Feature Channels: Chemistry

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Many of us view the year’s end as a time for reflection, and chemists are no different. As we say goodbye to 2018, Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly news magazine of the American Chemical Society, highlights the year’s biggest chemistry trends, most memorable molecules and more in a special issue. As part of its wrap-up, the magazine peers into its crystal ball to predict the hottest chemistry advances to watch for in 2019.

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CRISPR allows scientists to precisely target and edit DNA within living cells, which could help them correct anomalies that cause inherited diseases. A UD Team has now developed a method to use CRISPR/Cas9 technology to set off a cascade of activities in cells, a phenomenon known as conditional gene regulation.

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Scientists determine the accuracy of computational methods used to study the sulfate radical approach to purifying water.

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A discovery by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis shows that recycling carbon dioxide into valuable chemicals and fuels can be economical and efficient – all through a single copper catalyst.

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Despite the looming ecological consequences, glacier motion remains poorly understood. The roughness of bedrock, the temperature of the ice-bed interface and the presence of water-filled cavities all affect friction and influence how the ice will flow, but studying these factors poses unique challenges -- remote radar sensing by satellites and aircraft can track glacial movement, but it can’t peer through thousands of feet of ice to measure detailed properties of the ice and rock. In The Journal of Chemical Physics, Bo Persson describes a new model of ice friction that offers crucial insight into glacier flows.

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UC San Diego scientists have been granted $2 million to develop new methods for manufacturing products based on algae. Biologist Stephen Mayfield will lead efforts to develop novel platforms to produce biologically based monomers that will be used to manufacture renewable and biodegradable products.

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Researchers from the University of Basel have reported a new method that allows the physical state of just a few atoms or molecules within a network to be controlled. It is based on the spontaneous self-organization of molecules into extensive networks with pores about one nanometer in size. In the journal 'small', the physicists reported on their investigations, which could be of particular importance for the development of new storage devices.

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Interactions with water dominate how drug molecules bind to targets, but it’s tricky to model these interactions, limiting the accuracy of drug design. In a recent paper in The Journal of Chemical Physics, William A. Goddard III and Saber Naserifar from the California Institute of Technology describe their novel approach to building a new description of water (known as a force field) and demonstrate its accuracy.

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Medical researchers at Melbourne's Murdoch Children's Research Institute have made a new discovery about how a baby's sex is determined - it's not just about the X-Y chromosomes, but involves a 'regulator' that increases or decreases the activity of genes which decide if we become male or female.

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The formation of new aerosol particles is a complicated process. Researchers have only recently started to understand this process on a molecular level after instruments able to detect nanometer-scale particles became available.

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Brookhaven Lab's Computational Science Initiative hosted its second hackathon on graphics processing units for accelerating scientific discovery.

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When infants are playing with objects, their early attempts to pay attention to things are accompanied by bursts of high-frequency activity in their brain. But what happens when parents play together with them? New research, publishing December 13 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology, by Dr Sam Wass of the University of East London in collaboration with Dr Victoria Leong (Cambridge University and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) and colleagues, shows for the first time that when adults are engaged in joint play together with their infant, their own brains show similar bursts of high-frequency activity. Intriguingly, these bursts of activity are linked to their baby’s attention patterns and not their own.

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Hydraulic fracturing taps hard-to-reach pockets of oil and natural gas where more traditional drilling methods fall short. However, the process requires large amounts of water and chemicals, which can negatively impact public health and the environment. Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory are using a combination of neutron and x-ray scattering to make the process safer and more efficient.

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In new research from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and published in Science, scientists have identified a new catalyst that uses only about a quarter as much platinum as current technology by maximizing the effectiveness of the available platinum.

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Conventional lithium ion batteries, such as those widely used in smartphones and notebooks, have reached performance limits. Materials chemist Freddy Kleitz from the Faculty of Chemistry of the University of Vienna and international scientists have developed a new nanostructured anode material for lithium ion batteries, which extends the capacity and cycle life of the batteries.

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Within SUSU’s strategic direction entitled “Fundamental science in the sphere of providing Engineering 3.0”, an interdisciplinary project team of the university’s scientists in a record-breaking period of time (6 weeks) created Kinetic Calculation software product, which allows studying kinetics of chemical processes.

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A new phenomena forms vortices that trap particles, impeding electron avalanches that harm fusion reactors.

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Argonne researchers have demonstrated a new technique’s viability for membranes.

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Like people in a large company, proteins in cells constantly interact with each other to perform various jobs. To develop new disease therapies, researchers are trying to control these interactions with small-molecule drugs that cause specific proteins to associate more or less with their “coworkers.” Now, researchers reporting in ACS’ journal Analytical Chemistry have developed a method to visualize whether drugs are regulating protein–protein interactions inside cells.

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Aging often improves the flavor of wine, but sometimes the beverage emerges from storage with an unpleasant smell. One of the prime culprits is hydrogen sulfide, which can give the affected wine an aroma of sewage or rotten eggs. In a report in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers have now identified some potential sources of this stinky compound.

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Scientists of South Ural State University elaborated a unique technology for manufacture of products made of carbon graphite materials with high performance properties. The new technology will be applicable in ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgy, electric power industry and electrical engineering, chemistry, mechanical engineering, atom power engineering and rocket and space industry.

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The new Sherman Institute will advance basic research on novel therapies for a range of disorders, including autoimmune, neurodegenerative, and infectious diseases, as well as cancer.

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Benson Hill empowers organizations of any size across the agri-food value chain to benefit from the most advanced tools in genomic innovation, including the largest portfolio of Cpf1 and Cms1 nucleases in industry.

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Costas Soukoulis, Ames Laboratory senior scientist and Iowa State University Frances M. Craig Endowed Chair and Distinguished Professor, has been named as a 2018 National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellow.

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Researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have identified in live human brains new radioactive “tracer” molecules that bind to and “light up” tau tangles, a protein associated with a number of neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s disease and other related dementias.

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On Thursday, December 6, House and Senate lawmakers released bipartisan draft legislation, known as the Verifying Accurate, Leading-edge In Vitro Clinical Test Development (VALID) Act, which outlines a framework for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to regulate laboratory developed tests. AACC will oppose this bill if, as in previous iterations, it promotes additional, duplicative, costly federal regulations for clinical laboratories that will result in decreased patient access to essential medical tests.

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NIBIB-funded researchers have created a novel, low-cost biosensor to detect HER-2, a breast cancer biomarker in the blood, allowing for a far less invasive diagnostic test than the current practice, a needle biopsy. Scientists at the Universities of Hartford and Connecticut and funded in part by NIBIB, combined microfluidic technology with diagnostics, including electrochemical sensors and biomarkers, into a powerful package that can give results in about 15 minutes.

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Unexpected molecular interactions involving water clusters have a subtle, yet profound, effect on extractants picking their targets.

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A special issue of the interdisciplinary AVS journal Biointerphases, from AIP Publishing, appears this week online and focuses on the research results and reflections of a group of women at the forefront of biomaterials and biological interface research whose studies aim to improve human health through discovering basic, quantitative knowledge of the molecular world.

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By enabling super-fast remote control of specific cells, light-activated proteins allow researchers to study the function of individual neurons within a large network - even an entire brain. Now one of the pioneers of 'optogenetics' and colleagues have created two new tools - protein pores which when illuminated allow Ca2+ into cells or K+ out - for switching neurons on or off using light. Published in Frontiers in Neuroscience, their study shows that these synthetic 'ion channels' can be used to control specific neurons, even in live animals.

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As 2018 draws to a close, the pharmaceutical industry is celebrating a prosperous year of new investments and therapeutic breakthroughs. These successes were driven by cutting-edge science and progress in finally translating long-standing technology into actual products, according to a cover story in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society.

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Hydrogen-powered vehicles emit only water vapor from their tailpipes, offering a cleaner alternative to fossil-fuel-based transportation. But for hydrogen cars to become mainstream, scientists need to develop more efficient hydrogen-storage systems. Now, researchers reporting in ACS’ Chemistry of Materials have used metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) to set a new record for hydrogen storage capacity under normal operating conditions.

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Even in this digital age, paper is still everywhere. Often, printed materials get used once and are then discarded, creating waste and potentially pollution. Now, scientists report in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces the development of an easy-to-make “rewritable” paper that can be drawn or printed on over and over again. The messages can last more than half a year, compared to other rewritable papers whose messages fade after a few days or a few months.

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In the summers of 2017 and 2018, heat waves and drought conditions spawned hundreds of wildfires in the western U.S. And in November, two more devastating wildfires broke out in California, scorching thousands of acres of forest, destroying homes and even claiming lives. Now, researchers studying ash from recent California wildfires report in ACS’ Environmental Science & Technology that burned material in forests might help sequester mercury that otherwise would be released into the environment.

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New Mexico contains hundreds of historic uranium mines. Although active uranium mining in the state has ceased, rates of cardiovascular and metabolic disease remain high in the population residing close to mines within the Navajo Nation. According to a new study in ACS’ journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters, inhaled uranium in dusts from the mines could be a factor.

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The Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) awarded six prestigious scholarly and service awards and named three new Fellows at its Annual Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana. These awards recognize nine individuals for their outstanding contributions to the society and to the science of risk analysis.

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TORONTO, ON (Canada) - Cell phones - much has been written about their detrimental effects on attention spans, stress levels and dinner table conversations. People are in constant contact with their cell phones at all hours of the day. New research from the University of Toronto (U of T) suggests they could also be a source of toxic chemicals, or at least an indicator of the chemicals to which people are exposed.

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Harnessing nuclear fusion, which powers the sun and stars, to help meet earth's energy needs, is a step closer after researchers showed that using two types of imaging can help them assess the safety and reliability of parts used in a fusion energy device.

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Strong and flexible aerogels are used in a wide variety of products, from insulation for offshore oil pipelines to parts for space exploration missions. Now, aerogels are undergoing a paradigm shift due to a breakthrough in the understanding of their mechanical properties at the nanoscale level.

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Using a new approach to measure chemical contaminants in polar bears, scientists from Canada and the United States found a large variety of new chlorinated and fluorinated substances, including many new polychlorinated biphenyl metabolites. Worryingly, these previously unrecognized contaminants have not declined in the past decades, and many long-chain fluorinated alkyl sulfonic acids have been increasing over time, says the study published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

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The kicks a mother feels from her unborn child may allow the baby to 'map' their own body and enable them to eventually explore their surroundings, suggests new research led by UCL in collaboration with UCLH.

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A promising catalyst may enable creating fuel from sunlight, but we first need to understand how it splits water. When Daniel Nocera and his team shed light on a key step in the complex process, they got more than they expected.

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NSF EPSCoR CPU2AL program in Huntsville, Alabama, is now accepting applications from students at Alabama partner institutions for their Corporate Internship Program on Plasma Technology Applications. The application deadline is Jan. 24, 2019, 1 p.m. CDT.

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Researchers have discovered a new compound that helps us better understand how microbes keep the sulfur cycle turning, making it possible for us to enjoy ocean views and survive near the water.

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One of the most fundamental unexplained questions in modern science is how life began. Scientists generally believe that simple molecules present in early planetary environments were converted to more complex ones that could have helped jumpstart life by the input of energy from the environment. Scientists consider the early Earth was suffused with many kinds of energy, from the high temperatures produced by volcanoes to the ultraviolet radiation beamed down by the sun.

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Researchers at UC San Diego used materials like clay and plastic to create synthetic cells—or “cell-mimics”—capable of gene expression and communication rivaling that of living cells. According to some scientists, these newly published research results could be among the most important in synthetic biology this year.

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An antibiotic, minocycline, can increase the lifespan of roundworms by preventing the build-up of proteins during aging, a study in the open-access journal eLife reports.

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Hazelnuts, like olive oil, cheese and other agricultural products, differ in flavor depending on their geographic origin. Because consumers and processors are willing to pay more for better nuts — especially in fine chocolates and other delicacies — testing methods are needed to reliably authenticate the nuts’ country of origin. Researchers now report in ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that NMR analysis could fill the bill.

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Human skin contains sensitive nerve cells that detect pressure, temperature and other sensations that allow tactile interactions with the environment. To help robots and prosthetic devices attain these abilities, scientists are trying to develop electronic skins. Now researchers report a new method in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces that creates an ultrathin, stretchable electronic skin, which could be used for a variety of human-machine interactions.

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Researchers working to understand the biochemistry of cataract formation have made a surprising finding: A protein that was long believed to be inert actually has an important chemical function that protects the lens of the eye from cataract formation.