News 2019

The Bermuda Islands - a very special terrain in the middle of the western Atlantic Ocean, not only for its white beaches, but also because the archipelago is at the top of a 4,570-metre high volcano that died out about 30 million years ago. An international team of researchers has now taken a closer look at this geological peculiarity and geochemically examined the magma rock under Bermuda for the first time.

Researchers have taken a critical look at how much we really know about our exposure to particles and chemicals transported by our clothing. His study concludes that further research is needed and opens up new areas of investigation. There is growing evidence that our clothing exposes us to particles and chemicals on a daily basis - and that this exposure could carry significant health risks.

Water, despite its central place in so many processes vital to life on Earth, remains a chemical mystery in many respects. One of those mysteries is the nature of water at the exact point where it comes into contact with air. A study published April 18 by researchers at Yale University and the University of Washington offers a new level of observation and analysis.

Tiny light-emitting microalgae, found in the ocean, could hold the secret to the next generation of organic solar cells, according to new research carried out at the Universities of Birmingham and Utrecht. Microalgae are probably the oldest surviving living organisms on the planet. They have evolved over billions of years to possess light harvesting systems that are up to 95 per cent efficient.

Pharmaceutical chemists have a trick when they're designing a drug and want to make it easier for the body to take up without metabolic side effects: they might add a quaternary center-a carbon atom bonded to four other carbon atoms. The trouble is, such centers are often extremely hard to synthesize.

Ritual bundle contents include leather bag, carved wooden snuff tablets and snuff tube with human hair braids, pouch made of fox snouts and camelid bone spatulas. (Photos courtesy of Juan Albarracin-Jordan and José M. Capriles) Today's hipster creatives and entrepreneurs are hardly the first generation to partake of ayahuasca, according to archaeologists who have discovered traces of the powerfully hallucinogenic potion in a 1,000-year-old leather bundle buried in a cave in the Bolivian Andes.

Scientists from Berkeley Lab have made a next-generation plastic that can be recycled again and again into new materials of any color, shape, or form Light yet sturdy, plastic is great - until you no longer need it. Because plastics contain various additives, like dyes, fillers, or flame retardants, very few plastics can be recycled without loss in performance or aesthetics.

Scientists are excited about diamonds - not the types that adorn jewelry, but the microscopic variety that are less than the width of a human hair. These so-called "nanodiamonds” are made up almost entirely of carbon. But by introducing other elements into the nanodiamond's crystal lattice - a method known as "doping” - researchers could produce traits useful in medical research, computation and beyond.

EPFL researchers have created a smart device capable of producing large amounts of clean hydrogen. By concentrating sunlight, their device uses a smaller amount of the rare, costly materials that are required to produce hydrogen, yet it still maintains a high solar-to-fuel efficiency. Their research has been taken to the next scale with a pilot facility installed on the EPFL campus.

Petrochemicals, the oiland gas-derived compounds that serve as the molecular backbones for much of modern commerce, commanded a $539.3 billion market value in 2018. Replacing just a few of those petroleum products with chemicals made from plants or microbes could put a substantial dent in the world's fossil fuel consumption.

The use of potassium bromide in the production of graphene on a copper surface can lead to better results. When potassium bromide molecules arrange themselves between graphene and copper, it results in electronic decoupling. This alters the electrical properties of the graphene produced, bringing them closer to pure graphene, as reported by physicists from the universities of Basel, Modena and Munich in the journal ACS Nano.

Schematic of synthetic antibody formed by peptoid-carbon nanotube assemblies. The synthetic antibody can recognize lectin proteins - the target used in this proof-of-concept study - and their conjugate sugars. (Credit: Linda Chio/Berkeley Lab) Synthetic antibodies are imaged with infrared microscopy to detect lectin proteins and their target sugars.

Another year, another flu vaccine because so far scientists haven't managed to make a vaccine that protects against all strains of flu. A new approach could end that ritual and protect against deadly pandemic flu. If the virus that causes flu were an ice cream cone, then the yearly vaccine teaches the immune system to recognize just the scoop - chocolate one year, strawberry the next.

Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University's Department of Chemistry have found a way to control the lifetime of the quantum states of gold nanoclusters by three orders of magnitude, which could lead to improvements in solar cell and photocatalysis technologies. Their study is published in the April 18 issue of Science.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have elucidated an important part of a siganalling pathway that transmits information through the cell membrane into the interior of a cell. This siganalling pathway is of great significance for all mammals, since it is involved in various important vital processes such as the regulation of the heartbeat.

April 25, 2019 Intestinal organoids are three-dimensional structures derived from a single intestinal stem cell. They are great tools for applications ranging from fundamental biology to personalized and regenerative medicine. However, despite their relevance in research, it is still unclear how a single cell can give rise to a fully formed organoid.

Berkeley Lab researchers set the stage for new class of 3D-printed, all-liquid devices; could automate chemical synthesis for batteries and drug formulations Researchers at DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have 3D-printed an all-liquid device that, with the click of a button, can be repeatedly reconfigured on demand to serve a wide range of applications - from making battery materials to screening drug candidates.

By Christoph Pelzl Researchers at TU Graz have discovered a means of suppressing singlet oxygen formation in lithium-oxygen batteries in order to extend their useful lives. Additional at the end of the text. Since 2012, Stefan Freunberger of the Institute for Chemistry and Technology of Materials at TU Graz has been working on development of a new generation of batteries with enhanced performance and longer useful lives, and which are also cheaper to produce than current models.

Detailed models provide insight into 3-D structures of genes and the role of 3-D organization in gene function LOS ALAMOS, N.M. April 22, 2019-Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have created the largest simulation to date of an entire gene of DNA, a feat that required one billion atoms to model and will help researchers to better understand and develop cures for diseases like cancer.

From left to right: Susan Hubbard, Kam-Biu Luk, Jeffrey Long, and Claire Tomlin. (Credit: Berkeley Lab/UC Berkeley) Four scientists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a prestigious, 239-year old honorary society that recognizes accomplished scholars, scientists and artists in academia, the humanities, arts, business, and government.