweaks, a type of soil bacteria with an appetite for hydrocarbons shows promise as a biological factory for converting a renewable — but frustratingly untapped — bounty into a replacement for ubiquitous plastics.

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The fundamental design of the violin has been changed only once since the times of Antonio Stradivari, considered the ultimate master craftsman of the instrument. But new research by a Texas A&M University professor suggests that a modification could be made to the instrument that will enhance its tonal quality and how it is played. His findings could rock the music world, so to speak, and alter the way the stringed instruments are constructed in the future.

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Monika Hartl from the European Spallation Source is using neutron scattering at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Spallation Neutron Source to understand how plastic materials interact with the filters used to remove them from water. Through understanding these interactions, scientists can develop improved water filters that are better at purifying water and reducing water contaminants.

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Chemists in Vienna find a method to replace hydrogen with fluorine in organic moleculesThe development and improvement of pharmaceuticals plays the central role in the ongoing battle against human disease. Organic synthesis is the field that enables these developments as it offers the toolbox to diversify chemical structures.

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In the cells of every living organism — humans, birds, bees, roses and even bacteria — proteins vibrate with microscopic motions that help them perform vital tasks ranging from cell repair to photosynthesis. Now, scientists have developed a method for rapidly measuring proteins’ unique vibrations.

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Researchers at Indiana University have invented a new method to observe bacterial build cell walls in real time that could contribute to the search for new antibacterial drugs.

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Ions at the edge of water, exposed to air, don’t separate like they do when surrounded by water, offering insights for desalination and corrosion.

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Researchers at the University of Oslo find that when lipids land on a surface they form tiny cell-like containers without external input, and that large organic molecules similar in size to DNA’s building blocks can spontaneously enter these protocells while they grow. Both of these are crucial steps towards forming a functioning cell.

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While fossil fuel emissions in New Delhi account for 80 percent of the air pollution plume during the summer, emissions from biomass burning (such as crop residue burning) in neighboring regions rival those from fossil fuels during the fall and winter.

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Scientists have developed a deep neural network that sidesteps a problem that has bedeviled efforts to apply artificial intelligence to tackle complex chemistry – a shortage of precisely labeled chemical data.

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New method produces high-purity zirconium-89, a diagnostic radionuclide used to image cancerous tumors.

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A team led by Paul Steen, professor of engineering at Cornell University, has created a periodic table of droplet motions, inspired in part by parallels between the symmetries of atomic orbitals, which determine elements’ positions on the classic periodic table, and the energies that determine droplet shapes.

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Profiled is Vera Bocharova of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, who studies the structure and dynamics of soft materials—polymer nanocomposites, polymer electrolytes and biological macromolecules—to advance materials and technologies for energy, medicine and other applications.

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Researchers discovered that Earth's oceans started becoming oxygenated millions of years earlier than previously recognized.

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They make many everyday things easier, such as keeping children's feet dry in waterproofed boots, stopping the meat balls sticking to the frying pan and making it easier to clean the carpet.

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Researchers at Binghamton University, State University of New York have uncovered the unique way in which a type of Gram-negative bacterium delivers the toxins that make us sick. Understanding this mechanism may help design better ways to block and eventually control those toxins.

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Scientists at the microbiology lab led by Javier Campos-Gómez, Ph.D., in Drug Discovery at Southern Research discovered that Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a bacterium responsible for severe, drug-resistant infections in humans, uses a family of fatty acids, known as “oxylipins,” in a cell-to-cell signaling language critical for its virulence.

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Removing carbon dioxide from power plant emissions is a good idea to start with — and it may have an extra economic benefit. A Michigan Tech engineering is presenting their results this week on turning carbon dioxide into oxalic acid, which is used to process rare earth elements for electronic devices.

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An international team has used an X-ray laser at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to get an incredibly detailed look at what happens to the structure of a model photocatalyst when it absorbs light.

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A superfast detector installed on an electron microscope at Berkeley Lab will reveal atomic-scale details across a larger sample area than could be seen before, and can produce movies showing chemistry in action and changes in materials.

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The two most abundant elements in the universe, hydrogen and helium, were previously thought to be impossible to measure by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.

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When a stream of charged particles known as the solar wind careens onto the Moon's surface at 450 kilometers per second (or nearly 1 million miles per hour), they enrich the Moon's surface in ingredients that could make water, NASA scientists have found.

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In a strategic search, Johns Hopkins scientists created and screened a library of 45,000 new compounds containing chemical elements of widely used immune system suppressants, and say they found one that may prevent reperfusion injury, a tissue-damaging and common complication of surgery, heart attack and stroke.

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The ADA announced it will fund a $1.625 million Accelerator Award to University of Notre Dame's Matthew Webber to research and develop materials capable of sensing critical drops in blood glucose.

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Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) have designed a 28 GHz transceiver that integrates beamforming[1] with dual-polarized multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO[2]) technology.

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James Wishart, a chemist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, has been awarded the Maria Skłodowska-Curie Medal by the Polish Radiation Research Society (PRRS). The award recognizes his distinguished achievements in the field of radiation chemistry and his long-lasting and productive interactions with Polish scientists.

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NASA’s new Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments (PCE3) Consortium, one of five cross-divisional research coordination networks with the NASA Astrobiology Program, aims to identify planetary conditions that might give rise to life’s chemistry.

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The Earth First Origins project will uncover the conditions on early Earth that gave rise to life. by identifying, replicating, and exploring how prebiotic molecules and chemical pathways could have formed under realistic early Earth conditions.

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The Paesani Research Group works to collect data on the properties of materials like water, apply it to machine learning, optimize the material through modifications based on simulations and then synthesize an ideal material that could be used, for example, to extract water from the atmosphere.