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Researchers at Caltech and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have'in just two years'nearly doubled the number of materials known to have potential for use in solar fuels. They did so by developing a process that promises to speed the discovery of commercially viable solar fuels that could replace coal, oil, and other fossil fuels.

Researchers led by mineralogist Chi Ma have identified three new minerals in a tiny sample of the Khatyrka meteorite. The meteorite, recovered in pieces from the Koryak Mountains in eastern Russia in 1979 and 2011, made news in recent years for containing the first three natural quasicrystals ever found.

A single cell can contain a wealth of information about the health of an individual. Now, a new method developed at MIT and National Chiao Tung University could make it possible to capture and analyze individual cells from a small sample of blood, potentially leading to very low-cost diagnostic systems that could be used almost anywhere.

MIT researchers have devised a way to measure dopamine in the brain much more precisely than previously possible, which should allow scientists to gain insight into dopamine's roles in learning, memory, and emotion. Dopamine is one of the many neurotransmitters that neurons in the brain use to communicate with each other.

For the first time ever, researchers at TU Graz and the Medical University of Graz have managed to functionally characterise the three-dimensional interaction between red-light receptors and enzymatic effectors. The results, with implications for optogenetics, have been published in Science Advances.

MIT physicists have created a new form of matter, a supersolid, which combines the properties of solids with those of superfluids. By using lasers to manipulate a superfluid gas known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, the team was able to coax the condensate into a quantum phase of matter that has a rigid structure - like a solid - and can flow without viscosity - a key characteristic of a superfluid.

Compared to bacteria, in eukaryotes the genetic material is located in the cell nucleus. Its outer shell consists of the nuclear membrane with numerous nuclear pores. Molecules are transported into or out of the cell nucleus via these pores. Beneath the membrane lies the nuclear lamina, a threadlike meshwork merely a few millionths of a millimeter thick.

An effective treatment for a deadly strain of meningitis could become more readily available in less developed nations as a result of research led by Professor Graham Sandford of the Department of Chemistry. Cryptococcal Meningitis (CM) is the leading cause of meningitis in Saharan Africa and also accounts for 20% of HIV/AIDs deaths worldwide.

A Heidelberg physics project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) will focus on a new type of dating method for use in the earth and environmental sciences. The research team will deploy a special radioactive isotope of the noble gas argon (Ar) for the purpose of water dating. This isotope is useful for determining age in the range of 50 to 1,000 years.

Ramses Ramirez, research associate at Cornell's Carl Sagan Institute, left, and Lisa Kaltenegger, professor of astronomy and director of the Sagan Institute. Hunting for habitable exoplanets now may be easier: Cornell astronomers report that hydrogen pouring from volcanic sources on planets throughout the universe could improve the chances of locating life in the cosmos.

Research news The genome molecule contains the blueprint for life. The manner in which the blueprint is packed into the cell determines which genes are active and which are set to inactive. Disturbing this structure can result in illnesses such as cancer. Munich scientists have now succeeded in using molecular "tweezers" made from DNA to measure interactions at the first packaging level of the genome.

Scientists led by a team at Caltech have developed a new method for potentially removing nearly all sulfur compounds from gas and diesel fuel. Sulfur compounds in fuels such as gasoline and diesel create air pollution when the fuel is burned. To address that challenge, large-scale oil refinery processes remove the majority of sulfur from fuel down to a government-mandated level.

A common strategy to create high-yielding plants is hybrid breeding - crossing two different inbred lines to obtain characteristics superior to each parent. However, getting the inbred lines in the first place can be a hassle. Inbred lines consist of genetically uniform individuals and are created through numerous generations of self-crossing.

Research news Rechargeable lithium batteries with cathodes comprising nickel, manganese, and cobalt, are viewed as the most potent today. But they, too, have a limited lifespan. Already in the first cycle they lose up to ten percent of their capacity. Why this happens and what can be done to alleviate the ensuing gradual loss of capacity has now been investigated in detail by a team of scientists using positrons at the Technical University of Munich (TUM).

Findings Will Help Guide Nanoparticle Construction, Could Lead to New Materials, Drugs By Jocelyn Duffy Graphic shows Au246's hierarchical assembly into an artificial solid. Chemists at Carnegie Mellon University have demonstrated that synthetic nanoparticles can achieve the same level of structural complexity, hierarchy and accuracy as their natural counterparts - biomolecules.

Scientists detected a very specialized type of electron transfer in an aqueous salt solution ' 036/2017 from Feb 21, 2017 Scientists of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Universität Heidelberg, and the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague have empirically detected a very specialized type of electron transfer in an aqueous salt solution, one which had only been predicted theoretically up to now.

New molecules which scientists hope could one day become drugs for both cancer and diabetes have been created at the University of Bath. The compounds can increase glucose uptake into fat cells and could help diabetes patients manage their disease. They also reduce the proliferation of colon cancer cells, and could be used to reveal the link between diabetes and cancer, which is poorly understood.

Scientists at The University of Nottingham are using radar waves as part of a new tool developed to evaluate peatland sensitivity to global climate change. The new method is based upon an Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique that uses radar waves to measure vertical land surface motion.

Cutting edge tech shows molecule self-assembling into different forms passing from solution state to solid state and back again - a curious phenomenon in science - says University of Warwick research Phenomenon discovered using state-of-the-art national solid-state NMR facility at Warwick Research published by Chemistry: A European Journal - designated as 'Very Important Paper' Cutting edge technology has shown a molecule self-assembling into di

The evolution of cells and organisms is thought to have been preceded by a phase in which informational molecules like DNA could be replicated selectively. New work shows that hairpin structures make particularly effective DNA replicators. In the metabolism of all living organisms there is a clear division of labor: Nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) carry the information for the synthesis of proteins, and proteins provide the structural and executive functions required by cells, such as the controlled and specific catalysis of chemical reactions by enzymes.