News 2019

Researchers try a trick for complete 3D analysis of submicron crystals The 3D analysis of crystal structures requires a full 3D view of the crystals. Crystals as small as powder, with edges less than one micrometer, can only be analysed with electron radiation. With electron crystallography, a full 360-degree view of a single crystal is technically impossible.

Inspired by the processes of cellular differentiation observed in developmental biology, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the University of Bristol have demonstrated a new spontaneous approach to building communities of cell-like entities (protocells) using chemical gradients.

Porous metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have many applications like carbon capture and water-cleaning. However, MOFs with large pores tend to collapse. Chemists and chemical engineers at EPFL have now solved the problem by adding small amounts of a polymer into the MOF pores, an act that impedes pore collapse.

The 20th and 21st centuries have seen an explosion in the use of synthetic chemicals worldwide, including pesticides, medications and household cleaners - many of which end up in our waterways. Even in small amounts these substances can affect wildlife, plants and humans , and a number of them have shown resistance to normal water treatment methods, leaving them to build up in the environment unchecked.

The Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research is a leader in the field of DNA and RNA research. DNA has become the icon of modern bioscience but few people realize that it was our namegiver, who - almost a century before Watson and Crick - laid the chemical groundwork for the molecular breakthroughs that followed.

Scientists at Berkeley Lab have made a new material that is both liquid and magnetic, opening the door to a new area of science in magnetic soft matter. Their findings could lead to a revolutionary class of printable liquid devices for a variety of applications from artificial cells that deliver targeted cancer therapies to flexible liquid robots that can change their shape to adapt to their surroundings.

Publication by Laboratoire de chimie on July 17, 2019. The kinetic stability of any material in water relies on the presence of surface weak spots responsible for chemical weathering by hydrolysis. Being able to identify the atomistic nature of these sites and the first steps of transformation is therefore critical to master the decomposition processes.

Rice postdoc led Nature study to measure thermal conductance through molecules How much heat can a molecule handle? That's been a tough question to answer until now, but Longji Cui is on the case. The Rice University researcher and his former colleagues at the University of Michigan published the first direct experimental measurements of thermal conductance through a single molecule this week in Nature.

UC Berkeley scientists are probing the fleeting steps in rapid photochemical reactions with some of the shortest laser pulses possible today. In this case, a femtosecond pulse of visible light (green) triggers the breakup of iodine monobromide molecules (center), while attosecond XUV laser pulses (blue) take snapshots of the molecules.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have used the Swiss Light Source SLS to record a molecular energy machine in action and thus to reveal how energy production at cell membranes works. For this purpose they developed a new investigative method that could make the analysis of cellular processes significantly more effective than before.

Fuel cells may well replace batteries as the power source for electric cars. They consume hydrogen, a gas which could be produced for example using surplus electricity from wind power plants. However, the platinum used in fuel cells is rare and extremely expensive, which has been a limiting factor in applications up to now.

Machine learning allows quantum mechanics to be efficiently applied to molecular simulations for drug development, detonation physics and more This means we can now model materials and molecular dynamics billions of times faster compared to conventional quantum methods, while retaining the same level of accuracy.

Whether they are synthetic materials such as PET and Teflon, medicines or flavourings, life without synthetically produced compounds is barely conceivable in our everyday lives today. The chemical industry depends on efficient, long-term methods of producing synthetically derived molecules. For this purpose, chemists often use catalysts, i.e. additives with which they can facilitate and control chemical reactions.

A team led by John Ralph (left), a professor of biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and research scientist Steve Karlen has been awarded a patent for a method to synthesize acetaminophen-the active ingredient in Tylenol-from a natural compound derived from plant material. Photo by Chelsea Mamott With a new method to synthesize a popular pain-relieving medication from plants rather than fossil fuels, researchers at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center have found a way to relieve two headaches at once.

Rice, Rutgers scientists test early proteins for potential as building blocks in synthetic biology Electrons are common currency in biological systems, supplying the power to live. Scientists at Rice and Rutgers universities have found a way to harness them through a very old metabolic transaction. Their study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences details the successful manipulation of simple ferredoxin proteins that shuttle electrons from here to there in cells, and in the process shows they may have been doing so since the start of life on Earth.

Adapted from the original release published by UCLA. Everyday transitions from one state of matter to another - such as freezing, melting, or evaporation - start with a process called "nucleation," in which tiny clusters of atoms or molecules (called "nuclei") begin to coalesce. Nucleation plays a critical role in circumstances as diverse as the formation of clouds and the onset of neurodegenerative disease.

A team of Yale chemists is one step closer to using the ribosome - the cell's protein-making factory - to create designer polymers, including stronger and more flexible materials and life-saving drugs. The ribosome has a surprising capacity to insert the novel building blocks of polymers at the beginning of a protein sequence, the researchers report June 26 in the journal ACS Central Science.

UC Berkeley and Berkeley Lab researchers created a new crystal built of a spiraling stack of atomically thin germanium sulfide sheets. (UC Berkeley image by Yin Liu) With a simple twist of the fingers, one can create a beautiful spiral from a deck of cards. In the same way, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have created new inorganic crystals made of stacks of atomically thin sheets that unexpectedly spiral like a nanoscale card deck.

The subsurface ocean of Saturn's moon Enceladus probably has higher than previously known concentrations of carbon dioxide and hydrogen and a more Earthlike pH level, possibly providing conditions favorable to life, according to new research from planetary scientists at the University of Washington.

Scientists have long sought to mimic the process by which plants make their own fuel using sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water through artificial photosynthesis devices, but how exactly substances called catalysts work to generate renewable fuel remains a mystery.