Feature Channels: Chemistry

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AACC, a global scientific and medical professional organization dedicated to better health through laboratory medicine, is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2023 AACC and AACC Academy Awards. Through this annual awards program, AACC strives to support laboratory medicine professionals in all stages of their careers and to build awareness of the essential role that clinical laboratory testing plays in improving patient health.

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Liz Laudadio, a Walter Massey Fellow at Argonne National Laboratory, describes their research aimed at coatings to prevent corrosion of materials in settings like nuclear reactors.

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Tracing volatile organic compounds is important for public safety and all “smell” related issues. To this end, in Applied Physics Reviews, Liu et al. introduce a fluid mechanics-based chamber design for an electronic nose that consistently detects VOCs at low concentrations. The strategy, which includes using a shuntlike device to control the behavior of fluid flow, is a step forward in e-nose technology development.

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As a biogeochemist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Matthew Berens studies how carbon, nutrients and minerals move through water and soil. In this firsthand account, Berens describes recent fieldwork in Louisiana with colleagues to better understand coastal ecosystems.

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Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), an independent news outlet of the American Chemical Society (ACS), has unveiled its annual “Talented 12” list. The list highlights early-career researchers in the chemical sciences who are fearlessly tackling difficult global problems.

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Scientists from Argonne and Lawrence Berkeley national laboratories have developed a fluorine-containing electrolyte for lithium-ion batteries whose charging performance remains high in frigid regions and seasons. They also determined why it is so effective.

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Common inflammatory disorders such as ulcerative colitis and Crohn's disease can be diagnosed or monitored by measuring the protein calprotectin in stool samples, while serum levels of calprotectin could be used to monitor the inflammation status in rheumatoid arthritis.

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Chemists at the University of Kansas and U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have taken a big step toward splitting hydrogen and oxygen molecules to make pure hydrogen — without using fossil fuels.

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Giving people at high risk of PFAS exposure the opportunity to easily self-test could improve access to testing for these “forever chemicals” and lead to the early detection of detrimental health conditions, according to a new Michigan State University study. The study tested an improved approach for people to collect their own blood samples to test for PFAS without being part of an academic research study.

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In Physics of Fluids, researchers conduct a series of experiments that explore how changing key parts of the gummy-making process affects the final product, as well as how the candies behave in different storage temperatures. The group adjusted a variety of inputs while making the gummies, from the glucose syrup-to-sucrose ratio to starch and gelatin concentrations, to understand how these changes affected features like candy texture, moisture content, and pH. They used these results to identify the most shelf-stable combination for gummy candies.

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Chemists at the University of Kansas and Brookhaven National Laboratory have unraveled the entire reaction mechanism for a key class of water-splitting catalysts. Their work could help pure hydrogen be produced from renewable energy sources such as solar power.

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Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major greenhouse gas emitted through various types of human activities. In an effort to decrease humanity’s carbon footprint, scientists and policymakers across the globe are continuously trying to explore new methods for reducing atmospheric CO2 emissions and converting them into useful forms.

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ORNL’s electromagnetic isotope separator, or EMIS, made history in 2018 when it produced 500 milligrams of the rare isotope ruthenium-96, unavailable anywhere else in the world.

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Tomonori Saito, a distinguished innovator in the field of polymer science and senior R&D staff member at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, was honored on May 11 in Columbus, Ohio, at Battelle’s Celebration of Solvers.

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A new method for analyzing protein crystals – developed by Cornell researchers and given a funky two-part name – could open up applications for new drug discovery and other areas of biotechnology and biochemistry.

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A research team from the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Science, led by Professor Liu Xiaogang from the Department of Chemistry, has developed a 3D imaging sensor that has an extremely high angular resolution, which is the capacity of an optical instrument to distinguish points of an object separated by a small angular distance. This allows the novel sensor to capture 3D images at higher depth resolution.

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Nonfood, plant-based biofuels have potential as a green alternative to fossil fuels, but the enzymes required for production are too inefficient and costly to produce. However, new research is shining a light on enzymes from fungi that could make biofuels economically viable.

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Idaho National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have partnered with Idaho Power to evaluate the feasibility and advantages of making hydrogen at existing hydropower plants.

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With each breath, humans exhale more than 1,000 distinct molecules, producing a unique chemical fingerprint or “breathprint” rich with clues about what’s going on inside the body.

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The University of Arizona’s Husain Alqattan is the recipient of the APL Photonics 2022 Future Luminary Award for his work in utilizing pulse shaping and waveform synthesis to control electron motion and open the door for ultrafast electronics that process data at unprecedented speeds. The winning paper, “Attosecond light field synthesis,” was published in the April 2022 issue of APL Photonics. The award recognizes early-career researchers with the potential to become luminaries in the field of photonics.

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Low-cost 3D material paves the way for cost-effective clean energy production

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Carbon is an indispensable element for the formation of living organisms. At the same time, the carbon energy system, including biomass, enabled the ancestors of human beings to enter the age of carbon civilization, out of the period when they eat birds and animals raw.

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A research team led by Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley has engineered bacteria to produce new-to-nature carbon products that could provide a powerful route to sustainable biochemicals. The advance could reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the manufacturing of fuels, drugs, and chemicals.

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From a nanoscale grain of platinum, researchers made a first step in developing a tool that enables them to characterize the materials with a new level of detail, ultimately producing the best materials for the hydrogen production and use.

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Recognizing and separating enantiomers is a difficult task for chemical engineers. Researchers from the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have developed a modular method of recognizing chiral molecules.

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Researchers at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory captured one of the fastest movements of a molecule called ferricyanide for the first time by combining two ultrafast X-ray spectroscopy techniques. They think their approach could help map more complex chemical reactions like oxygen transportation in blood cells or hydrogen production using artificial photosynthesis.

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The air pollutant secondary organic aerosol (SOA) forms when ammonia and amines react with oxygenated species. When ammonia is present when alkenes react with ozone, SOA increases in size and numbers. This may be due to Criegee intermediates. New research found that a particular amine, dimethylamine, reacts 34,000 times faster with one version of the Criegee intermediate acetaldehyde oxide than with another version of the same compound.

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A team of researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory recently published the most comprehensive study of global COVID-19 variant transitions, which showed significant diversity in variant spread around the globe related to vaccination rates, number of co-circulating variants and immunity from previous infection.

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A recent study by scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and collaborators found that many of the fossils from Germany’s Posidonia shale do not get their gleam from pyrite, commonly known as fool’s gold, which was long thought to be the source of the shine. Instead, the golden hue is from a mix of minerals that hints at the conditions in which the fossils formed.

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For millions of Americans that suffer from seasonal allergies (pollen and mold), climate change is exacerbating an earlier, longer, and overall worse allergy season.

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While adding a little water is popularly thought to “open up” the flavor of whisky, a Washington State University-led study indicates there’s a point at which it becomes too much: about 20%.

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A method to store advanced cell models has been developed by researchers at the University of Warwick.

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In a world that is slowly distancing itself from carbon-based energy, there has been a meteoric rise in the use of lithium-ion batteries as a next-generation energy storage solution.

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In an effort to make textiles more sustainable, a new method allows researchers to break old clothing down chemically and reuse polyester compounds to create fire resistant, anti-bacterial or wrinkle-free coatings that could then be applied to clothes and fabrics.

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Geoscientists have detected specific gases being released from fractured rocks in real time after a series of small chemical explosions set underground. This fundamental research, led by Sandia National Laboratories geoscientist Steve Bauer, could one day improve the prediction of earthquakes or detection of underground explosions.

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A researcher at Missouri University of Science and Technology is looking to solve the problems of tomorrow by using chemistry from the distant past.

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The green hydrogen economy is a sustainable alternative to fossil fuels. However, one of the challenges of constructing a global hydrogen economy is hydrogen transportation by sea.

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Lecturers of the Faculty of Allied Health Sciences, Chulalongkorn University have developed MTB Strip Test Kit for Tuberculosis (TB) diagnosis that’s accurate and easy to use, guaranteed by the 2023 Invention Award from the National Research Council of Thailand (NRCT) — Another hope to reduce the spread of tuberculosis in Thailand.

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Ammonia (NH3) is one of the most widely produced chemicals in the world, with a production of over 187 million tons in 2020. About 85% of it is used to produce nitrogenous fertilizers, while the rest is used for refining petroleum, manufacturing a wide range of other chemicals, and creating synthetic fibers such as nylon.

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Bacterial spores can survive for years, even centuries, without nutrients, resisting heat, UV radiation, and antibiotics. How inert, sleeping bacteria — or spores — spring back to life has been a century-long mystery.

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Among families with children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, Johns Hopkins University researchers say they have found a link between chemical “marks” on DNA in the sperm of fathers and autistic traits in their 3-year-old children.

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The researchers focused on 66 PFAS compounds for their study. These can be grouped into three categories: 1) PFAS groups that have been regulated for some time; 2) new PFAS that industry uses as substitutes for regulated PFAS; and 3) precursors that can degrade to other, more persistent PFAS.

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For the rational design of new material compounds, it is important to understand the mechanisms underlying their synthesis.