Feature Channels: Chemistry

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AACC has sent comments to the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee urging the committee not to include the VALID Act in its omnibus Food and Drug Administration (FDA) user fee legislation. VALID would limit the availability of vital laboratory-developed tests, decreasing patient access to life-saving diagnostic tools.

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An international team of scientists is using porous, sponge-like materials that can trap carbon dioxide in their cavities while allowing other gases such as nitrogen to pass through. The materials are made from sugar and low-cost alkali metal salts, so they would be inexpensive enough for large-scale deployment, and they could be particularly effective for limiting the environmental damage of coal-fired power plants.

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A big problem with the disposal of nuclear and electronic wastes is that the process wastes precious metals such as gold and platinum-group metals, which are key metals in computer chips.

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A pioneering study published today in AACC’s The Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine has established transgender reference intervals for common clinical laboratory tests.

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The American Cleaning Institute (ACI) urged congressional leaders to ensure that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention (OCSPP) receives the funding necessary to ensure that new, innovative and safe cleaning products can reach consumers quickly.

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A small group of researchers including Dennis Kurzbach from the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Vienna just published in "Nature Protocols” an advanced NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) method to monitor fast and complicated biomolecular events such as protein folding.

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Photoreduction of CO2 into transportable fuel like formic acid (HCOOH) is a great way of dealing with CO2’s rising levels in the atmosphere.

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Pivotal discoveries at Argonne’s Advanced Photon Source make the world better every day. Here are six that help us, inspire us and add to the promise of a brighter tomorrow.

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A startup under the umbrella of CU Innovation Hub in collaboration with the Chula Faculty of Science has developed an innovative “Detachable and Dissolvable Microneedle” that makes any injections easy and painless for everyone, while also significantly reducing medical wastes.

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Researchers have used a widespread species of blue-green algae to power a microprocessor continuously for a year - and counting - using nothing but ambient light and water.

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In “proof of concept” experiments with mouse and human cells and tissues, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers say they have designed tiny proteins, called nanobodies, derived from llama antibodies, that could potentially be used to deliver targeted medicines to human muscle cells.

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Paul Benioff, an Argonne emeritus scientist, helped pave the way for the field of quantum computing that is now being intensely pursued throughout the world. He passed away on March 29, leaving a legacy of intellectual courage and collaboration.

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Chemists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a new machine-learning (ML) framework that can zero in on which steps of a multistep chemical conversion should be tweaked to improve productivity. The approach could help guide the design of catalysts -- chemical "dealmakers" that speed up reactions.

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The research team of Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT) for the first time clearly demonstrates that the effect on the flow reverses according to the degree of change in the properties due to the reaction in a reacting flow with production of viscoelastic material, through experiments involving high-precision rheological measurements and a newly proposed theory.

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Much of what scientists think about soil metabolism may be wrong. New evidence from NAU published in Plant and Soil suggests that microbes in different soils use different biochemical pathways to process nutrients, respire and grow. The study upends long-held assumptions in the field of soil ecology and calls for more investigation and higher-resolution methods to be applied to what has been a black box for the field.

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Over the past decade, just as the invention of the silicon microchip revolutionized electronics, crystalline minerals called perovskites have helped researchers discover new, innovative electronics and energy technologies. Now, at Idaho National Laboratory, researchers are using perovskites for different energy applications: converting fuel into electricity or producing valuable chemicals such as ethylene, hydrogen or ammonia.

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A team of energy researchers led by the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have invented a groundbreaking device that electronically converts one metal into behaving like another to use as a catalyst for speeding chemical reactions. The invention opens the door for new catalytic technologies using non-precious metal catalysts for important applications such as storing renewable energy, making renewable fuels, and manufacturing sustainable materials.

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Industry produces acetone and isopropanol using processes that release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Researchers have now developed a new fermentation process that efficiently converts waste carbon oxide gases into acetone and isopropanol. This use of engineered bacteria advances progress on “carbon-negative” biomanufacturing for more sustainable industrial production and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

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Holding the right material at the right angle, Cornell researchers have discovered a strategy to switch the magnetization in thin layers of a ferromagnet – a technique that could eventually lead to the development of more energy-efficient magnetic memory devices.

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Scientists at Argonne have used machine learning algorithms to predict how long a lithium-ion battery will last.

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Together with researchers from Ulm and Neuchâtel, Empa will soon be studying material samples on the ISS. The material in question are super-hard and corrosion-resistant alloys of palladium, nickel, copper and phosphorus - also known as "metallic glasses". A high-tech company from La Chaux-de-Fonds, which produces materials for the watch industry, is also involved.

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A cross-college collaboration at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) has developed a self-learning artificial intelligence (AI) platform that uses big data analytics to discover how new pharmaceutical drugs and various molecules work inside living cells.

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Using valved respirators to prevent the spread of COVID-19 has been discouraged due to concerns that valves do not effectively filter particles from exhaled air, but few studies actually have looked at this. Now, researchers report in Environmental Science & Technology Letters on their performance.

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Researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology show that some children’s products advertised as water- or stain-resistant contain potentially harmful per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), even items labeled “green” or “nontoxic.”

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What do gunpowder, penicillin and Teflon all have in common? They were inventions that took the world by storm, but they were all created by complete accident.

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Wet electrolyte could be a key to inexpensive energy storage.

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ORNL researchers have developed and tested novel small-molecule antivirals in an effort to design new drugs to treat COVID-19. The so called hybrid inhibitor molecules are made from repurposed drugs used to treat hepatitis C and the original coronavirus outbreak in the early 2000s. The experimental research results show the molecules are similarly as effective as some of the leading drugs on the market today.

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New experiments have shown the source of the aurora borealis. Researchers have demonstrated Alfvén waves accelerating electrons under conditions that correspond to Earth’s magnetosphere. The new experiments show that electrons “surf” on the electric field of the Alfvén wave in a plasma. These electrons are the ultimate source of the light we call the aurora borealis.

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Polaritons offer the best of two very different worlds. These hybrid particles combine light and molecules of organic material, making them ideal vessels for energy transfer in organic semiconductors. They are both compatible with modern electronics but also move speedily, thanks to their photonic origins.

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Large ion clusters known as aggregates are an important emerging topic for research on electrolytes in batteries. The research indicates that aggregates can affect electrolyte properties, including stability and ion transport.

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UPTON, NY—Minfang Yeh, a senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, has won the American Physical Society’s 2021 Division of Particles and Fields (DPF) Instrumentation Award. The award honors Yeh’s pioneering work in the development and production of high-performance water-based liquid scintillators for particle physics experiments, including metal loaded scintillators for rare process experiments.

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Quantum computing holds the potential to be a game-changing future technology in fields ranging from chemistry to cryptography to finance to pharmaceuticals.

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Scientists have tried to develop a silver coating for implantable medical devices to combat infection with limited success. In ACS Central Science, one team reports a new, long-acting silver-ion releasing coating that, in rats, prevents bacteria from adhering to implants and then kills them.

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Morris Bullock has led PNNL's pursuit of the efficient conversion of electrical energy and chemical bonds through control of electron and proton transfers.

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A groundbreaking study published today in JAMA demonstrates significant inconsistencies with pediatric reference intervals, which are essential to high quality pediatric medical testing. Completed by AACC’s laboratory medicine experts, this study identifies some of the most pressing issues in this area, thereby paving the way for the medical community to develop more reliable pediatric reference intervals and vastly improve children’s medical care.

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Micropollutants in water often are hormones that accumulate in the environment and may have negative impacts on humans and animals. Researchers of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and Leibniz Institute of Surface Engineering (IOM) in Leipzig have now developed a process for the photocatalytic degradation of these pollutants when they flow through polymer membranes. It is presented in Nature Nanotechnology. Irradiation with light triggers a chemical reaction, as a result of which steroid hormones are degraded on the membranes coated with titanium dioxide. (DOI: 10.1038/s41565-022-01074-8)

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Irvine, Calif., April 22, 2022 — Physicists at the University of California, Irvine have demonstrated the use of a hydrogen molecule as a quantum sensor in a terahertz laser-equipped scanning tunneling microscope, a technique that can measure the chemical properties of materials at unprecedented time and spatial resolutions.

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A geologic formation near Aix-en-Provence, France, is famed as one of the world’s chief treasure troves of fossil species from the Cenozoic Era. Since the late 1700s, scientists there have been unearthing amazingly well-preserved fossilized plants and animals.

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The need for negative emissions technologies to address our climate crisis has become increasingly clear. At the rate that our planet is emitting carbon dioxide – adding about 50 gigatons every year – we will have to remove carbon dioxide at the gigaton scale by 2050 in order to achieve “net zero” emissions.

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We share the FDA’s goal of alerting the public to the potential misuse of non-invasive prenatal screening (NIPS) tests. This is why we’ve been advocating for the modernization of how laboratory-developed tests (LDTs) are regulated by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

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The development of new, more efficient electrochemical cells could provide a good option for carbon-free hydrogen and chemical production along with large-scale electricity generation and storage. But first, scientists must overcome several challenges, including how to make the cells more efficient and cost-effective. Recently, a research team led by Idaho National Laboratory used a simple process to bind materials more tightly within protonic ceramic electrochemical cells, also known as PCECs, solving a mystery that had limited the technology’s performance. The results were published in the latest issue of the scientific journal Nature.

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Researchers from Sandia, ORNL, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville used neutron scattering and additional experimental techniques to study a series of materials called metal organic frameworks (MOFs) made from the entire list of rare earth elements. The researchers established a comprehensive approach to evaluating large numbers of MOFs and also made an important discovery about a defect that can be useful in building technologies to mitigate toxic gases such as nitrogen and sulfur dioxides.

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Scientists at Berkeley Lab are working on new approaches to achieve direct air capture of carbon dioxide. Andrew Haddad, a researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Energy Technologies Area with a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry, talks about how a Nobel Prize-winning chemistry concept from more than a century ago inspired his idea for efficiently capturing CO2.

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Researchers reporting in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology have observed that non-biting midge larvae accumulate contemporary pesticides from polluted water and retain the substances into adulthood. As a result, animals that eat the adult flies could consume small amounts of pesticides daily.

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Pharmaceuticals, plastics, and other industries use enzymes to help synthesize molecular feedstocks.

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Argonne’s Alfred P. Sattelberger received a distinguished service award from the American Chemical Society. The award recognizes Sattelberger’s career-spanning contributions to inorganic chemistry. It was presented at the ACS Spring 2022 conference in San Diego.