Feature Channels: Chemistry

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Pharmaceutical synthesis is often quite complex; simplifications are needed to speed up the initial phase of drug development and lower the cost of generic production.

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A collaboration between scientists at Cambridge and UCL has led to the discovery of a new form of ice that more closely resembles liquid water than any other and may hold the key to understanding this most famous of liquids.

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Chemists can make a career out of controlling whether certain molecules are generated as a lefty or a righty. Molecules don’t literally have hands, but scientists often refer to them in this way when looking at molecules that are mirror images of each other and therefore are not superimposable.

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American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology endorses NIH moves toward disability inclusion and calls for broad federal effort to support scientists with disabilities

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Archaeologists have found what they say is the first solid scientific evidence suggesting that Vikings crossed the North Sea to Britain with dogs and horses.

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New UC Riverside research suggests nitrogen released by gas-powered machines causes dry soil to let go of carbon and release it back into the atmosphere, where it can contribute to climate change.

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A new battery material that dissolves in water will make it simple and economical to recycle a wide range of batteries, so we can reuse the valuable and increasingly rare materials within, including nickel and cobalt.

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The joint research team of Dr. Oh Dongyeop and Dr. Kwak Hojung of KRICT and Professor Park Jeyoung of Sogang University have developed eco-friendly paper straws that are 100% biodegradable, perform better than conventional paper straws, and can be easily mass-produced.

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A chemical engineer developing more environmentally friendly materials and a geologist exploring the chemistry of Earth’s carbon reservoirs are the latest Florida State University faculty members to be named Fellows by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, or AAAS.

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John Mitchell, Valerie Taylor and Lisa Utschig were selected by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to be inducted as fellows.

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The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) announced today (Tuesday, Jan. 31) that Dr. V. Prakash Reddy, professor of chemistry at Missouri University of Science and Technology, has been elected Fellow of its organization.

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Malaria is a devastating disease, with 247 million cases and 619,000 deaths reported in 2021 alone.

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Computational chemists reduce or eliminate hazardous materials by running simulations to develop fast, accurate models. MIT researchers use SDSC's supercomputer to explore the luminescent properties of iridium-centered phosphors.

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U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm honored 44 teams with the Secretary of Energy Achievement Award and five individuals for their work. Among the recipients are Distinguished Professor Esther Takeuchi, a battery researcher with a joint appointment at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University; Douglas Paquette, a hydrogeologist in Brookhaven Lab's Environmental Protection Division; and Robert Gordon, manager of the DOE-Brookhaven Site Office that oversees operations at Brookhaven Lab.

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A new hybrid catalyst converts carbon dioxide into ethylene in one pot. The catalyst was developed by scientists from Ames National Laboratory, Iowa State University, University of Virginia, and Columbia University.

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China is a night-time ‘hot-spot’ for the production of nitrate radicals (PNO3) that could have a major impact on health-threatening ozone and fine particulates (PM2.5) in the atmosphere, a new study reveals.

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Linda Young, an Argonne Distinguished Fellow in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering division will receive an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University in Sweden on Jan. 27.

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Global warming causes more environment issues, due to greenhouse gases like CO2. In natural photosynthesis, CO2 turns into organic compounds like glucose or starch.

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The enzymes polyketide synthases and nonribosomal peptide synthetases can shuffle their parts, allowing them to produce new chemicals. To help scientists design these enzymes, researchers have improved ClusterCAD. This tool helps users modify these enzymes for synthetic biology applications. New improvements include an expanded database, powerful search tools, and helpful new features within the interface.

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Just as a choreographer’s notation tells a dancer to strike a particular pose, an enzyme newly discovered by Rice University scientists is able to tell specific molecules precisely how to arrange themselves, down to the angle of single hydrogen bonds.

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The composition of foodstuffs, but also the sequence of dishes, is important for the perfect taste experience of a menu. This insight, based on experience, is well known.

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The discovery of diverse ices in the darkest regions of a cold molecular cloud measured to date has been announced by an international team of astronomers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. This result allows astronomers to examine the simple icy molecules that will be incorporated into future exoplanets, while opening a new window on the origin of more complex molecules that are the first step in the creation of the building blocks of life.

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Investigating the interplay between the structure of water molecules that have been incorporated into layered materials such as clays and the configuration of ions in such materials has long proved a great experimental challenge.

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A transdisciplinary Northwestern University research team has developed a revolutionary transistor that is expected be ideal for lightweight, flexible, high-performance bioelectronics.

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Methanogens are microorganisms that produce methane when little or no oxygen is present in their surroundings.

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KRISS has developed Certified Reference Materials (CRMs)* that can enhance the reliability of using dried blood spot testing for newborn screening.

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Research on fungi underway at the University of Kansas has helped transform tough-to-recycle plastic waste from the Pacific Ocean into key components for making pharmaceuticals.

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Scientists developed a way to make carbon-based molecules with a unique structural feature: interlocking rings.

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The DOE Early Career Research Program Award allowed Ming Ye at Florida State University to develop interdisciplinary approaches to quantify and reduce uncertainty in environmental studies.

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Nuclear and hydrogen could be the ideal fuel for recharging electric trucks, opening potential markets for developers of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs).

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Synthetic energy carriers are carbon-neutral and make renewable energy transportable and storable in the long term. Synthetically produced methane is one of them. The problem: The production involves rather high energy losses; moreover, existing processes require the methane to be purified. To change this, Empa researchers have developed a new, optimized reactor concept for methanation.

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Scientists have decoded the physical process that takes place in the mouth when a piece of chocolate is eaten, as it changes from a solid into a smooth emulsion that many people find totally irresistible.

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RUDN University biologists have discovered a new type of pathogenic fungus that infects potatoes and leads to massive crop loss. Fungi in this genus were previously known to be harmful to potatoes and other plants, but this species was considered harmless.

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RUDN University chemists, biologists and physicians have found a simple way to predict the properties of compounds of drugs with metals. This can be done using topological indices - numbers that describe the structure of the molecule. The results will help finding new metal complexes that will improve the activity of existing drugs.

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Flow batteries offer a solution. Electrolytes flow through electrochemical cells from storage tanks in this rechargeable battery. The existing flow battery technologies cost more than $200/kilowatt hour and are too expensive for practical application, but Liu’s lab in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE) developed a more compact flow battery cell configuration that reduces the size of the cell by 75%, and correspondingly reduces the size and cost of the entire flow battery. The work could revolutionize how everything from major commercial buildings to residential homes are powered.

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Journalists who register for the spring meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) will have access to more than 10,000 presentations on topics. ACS Spring 2023 is a hybrid meeting being held virtually and in-person in Indianapolis on March 26-30 with the theme “Crossroads of Chemistry.”

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On Jan. 9, a United Nations-backed panel of experts announced that Earth’s protective ozone layer is on track to recover within four decades, closing an ozone hole over the Antarctic that was first noticed in the 1980s. But it was research conducted at the University of California, Irvine in the 1970s that made this good new possible.

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Plant biochemists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have discovered a new level of regulation in the biochemical “machinery” that plants use to convert organic carbon derived from photosynthesis into a range of ring-shaped aromatic molecules. The research suggests new strategies for controlling plant biochemistry for agricultural and industrial applications.

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The word “exotic” may not spark thoughts of uranium, but Tyler Spano’s investigations of exotic phases of uranium are bringing new knowledge to the nuclear nonproliferation industry. Spano, a nuclear security scientist at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and her colleagues examined four previously understudied phases of uranium oxide: beta (β-), delta (δ-), epsilon UO3 (ε-UO3) and beta U3O8 (β-U3O8).

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RUDN University researchers combined the advantages of artificial and natural polymers when creating nonwoven materials for use in medicine.

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Researchers at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, have discovered a new synthetic pathway with which they can produce a specific organic compound from the simple molecule carbon monoxide (CO), namely anionic ketenes.

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The chemistry of planet formation has fascinated researchers for decades because the chemical reservoir in protoplanetary discs—the dust and gas from which planets form—directly impacts planet composition and potential for life.

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Complimentary press passes are now available for Discover BMB, the annual meeting of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, to be held March 25–28 in Seattle.

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RUDN University agronomists have studied the thermodynamics of hydrogels, which must absorb water from the air and hold it in the ground to prevent evaporation. It turned out that this approach is unlikely to help save agriculture from drought - hydrogels retain water too well and give it poorly.